“Go home, Alessandro. Accept what you are. Your grandfather refused to announce the excision in public, because he still hopes you will come back to the fold and earn your keep by fucking some rich heiress until she opens her bank accounts. That’s your destiny.”
Alessandro smiled. It chilled me to the bone.
“Well, I have done my part.” Xavier rose. “Please enjoy the rest of your day.”
He got up and walked away.
Alessandro looked at me. He didn’t say anything, he just looked at me. They had tried to auction him. Like a horse. He must’ve known that’s what they had planned for him. He’d spent half of his life pretending to be someone he wasn’t.
Linus sat down next to me. “The show is about to start.”
Slowly, deliberately, Alessandro turned away from me and looked at the dais.
The Speaker of the Assembly, Luciana Cabera, walked into the chamber. She was a Hispanic woman in her sixties who had been elected to the position after the previous Speaker retired last year. A white man in his forties walked onto the dais carrying a golden staff. He banged it on the floor. A pulse of magic burst from him.
“This special session is now open.”
I didn’t even care anymore. Alessandro sat next to me, still like a statue and I wanted to fix it.
Luciana walked up to her thronelike chair on the dais and sat.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on such short notice. I promise this will be quick. As you all know, Cheryl Castellano, Prime and Head of House Castellano, has appealed to this body. She claims to be falsely accused of murdering Felix Morton, Prime and heir to House Morton. She believes that her business partners conspired with Lander Morton, Prime and Head of House Morton, to intentionally smear her name in an effort to remove her from the board of the Pit Reclamation Project and requests that we hear her case and render our judgment.”
Cheryl had some balls. Wow.
“Normally, the Texas Assembly would be only too happy to adjudicate this matter.”
A light ripple of laughter ran through the chamber. The Texas Assembly hated dealing with inter-House feuds.
Luciana raised her hand. The laughter died.
“Regretfully, we have another pressing matter, which overrides this appeal.”
A burly bailiff who looked like she could stop a tank barehanded walked up onto the dais and handed the Speaker a sealed envelope. A camera projected the image of the envelope onto a huge digital screen behind Luciana. It bore the seal of the National Assembly.
Luciana opened the envelope, pulled out an old-fashioned parchment, and unrolled it.
“Cheryl Amanda Castellano of House Castellano, you are hereby remanded into the custody of the National Assembly on charges of crimes against humanity and unlawful magic experimentation.”
The chamber erupted.
“Order!” the Gold Staff roared.
Cheryl jumped up. “No! No.”
Chains burst out of the ground and wound around Cheryl. She fell silent, her scream cut off. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she sagged down.
Two figures stepped out from an alcove behind the dais, both wearing crimson robes with hoods that hid their faces. The shorter figure waved a hand and Cheryl rose three inches off the ground. They walked to the doorway, and Cheryl followed, gliding silently.
I leaned to Linus and whispered, “Who are they?”
“Wardens from other states,” he murmured back.
Right. And everyone would see Linus sitting in the chamber, presumably having nothing at all to do with the scary hooded figures taking Cheryl away. His identity as a Warden would remain confidential.
“This is an outrage!” Lander howled, punching the arms of his chair. “She killed my son! I demand vengeance!”
The robed figures paused before Lander’s wheelchair. The front figure spoke in a deep female voice.
“The National Assembly regrets the loss of your son and acknowledges the anguish of House Morton. Should she be found guilty, we invite you to join us for her execution. Be assured, Prime Morton, you won’t have to wait long for that invitation.”
Lander took a deep breath, then sagged in his chair. The hooded pair walked out of the chamber, Cheryl in tow.
“All is well that ends well,” Linus murmured. “I’ll see you both for dinner tonight. My place.”
Sunshine flooded the parking lot. Heat rose from the pavement in waves. I pulled the black robe off and tucked it under my arm. Another moment, and I would bake like a pie.
Tonight, Linus would want the full report. Most likely he was working on a plan to take down Arkan. That was okay. Arkan needed to die and Xavier had to die with him. I was fine with that.
In front of us a large fountain in the shape of a giant dandelion sent mist and water into the air.
Alessandro hadn’t said a word.
I held the keys out to him. “Would you like to drive?”
He turned to me, his face grim. “We need to talk.”
I had expected it, but my world cracked in half anyway. I stopped.
A muscle jerked in his cheek. “What he said was true. Every word of it.”
“I know.”
“I grew up pretending to be the man I should’ve been. My job was made very clear to me after my father died. My mission in life was to attract the right kind of bride with a bank account large enough to keep our family alive. I went to the parties wearing designer clothes after listening to my mother cry on the phone with our creditors. I attended gallery openings and drank champagne while my sisters ate the same pasta with nothing but a bit of salt for three days in a row because it was all we had.”
The burden of it, the shame he must’ve felt, had to be crushing. But he talked about it as if he were discussing the morning news over coffee.
“Every time I tried to earn money, my family spat on it. After the third time my grandfather hurled the money I brought home in my face, I realized that they would never accept it. And when I refused to be sold, they excised me. In the last decade I’ve earned over sixty million. All of it, except for fifty thousand dollars I keep in my account as operational expenses, went to our debt and to my mother and my sisters. Xavier is right. I’m the reason their lights are on. I have earned enough to keep the creditors off their back and to make sure that my mother and my sisters won’t starve. They can afford clothes and shoes. They won’t go without. I would have kept going, but my oldest sister grew up. She’d acted as my agent since she was fourteen, but now she refuses to take my blood money. She says she doesn’t want the guilt of knowing I might die for it.”
“I think I would like your sister.”
His voice was so detached. He’d locked all his feelings into a cage of will and kept them there.
“I can offer you nothing except myself. All I can do is be an assassin or a bodyguard. I’m done being an assassin and you’re the only person I want to guard. I tried to tell you this before, but I wanted you so much, it almost made me insane. I am a prince in plastic jewels, but I was still raised as a Prime. I know what a Prime should bring to the marriage.”
“And what would that be?”
“A stable House. Political and financial connections. Alliances. Wealth. Security. I have none of it. I come to you with nothing. Right here, right now, this is all I will ever be. I can’t leave you on my own, Catalina, but if you tell me to go, I will. I promise I’ll never bother you again.”
He waited.
His words floated from my memory. You’re beautiful, you’re brilliant, and if they knew how dangerous you were, you would get buried in proposals.
It was my turn.
“Alessandro, you’re the most powerful antistasi on the planet. What you did in the Pit was beyond anything I could’ve imagined. You’re strong, skilled, educated, and you have this incredible brain that unravels complex schemes in seconds. You walked into a building full of trained killers and eliminated everyone there to save a child you barely knew. And then you went to see Victoria Tremaine and threatened to cut her head off, and she let you go because you are charming, and your bearing is flawless. Who in this world can do that? You’re kind to my relatives when you have nothing to gain. You’re probably the only person aside from my family who understands me and can call me on my crap. And with all of that, you love me. You bring so much, Alessandro.”