Page 109 of Devoted

For the first time in our lives, he’d blocked me out of his thoughts. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why the hair stood up on the nape of my neck, but dread was lodged between my ribs like a splinter too small to see and too deep to ignore.

I didn’t voice my concerns. Not with how Valeria clung to my brother, how he didn’t want to let her go. Not here, not now, not in the middle of everything that was already pressing down on all of us.

But I knew my brother.

And whoever I was looking at right now… wasn’t entirely him.

40

GABRIEL

Ihad seen death plenty of times before today.

I had been its architect.

Its instrument on numerous occasions.

I had signed orders that ended lives and walked away without losing a night’s sleep because that was what it meant to be Marcello’s heir, the chosen son, destined to inherit the D’Immortali throne. To control a corrupt, ruthless empire through little more than fear and cold, necessary violence.

But nothing—nothing in my sixty-some years—prepared me for walking through Louis and Aurora Demente’s formerly luxurious estate, the ruins still smoking in the afternoon sun.

Bodies littered the ground—servants, guards, anyone foolish enough to stand their ground and not flee. I bent over, picked up a small shoe, tiny enough to sit in the palm of my hand. I wiped off a drop of blood, my instincts screaming for me to do something.

I closed my eyes, took a breath that tasted of metal and smoke, and replayed everything Valeria had told us less than an hour ago. I hadn’t anticipated Giovanni’s bloody return nor the manner in which he’d used the Drax like some grotesque blade of vengeance.

No, the monk had only been biding his time, and I’d been lulled into complacency.

Clearly, Blackwood was no longer in charge. Some seismic power shift had occurred over these past days, and Giovanni DiRavello had landed on his feet. As fucking usual.

His message had come through loud and clear. Give me back the Basin, or blood will fill the streets of Venice.

I’d come alone, leaving even Nico behind.

I’d needed to see for myself if his anger stretched to the innocents, or if he’d only meant to make some grand, bloody statement in front of the council, like the weak-spined bastard he was. But standing in the ruins of what had once been one of the oldest estates in the Dynasty, I faced the truth.

Giovanni would kill us all in the name of power.

Some part of me still couldn’t comprehend this level of evil. Even my father’s ambition had been tempered by some twisted form of honor, but Gio lacked even that. He would murder every Dynasty member—I stared at the tiny shoe—down to the last child to fulfill what he no doubt saw as his destiny.

“Twenty-three members of the household are dead. Plus the four from this morning in the council chambers.” Severin’s boots crunched on gravel as he stepped closer. He looked as if he’d aged twenty years, from the deep lines bracketing his mouth. “I should have stopped…”

I held up my hand, cutting him off.

“If you had, you would have been added to the count. So would Valeria. No, this is on Giovanni. And Blackwood. This blood is on their hands, not ours.”

“The wounds are consistent with what I saw this morning,” Severin continued, the commander’s voice reedy as he scanned the bloodied grounds. “They unleashed the Drax on these poor souls, and they didn’t die quickly, either. A few might have been questioned first. Hard to tell with the extent of the wounds.”

“Questioned about what?”

“Valeria, most likely. Chances are, they suspect she’s the one hiding you, and they’re searching for the location. Rocco was always a cagey bastard, and while there were rumors he had a house in the city, even I didn’t know about the island. But as you know, in our world, nothing stays hidden forever.”

That tracked and also meant our time was dwindling.

“According to Valeria, no one outside the bloodline knows about the island,” I said quietly. “But given Rocco’s inside the villa, pissed off and disillusioned, I wouldn’t put it past him to sell out his own daughter.”

“Giovanni will target another family.” Severin stared out over the wreckage, squinting against the smoke. “He’ll be looking for a response from you.”

“I know. He’ll get one,” I murmured, deciding what, exactly, that would look like.