Page 62 of Fastest Kill

"Let's hope it's not an account of him and Gabriella's sexual adventures," Frederica teased, hoping to make him laugh. He gave her a disapproving look, and she held her hands up in surrender. "Hey, I'm only saying it because it's something my parents would do, so I'm just warning you."

Dario sank from his knees to sit on the floor, his back against the desk, the journal open in his lap. "I don't think he was the kind to write something like that down, but if I get to a juicy bit, I'll let you know."

Giving a man space was a language Frederica understood better than comfort, so she left him to it and turned back to the bookshelves without a word.

She pulled down a copy of Petrarch's sonnets, its pages brittle and smelling of vanilla. She opened it, checked the spine, and, finding it solid, slid it back into its place. She moved to the next one and left him alone. If Dario wanted her input, he wasn't afraid to ask, and someone had to get through all the shelves by nightfall.

27

Dario could never mistake his father's handwriting for anyone else's. It was slanted, impatient, always rushing to catch up with whatever Niccolò's brain was doing ahead of it.

Dario knew it from birthday cards, notes left on kitchen tables, the margin comments in the books along the library walls that were the penciled observations of a man having a private argument with long-dead authors.

The early journal entries were practical. Meeting notes, dates, a record of conversations with Serapis written in a compressed shorthand, like he didn't trust his own memory.

The language became more careful when Serapis's name appeared, coded in a way that wouldn't have been obvious to anyone who hadn't known his father: Zio, occasionally, or simply L. The entries about Agrippa were rarer, more guarded. A name never written in full. A problem referred to only as il dormiglione. The Sleeper.

Dario filed it all away with the careful, distant attention he used for operational briefs, the part of his brain that could absorb information without attaching to it yet. He needed to stay focused and not drown in the longing for his father.

Niccolò's entries changed as the dates moved forward. The coded professional notes and the shorthand fell apart, and the sentences grew longer and more unguarded.

He read an entry about Rodrigo first:

He carries so much and says nothing. He has always been this way. I am proud of him every day, and I am worried about him every day, and I haven't yet found a way to tell him either thing that he actually needs to hear. I hope he finds something worth protecting that isn't the family. He is better at loving than he knows. He has just never been told he was allowed to.

Dario closed his eyes for a moment and tried harder not to feel like he was invading Niccolò's privacy. He opened them and kept reading.

Leo frightens me sometimes. Not because he's dangerous—though he is—but because he burns so hot, and there is nowhere for it to go. He will either find someone who understands what to do with all that fire, or he will consume himself from the inside out. I pray for the former. I would leave him a note, but he would analyze it to death and miss the point.

Dario heard Frederica moving behind him, the soft sound of a book being replaced on a shelf. He dreaded what he would find next and forced himself to the next page.

Dario has my soft heart. He doesn't know it yet. He thinks being soft is a weakness. He has learned, I think, to make the softness invisible so no one can use it against him. I wish I had taught him differently, that I could make Gabby understand that she doesn't have to push them so hard. I know she just wants them to be able to keep themselves safe. Someday, Dario will understand that his soft side is the hardest kind of strength to have.

Dario stopped reading. He sat with his father's words for a long time. From somewhere outside came the thin sound of a gull and the lap of the canal waves, and Frederica replacing another book.

His father had sat at this desk, in this room, and thought: Dario has my soft heart.

He had written it down, which meant he had needed to. The same way Dario sometimes needed to handwrite things down to make them real, to hold the shape of them outside of himself, where they wouldn't get lost. Niccolò had needed to keep this one.

He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and held them there until the pressure behind his eyes subsided, and he turned the page.

The entries became shorter after that. More dates. More coded references to Serapis and the preparations. A series of notes from a trip he recognized as the Venice week they had taken for Rodrigo's twenty-first birthday, the last time the four of them had been together in this house while it was still theirs.

Dario read slowly. R. in good spirits. Leo took apart the lock on the wine cabinet within thirty minutes of arriving. D. found it before he did, but I didn't have the heart to tell him.

Dario laughed, short and involuntary.

Meeting with L. tomorrow while the boys sleep in. The object needs a new keeper. L thinks it's better left with me, but it's not something I could keep in my pocket without worrying about losing it. Someone who doesn't know what it is can carry it without fear.

Dario's eyes stopped moving.

Giving D. something to keep safe. He won't understand what I mean by it, but he will keep it. He keeps everything. He just pretends not to because he doesn't want Gabby to know he is sentimental.

Dario stared at the sentence until the words stopped moving. Giving D. something to keep safe.

"Frederica," he called. Her footsteps crossed the room, and she crouched beside him. She read the open page and raised an eyebrow.

"Rodrigo's twenty-first birthday," he said, rubbing at the bridge of his nose again. "We came to Venice. All four of us, no staff, no security. My mother thought it was irresponsible. My father said Rodrigo needed a trip where he wasn't in charge of anything. I woke up in the middle of the night and heard my father's voice in the next room. Low, like he was on a call. I went back to sleep."