I smiled. He always knew the most tactful way to interrupt Mother’s tirades. “We might as well finish it so we don’t have to work in the morning.”
He dipped his pen in the inkwell. “You mean so you don’t have to work in the morning. The work for me, my dear, never ends.”
Father scratched the nib across the paper as I told him about my successful night.
He sighed and set his quill aside. “He didn’t pay a lot, of course,” my father said. Suicide requests usually didn’t.
“I thought you were going to have Matteo take over some of the paperwork,” I said. “He’d excel at it.”
Almost as if he’d heard us, Matteo stepped into the office. I nodded and he sniffed, once.
“Lea,” he said. “Got home late enough, I see.”
“Matteo. Didn’t go out at all, I presume.”
“Children, please.” Father removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
I’d never gotten along with my brother Matteo. He was strict and humorless, so different from Rafeo and me. As a child, I used to dream about him leaving the Family, joining another. Of course, now I understood things were complicated.
I exhaled. Losing Matteo, losing any of us when our Family had already lost so many, would put us further in a bind. Maybe Mother was right. Maybe it was time for me to grow up and do something for the Family for a change.
I thought about Val, the smell of his skin, the taste of his lips, and the feel of his embrace. We couldn’t always have what we wanted. I knew this. Sometimes, we had to give up what we wanted to get what our Family needed.
Even if that meant marrying Brand Caffarelli.
five
LATER, I WOULDN’T BE SURE WHAT HAD WAKENED ME: the smell of smoke, or the sounds of violence outside my room.
In the end, it didn’t matter.
I rolled out of bed, alert. The acrid scent of burning wood and cloth reached me even through my closed bedroom door.
I jerked open a drawer in my bureau and dragged on a pair of leather pants beneath my nightgown, not only for ease of movement but also for the pockets they afforded me. I grabbed any knives in my end table, far too few for comfort, and cursed my sword, still resting in the weapons room.
A sudden bang exploded against the door. I dropped into a defensive stance, knives in hand. My key thumped against my chest from its chain.
No one burst through. Gray smoke flowed under the door.
I snatched my mask from my bedside table and jammed it over my face. Its familiar smell enveloped me. I breathed deep. Whatever was happening outside my room, I could handle it. I was a clipper. A Saldana. I had no fear. Right?
The door handle burned my palm. I yelled and pulled away. Sloppy, Lea. I needed to get my wits about me. I slipped my sleeve over my skin and jerked the door open to face the fire.
Flames crawled across the walls. The Saldana Family tapestries burned merrily as the hall and rooms filled with smoke. With no windows in the house, the smoke had nowhere to go. The fire would burn until it consumed all the air in the house. My Family’s remaining wealth, all our beautiful things, surrendered themselves to the flames.
A hall door creaked and fell inward, covered in flames. Go! Move! Do something!
I dashed from my room. My mask protected me from the smoke. It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last.
“Mother!” I shouted. “Father!” Had they fled and left me alone?
The flames licked the ceiling. Before long they would rain onto me. I had to get out of here. I had to reach the tunnels.
I raced through the halls, stopping only to check the bedrooms. In Emile’s room his nursemaid Silva leaned over his bed, a knife plunged into her back. She’d been dead long enough for her blood to soak his bedcover, turning it scarlet.
I clenched my hands into fists. She had been kind, and caring, and now she was dead. There was nothing I could do for her, but maybe she could help me. I removed the knife. No markings, no sigils or crests. No sign of who owned this knife. Of who was attacking us.
Did Rafeo have Emile?
Jesep’s and Matteo’s bedrooms were engulfed in flames, and I couldn’t see inside.
I stumbled down the stairs, coughing as the smoke snaked its way beneath my mask. There wasn’t much time, but I needed to find my Family. I wouldn’t leave without them.
In the stairwell another body lay slumped against the wall. Rafeo. A wordless shout escaped my lips. I dropped beside him. He wore his leathers, and a crack ran along the white side of his mask where his mouth would’ve been. My fingers pressed against his neck. Nothing, then a pulse, slow and weak. My hand came away coated in the deep red of heart’s blood.
He groaned, and relief washed over me like a gale before a storm.
Stay calm. More than anything I had to stay calm. Rafeo needed me.
“I’m here, Rafeo.” I threw his arm over my shoulder. Rafeo was not a large man, no Saldana was, but even with all my strength I couldn’t bring him to his feet, not without his help.
“Rafeo.” I struggled to lift him. “You need to help me. I can’t do this without you.”