His face changed in increments, the way storms gather over water. “Yes.”
“You believed he betrayed your family.”
“I believed my father.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” He took a breath. “It isn’t.”
I went closer until I could see the exhaustion around his eyes.
“Why didn’t you come for me?”
He laughed once, bitterly. “I was busy tearing my life apart.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I pulled every record tied to my uncle’s death. Every ledger. Every offshore account. Nico helped. There were enough inconsistencies to start a war.” His gaze held mine. “Dante knows I know.”
A chill slid down my spine. “Roman—”
“He’s making a move tonight.”
My heart stopped. “What kind of move?”
Before he could answer, a voice came from the terrace.
“An inevitable one.”
Dante Castelli stepped into the garden with two men behind him.
He was older than Roman, silver at the temples, elegant in the way powerful monsters often are. Valentina stood beside him in a pale dress, her expression unreadable now that the room had finally run out of masks.
Roman moved instantly, putting himself between me and his father.
That should have frightened me.
Instead, absurdly, it calmed me.
“Step away from her,” Dante said.
Roman didn’t move. “No.”
Dante’s gaze cut to me. “Miss Harding, your father was a coward then and remains one now.”
“Funny,” I said, because terror has always made me sharper. “I was just thinking the same about you.”
One of the guards shifted.
Roman’s hand flexed at his side.
“Enough,” Dante said. “You’ve humiliated this family for a girl who should have been leverage and became a distraction.”
Roman’s voice turned to ice. “She is neither.”
Valentina looked at Roman, really looked, and whatever she saw there changed her.
I watched her understand, in real time, that she had never once possessed what she thought she possessed.
Then everything happened at once.
Headlights flashed beyond the hedges.
Men shouted at the front drive.
Nico’s voice rang out somewhere behind the house: “Now!”
Dante’s guard reached inside his jacket.
