Assassin's Heart (Assassin's Heart, #1)(66)

“Your mother sent me letters, sometimes. Though none in recent years.”

“My mother? Bianca Saldana?”

He rolled his eyes. “Unless you have another mother I don’t know of, then yes.”

This . . . this flipped my world upside down. My mother had sent letters to Marcello Saldana, who we were told never to speak of. Who had brought shame to the Family. “Why would she do that?”

“We were friends. I was glad when she married Dante and joined our Family. I had great love for Bianca and my brother. It opened a wound I thought long healed to hear of their deaths at the hands of the Da Vias.”

“Then why do you refuse to help?” I leaned forward. “Come with me! You know what it’s like to need vengeance. You took yours but now stop mine. Give me the location of the Da Via Family home and we can make them pay for what they’ve done to our Family. I will make sure they never forget the Saldanas!”

“At the cost of your own life, you mean?”

I leaned back. “If need be. I’m not afraid to die.”

He laughed. “No, of course you’re not! You’re, what, seventeen? And a disciple of Safraella. I’m sure you can’t wait to meet Her cold embrace.”

He mocked the gods too easily. “You step awfully close to blasphemy. I am Her disciple, and I’m confident She would offer me a fast rebirth.”

“And then what? You die and are reborn? And what of the people you leave behind?”

“There are no people. Everyone’s dead.”

Marcello widened his eyes in a way that said he didn’t believe me. He looked over to where Les slept.

My stomach coiled at the thought of Les. Of Les injured in the alley, of the brief moment when I’d thought he was dead.

“Dying is the easy part.” Marcello got to his feet. “But what you leave behind is another matter.” He glanced at Les again. “I fear you will destroy him.”

“Me?”

“He is too kind to you. He thinks if he is kind, then people will like him. And if they like him, they won’t leave. But that is not the way of things. You are a flame and he is a moth, drawn to you, unaware if he gets too close you will burn him up.”

He’d struck dangerously close to my own thoughts regarding Les. But I wasn’t the only one to blame. “And you? You’ve given him a sword and taught him only enough to be dangerous with it, but not when to back away.”

“Things were fine before you arrived,” he countered.

“Were they? You never fought about it? You never threatened to leave, never held that over his head?”

Marcello was silent. He couldn’t deny it.

I sighed. “Truly, Uncle, we’re both at fault.”

He nodded slowly. “We’re Saldanas. Sooner or later we destroy the ones we love. Come, let’s pour you a bath.”

He walked behind the fireplace to another section of the room. Maybe he was right. It would be cruel, abandoning Les when he’d already lost so much. But I couldn’t stand the thought of someone else dead because of me. And I couldn’t let the Da Vias get away with what they’d done.

No. I had to continue with my plan. It was kill or be killed. If I did die, hopefully any grief Les felt would be lessened by the knowledge that I’d died on my own terms, confronting the Da Vias instead of waiting for them to take me in the night.

Still, I thought about Rafeo and my Family. My uncle wasn’t wrong. Living, being the person who stayed behind while those you loved left, was not an easy path to take. Not at all.

Marcello and Les had a large copper tub hidden behind the fireplace. It didn’t take long for Marcello to fill it, and while the water was lukewarm at best, the closeness of the hearth heated the tub and the water the longer I sat inside.

Before I climbed in, Marcello disappeared and returned with a stack of folded papers.

“Here.” He handed them to me. “These are some of the letters your mother sent me.”

I took them gently. Marcello left me to my privacy and I climbed into the tub, careful to keep the letters dry.

I could feel my mother in each piece of paper, sense her spirit as she chose what words to tell my uncle.

I read of her happiness when my brothers and I were each born, how eager she was to expand the Family. And her pride at Rafeo’s marriage and the birth of Emile.

And then a final letter of grief, describing the plague that had swept the city, telling of the deaths in the Family, the loss of Jesep’s parents, who I realized Marcello would have known, would have loved. Jesep’s mother was my father and Marcello’s younger sister. And Rafeo’s wife, taken by the sickness just when it seemed it had finally abated.

The Family had been so weakened, she wrote, she didn’t know how we would ever recover. And we hadn’t, of course. The Da Vias took advantage of our weakness and destroyed us when we were too few to stop them.

Throughout the letters, though, my mother spoke of her love and pride in her children. How, even when Rafeo joked too much, he could always make her laugh. How Matteo’s almost blind devotion to tradition and rules made him a precise and proficient clipper. And how my willful nature and stubbornness expressed itself in loyalty to the ones I loved.

The last line was brief. Just a mention of me, earning my mask, and how proud she was, and how she knew someday I would be the best clipper of them all if I could focus on what was important.