Assassin's Heart

by Sarah Ahiers

  Les squeezed himself out of Fabricio’s. I stretched my neck and looked up at the four-story monstrosity of a house that towered over us. Everything about it spoke of the richest of inhabitants. I shook my head.

  “What is it?” Les peered past the gap in the city wall to the dead plains.

  “It’s only . . . of course the Da Vias live in a giant mansion, displaying their riches for all to see. I don’t know why I ever assumed they’d have tunnels like we did. They’re too much in love with themselves to think of safety.”

  “To be fair, the tunnels didn’t save your Family. Or my master.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. Come on.”

  The door to the manor was unlocked, and I pushed it open quietly. Before us extended a hall bathed in darkness. Les pulled out his cutter and held it loosely beside him. I left my sword on my hip, but selected a stiletto.I was finally here to avenge my Family. To end my guilt and shame.

  We slipped into the dark hallway, letting our eyes adjust. Les reached behind him to shut the door and I grabbed his arm.

  “Leave it open,” I said.

  “Why? If someone comes across it, won’t it make them suspicious?”

  I glanced out the door and past the broken wall to the dead plains. “It’s my backup plan.”

  We walked quietly down the carpeted hall. There were no rooms or doors, only a straight path that led to a set of stairs and another door.

  The stairs were solidly built and didn’t creak as we climbed them. At the door I glanced at Les. He tightened his grip on his cutter and gave a quick nod.

  I slid Marcello’s key into the lock and turned. It clicked. I pushed the door open, and light spilled over us.

  We’d entered the Da Vias’ home.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  forty

  THE INSIDE OF THEIR HOUSE WAS AS LAVISHLY DECORATED as I would have expected of the Da Vias. Rich tapestries hung on the walls, as did painted portraits of Family members throughout the ages. Les and I walked across the thick carpet. I should’ve been watching our path, listening for people, but I couldn’t help but stop and stare at a portrait of Val. He looked so stern in the painting; the artist had failed to capture his smirk of arrogance.

  “Lea,” Les hissed. I abandoned the portrait to follow him.

  The hall opened to a large grand room, the floor tiled in marble, columns supporting the ceiling that soared above our heads. I’d been to balls at the palace that didn’t have rooms as decadent as this one.

  There was another door across the room from us. I felt exposed, stepping into the giant, open room, but we had to keep going.

  We scurried across the room, keeping our footfalls light and searching the space around us. We reached the door and paused only a moment before we opened it and left the grand room behind.

  Another hallway. This one had doors set in the walls. We stood before the first one, made of heavy oak.

  The mark on my back twinged.

  The door could have led anywhere, to a kitchen, a bedroom, another grand room. We could open the door and find it packed with Da Vias. But it was on the north side of the building, which was pressed up against the city wall outside.

  “Do we open it?” Les asked.

  We needed to stick with the plan. To find Marcello and then to burn the whole place down with the firebomb. Our time was limited, and if it ran out, I would have to make decisions I didn’t want to make.

  But there was something about this door. Even if it was simply a bedroom, maybe we could find someone still sleeping and convince them to tell us Marcello’s location. It could be worth the delay.

  I nodded. Les turned the door handle. My heart thudded in my chest and everything seemed too silent, too still. The door swung open.

  It led to a bedroom, dark and empty.

  There was no reason to explore it, to go inside and see what we could find. None. But my hand twitched. I crossed the threshold, slipping into the dim room.

  There was nothing in it, only a canopied bed, unoccupied and rumpled. I faced Les and shrugged. Maybe my instincts had been wrong.

  A figure launched out of the shadows, tackling me before I could bring my stiletto up. I was slammed to the floor. Hands scrabbled for my neck. Fingers dug into my throat, choking me. I bucked, trying to break free of him. Another shadow raced into the room. Les.

  My attacker rolled off, dodging the slice Les had aimed for his head. I rolled toward Les and got to my feet, coughing.

  “Are you all right?” Les kept his eyes on the Da Via, who circled us in the shadows.

  I nodded and unsheathed my sword. Sloppy of us, to think the room was vacant. But if my attacker was armed, he would have pulled a weapon by now. It was two against one, and we were prepared for a fight.

  I nudged Les, and we sprang at him together. Les swung left. I dashed right.

  The Da Via swiveled his head and made a quick decision. He lashed out at Les with a bare foot, connecting with his thigh. It wasn’t enough to do more than bruise, but it caused Les to lose his footing. He stumbled, missed his swing.

  The attacker turned toward me. I lunged, sword in my right hand, stiletto in my left. He dodged and grabbed my left wrist, squeezing my tendons. I jerked him forward, trying to free my hand. We stumbled into the light spilling from the hallway.

  The Da Via was shirtless, dressed only in a pair of sleep pants. His sandy blond hair lay disheveled about his head. I gasped. Matteo.

  My hesitation cost me. He ripped the stiletto from my fingers, flipping it around and brandishing it before him.

  Les circled back to me.

  “Come on then!” Matteo snarled.

  I stepped away, breathing heavily. I pushed my mask to the top of my head. Matteo stared at me for a moment, his expression of rage slowly replaced by astonishment.

  “Lea.” He lowered his weapon slightly.

  “Surprised to see me?” My heart pounded in my chest, and not from the fight. I’d known he was alive. I’d known it. But I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to face him. I’d thought Safraella had been urging me into this room, but maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe it had been a warning instead.

  Matteo swallowed loudly. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  I pulled my mask down so he couldn’t see my emotions flashing across my face. “You’re supposed to be dead, too. In our house, burned like the rest of our Family.”

  He tightened his jaw. “Claudia told me you died in Yvain.”

  “She wasn’t wrong. And which Da Via told you about the rest of our Family? Was it Nik? Or Val? Did they tell you how our mother died? Our father? Jesep?”

  He narrowed his eyes and took a step back.

  “You betrayed us!” I yelled. “Rafeo died in my arms because of you.”

  “Don’t talk to me about Rafeo. I loved him, too.”

  “I loved him best! Where were you that night? Were you with them, or were you with us?” Beside me, Les dropped his free arm to his belt. I focused on Matteo.

  “I was with them,” Matteo answered. “I’ve loved Claudia for years in secret. Years. But Mother and Father wouldn’t agree to any sort of union between us and the Da Vias. So I remained discreet. Much like you with Val.” He sneered at me, and though there had never been much love lost between Matteo and me, his anger and bitterness poured through me like sour poison.

  “When Claudia told me she was pregnant,” he said, “and offered me a place beside her, I knew where I belonged. You damn well know Family comes before family, and I was a Da Via as of the night of the fire. It was a test for me. It was prove I was one of them or die. So I told them how to traverse the tunnel, and they used the key you so helpfully provided to get inside. It wasn’t just me, dear sister, who betrayed our Family.”

  His words were another knife wound, this time in the heart. I couldn’t catch my breath. My ribs pressed tig
htly against my lungs, and I struggled to make them obey, but they wouldn’t. Ever since the night of the fire, I’d carried the blame of my Family’s death. I’d given the Da Vias the means to reach my Family. But it hadn’t been only me.

  It had been Matteo who had killed us. My brother who had seen his Family murdered.

  “You have a new mask,” Matteo said. He glanced at Les. “And a new Saldana. Though judgment has yet to be made on whether he’ll measure up to the reputation.”

  I raised my sword. A gust of cold flowed through me, as if my blood had been replaced by a chill wind. “He’s more of a Saldana than you ever were.”

  Matteo snarled and twisted his wrist. I recognized the move. I pulled my sword back, prepared to defend myself, when something cut through the air, connecting with Matteo’s neck.

  A knife protruded from his throat. Blood poured down his chest as he stared at me in utter shock.

  I looked at Les, his hand held before him from when he’d released the knife.

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but stare at my brother. Matteo gurgled and dropped the stiletto. He grasped the hilt of the knife, pulling it from his throat.

  Blood poured everywhere. He took a step toward me. Another. He fell. I dropped beside him, pushing the mask from my face.

  “Matteo.” I pressed my hands to his throat, his warm blood spilling over my fingers. There was nowhere I could put them to stop the bleeding. I’d been here before. There was nothing I could do.

  Matteo coughed up blood. He blinked once, twice, and then his eyes went dark.

  I groaned, pulling my fingers away. I stared at them. The life’s blood of both my brothers had coated my hands. I’d never be clean of it.

  “Lea.” Les spoke. I struggled to my feet, my hands leaving bloody prints in the pale carpet beside Matteo’s body.

  “You killed my brother,” I said to him.

  He handed me a shirt that had been resting over a chair. I took it from him, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Les stepped closer and clasped my hands in his. He used the shirt to clean the blood from me.

  “I had to,” Les said.

  “Why?”

  “Because She asked it of me. She told me that I couldn’t let you kill your family, your blood. That I had to spare you that.”

  I blinked as he scrubbed at my hands. Safraella had granted me that mercy, even though Matteo was a Da Via now. And She’d sent me here to kill the Da Vias, when She’d told me to return them to Her.

  “Lea?” Les asked quietly, pushing his mask up.

  I sank against Les. He wrapped his arms around me, and I held tight to him as thoughts tumbled through my head.

  “It’s all right,” Les said. “It’ll be all right.”

  I nodded against him, my eyes jumping down to Matteo’s body before they flicked away. Behind Les, tucked in a corner of the room, stood another door.

  I pulled away. “There’s a door. . . .”

  He turned. I walked to it. The knob twisted easily in my hand.

  Les dropped his hand to his belt. “We’re running out of time, and we don’t know what’s in there.”

  I pushed the door open.

  It was another bedroom. No, not a bedroom, a nursery. A crib stood to the side, and on another wall was a child’s bed.

  My arms shook. I clutched them to my chest. I stepped to the bed. A child lay in it, asleep. His cheeks were flushed with warmth, his black, curly hair resting against his face.

  Emile.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  forty-one

  I FELL TO MY KNEES BESIDE HIS BED.

  Les ran to me, but I focused on Emile. I brushed a lock of hair behind his ear, and he stirred in his sleep.

  “Lea?” Les asked.

  “It’s Emile,” I whispered. “My nephew. Rafeo’s son. They didn’t kill him. They took him.”

  I stood and watched him sleep, his breaths coming easily, his fist clenched beside his face.

  “They took him,” I said. “To make him a Da Via, to make sure he never remembered being a Saldana.”

  I approached the crib. Inside slept an infant girl, a blond thatch of hair crowning her head. Claudia and Matteo’s child. I scanned my memory for her name. Allegra.

  I should have hated her. She was a Da Via and the daughter of a brother who had betrayed us all. But I didn’t. She was so beautiful.

  “Lea . . . ,” Les started. “What should we do?”

  I stepped away. “We’re wasting too much time. We need to keep going or we won’t have time to set the firebombs.”

  “But surely this changes everything?”

  “Does it?” I tugged on my hair.

  “Wait.” Les grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face him. “I know you say that Family comes before family, but I don’t believe that. I think family”—he gestured to Emile on the bed—“should come first. And I also believe that family is what you make of it.”

  His words sank into me, twisting around my memory of what Safraella had said to me before the resurrection. She’d brought me back, allowed me to resurrect Les in order to kill the Da Vias. But She was a goddess of death. If She wanted them, did she really need me to deliver them?

  “I don’t know what to do,” I whispered.

  “Lea, you’re the best thing in my life, and however long we have left here, I want to spend it with you. I will follow you no matter what you decide. But do you really want to give up what remains of your family just to make the Da Vias pay? If we only have time to save Marcello and the children or carry out your murders, which would your Family pick? Which would Rafeo pick?”

  I sagged and Les wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close to him.

  When Safraella had given me a resurrection, I’d thought about choosing Rafeo. I’d thought about bringing him back. But it would have been a shallow gift, to return him to a life where his son was dead. Nevertheless here slept Emile, alive and whole, and I couldn’t leave him here, couldn’t leave him in the hands of the people who’d murdered his father.

  “His son,” I answered.

  Family over family, She’d said to me. But maybe She’d meant the opposite. Maybe sometimes murder wasn’t the answer.

  Maybe this time I could choose to save a life instead.

  I pulled away from Les and wiped my eyes under my mask. I’d spent so long planning to kill the Da Vias for murdering my Family. But they hadn’t killed all of us. This time I could choose family over Family. Vengeance didn’t have to be everything.

  And maybe vengeance wasn’t as important as redemption.

  “What should we do with that?” Les gestured to the bag that held the firebombs and extra supplies.

  I sniffed. “Bring it, just in case. We’ll find Marcello. Then we’ll come here for Emile and we’ll leave. Join the Caffarellis or leave Lovero, I don’t care. As long as we’re together.”

  Emile sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes with his fists. “Aunt Lea?”

  “Oh.” I rushed over, kneeling in front of him. “Yes, it’s me.”

  He reached out for me and I grabbed him, holding him tight, his small arms wrapped around my neck.

  He was so exquisite. I didn’t want to ever stop looking at him. He let go of me.

  “You went away,” he scolded. “Did you bring my papa?”

  My breath escaped me in a whoosh and I reached for him again, but he saw Les over my shoulder and squirmed free of me.

  “Papa!” He stumbled to Les. But when he got closer he slowed, perhaps seeing how tall Les was compared to Rafeo.

  Les pushed his mask up and smiled at Emile, who stared at him suspiciously.

  I scooped up Emile. He tucked his face against my neck, hiding.

  “I don’t have your papa.” I rubbed his back. “This is Les.”

  “I want my papa.” He pouted.

  “Me to
o.”

  I walked him to the bed and set him down. “I want to you to listen to me carefully,” I said. He nodded. “Les and I are going to leave you here—”

  “No!” he shouted. I peeked at Allegra’s crib, sure he would wake her. “I want to go with you!”

  “You can come with us,” I said. “But only if you’re a big boy and can wait and be quiet.” Before the attack Rafeo had been teaching Emile how to be patient, the first skill any clipper learned. “Can you do that?”

  Emile picked at a scab on his arm while he kicked his legs. He nodded.

  “Fine, then. You’re going to wait and be quiet in your bed. And if you do a good job, Les and I will come back and find you and you can come with us.”

  Emile wrinkled his nose but nodded. I reached into my belt and pulled out the smallest knife I had, a push dagger designed to fit between my knuckles for a punch with a surprise. I handed it to Emile, and his eyes lit up.

  “Be careful with it,” I said. “You remember the rules?”

  He nodded and held it in his pudgy palm. “Point out, not in.”

  I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

  We left the room, and I watched him closely as we closed the door behind us.

  “You just gave a weapon to a child,” Les said.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s, what, four?”

  “He’s been handling weapons since he learned how to talk. He won’t hurt himself.”

  Les shook his head. “Come on. Let’s find my master and get out of here before we stumble on anyone else.”

  “This house is huge,” I said as we stepped out into the hall. The sun was setting, I could feel it in my bones. “I’m not sure how we’re going to find him.”

  “Nothing’s beyond fixing yet. We can still save him. Save us.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. Les was right. This wasn’t the time or place to worry about it. We needed to find my uncle and get out as fast as possible.