She shoved me, her voice shaking with fury. "Nara, who do you think you are?"
"How dare you speak to your senior brother and sister like that?!"
Edoardo stepped between us, his expression the picture of composed reason. One hand went to his tie, straightening it with a practiced tug. "Nara, don't be rash."
"The Castellano crew was always a small, unremarkable outfit. Massimo spent his entire life trying to make it flourish and never could. What chance would we have?"
"Besides, all of us have been made now. Isn't that a glory the crew can be proud of?"
He reached out and took hold of my arm.
"Come now, be good. I'll take you to see the Boss. I'll make sure you get a fine position in the organization..."
But before the last word left his mouth, my stiletto was already buried in his chest.
Edoardo never even had time to react. He crumpled to the ground, eyes wide and glassy, dead before he hit the stone.
Every Valente soldier in the vicinity went rigid with shock. Weapons cleared leather, all trained on me.
Rosalia stumbled back two steps, her face white. "Nara, what kind of cursed thing are you holding?!"
She asked because Edoardo had already been made. The protection of the Valente name shielded him.
An ordinary blade couldn't have gotten within arm's reach before a dozen soldiers cut you down.
So in her mind, my weapon had to be something unholy.
I raised the stiletto, letting the light catch its edge. My voice was flat and cold. "Cursed? No common killer is worthy of wielding this."
"But you'll find out what it is soon enough."
I crouched beside Edoardo's body and drew the blade across his chest, slow and deliberate, blooding the steel.
"Since our dear senior brother had no loyalty to speak of, his blood might as well serve a better purpose. A blood offering for my blade."
"Nara, you vicious monster!"
Rosalia's eyes went red with rage. She pulled a gun from beneath her jacket and lunged toward me.
But at the critical moment, a Valente soldier beside her seized her arm and hauled her back, his hand trembling as he pointed at the stiletto hovering over Edoardo's body, the black handle slick and gleaming.
"Lady Rosalia, look. Your junior sister's blade... something's wrong with it. It's drinking the blood on its own."
Rosalia didn't care. She scoffed, flipping her hair over her left shoulder. "Old weapons never play by the rules. What's so strange about that?"
The soldier shook his head frantically. "No, you don't understand. You've only just been made."
"In all the generations since the families first formed, there has only ever been one blade that craves the blood of made men..."
Rosalia blinked, clueless. "What blade?"
The soldier's lips trembled around one word: "Mietitore."
Rosalia's jaw dropped. The color drained from her face.
But before she could gather her wits, a voice split the air from somewhere above the compound walls, heavy with authority that needed no anger to terrify.
"Silence!"
"I destroyed the Ferro heir with my own hands. Mietitore was shattered by my order. It no longer exists."
"You will not spread such baseless fear!"
I knew that voice. I knew it the way you know the sound of your own heartbeat. Aldric Valente. My enemy for as long as I had drawn breath.
And the one who had wounded me deepest of all.
He was right about one thing. I was the Ferro heir he claimed to have destroyed.
I was also the only other true power that had emerged from the Old Country alongside him, the only one who had survived the annihilation of the original families.
The year the old dynasty was wiped out, the two of us had nowhere left to go. We set aside our enmity out of necessity, clinging to each other to survive.
For years after that, Aldric treated me well.
The Ferro bloodline breeds cold. He was the one who taught me how to cry and how to laugh.
Under his guidance, I slowly learned to live in the world beyond the Old Country.
So when he told me he wanted to take me to the Commission's stronghold, that he would look after me for the rest of my life, I agreed without a second thought.
Years as husband and wife. Every one of them devoted. Every one of them tender.
Until Aldric met a civilian woman, and everything veered off course.
That woman was Elara, the one he now called his wife.
Elara was flesh and bone, a nobody from outside the families. She could not set foot in the Commission's inner world. The only way was to replace the nothing inside her with real power, with the leverage and legacy of a true dynasty.
Aldric searched every corner of the organization and found no justification to take what he needed from anyone else.
