Assassin's Heart (Assassin's Heart, #1)(94)

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 tightly 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 A gust of cold flowed through me, as if my blood had been replaced by a chill wind.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.





forty-one


I FELL TO MY KNEES BESIDE HIS BED.