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I flex my hand, testing her handiwork. "It's good. Almost like a professional did it."

"Thank you." She hesitates, eyes on my wounded hand. "No one's ever tended your wounds before, have they?"

Her fingers drift to my other hand, the one missing its ring finger. The scarred stump where I cut it off to send my message. Her touch is feather-light as she traces the healed wound.

"I know you did this for me," she whispers.

My throat tightens. "I did it toclaimyou. Notforyou. To show my brother I would take what's mine, no matter the cost."

She lifts my hand to her lips, pressing a soft kiss to the scar tissue. The gesture hits me hard. No one has ever touched me there, let alone with such... tenderness.

"Was it worth it?" Her amber eyes search mine. "Mutilating yourself just to make a point?"

"Yes." The word comes out rough. Raw. I curl my remaining fingers around her chin. "I would cut off every finger, spill rivers of blood, burn cities to ash to have you. To keep you."

She shivers but doesn't pull away. "You're a monster."

"I'm a Ravelli." I brush my thumb across her lower lip. "Your monster. And I think… you're starting to like it."

"Maybe." Her teeth graze my thumb. "Or maybe I'm just learning to be a monster too."

The admission sends heat coursing through me. This woman, this queen I've claimed, understands the darkness inside me.

More than that… she welcomes it.

My phone buzzes on the table between us. Sophia's update from London on the Vatican Bank accounts we've been working to secure more tightly. The message is brief, but fuckingdevastating:Access has been denied. Your accounts frozen and all contact lost. Advise the next move accordingly?

Fuck.

In one stroke, we've lost control of financial channels worth millions. Channels that were essential to my plan. Channels where money from drugs and weapons could flow freely for years, undetected and uncompromised.

Francesca reads my expression with unsettling accuracy. "Bad news?"

I stand abruptly, emotional walls slamming back into place. "Business setback. Nothing important."

"Dante—"

"I need to work," I cut her off. Fuck. I need distance from her perceptive eyes, from the confusion she creates in me. "I'll be in the study. Don't wait up."

As I stride from the room, I feel her gaze on my back. She's disappointed, understanding, and somehow still accepting all at the same time.

It should comfort me.

Instead, it terrifies me.

Because for the first time in my life, I'm facing the possibility that my father might have been right: perhaps I'm not cut out for the throne after all.

Perhaps I'm simply the monster he always claimed I was. Effective in violence, shooting a man dead without a care in the world, but at the end of the day, completely incapable of the strategic restraint true power requires.

And perhaps most terrifying of all is the realization that I'm starting to care about how Francesca sees me. Whether she witnesses the monster, or the man I might have become in a different life.

A man worthy of the tenderness in her eyes when she bound my wounds.

A man who might deserve more than blood and power.

A man who might, someday… deserve her.

Chapter Sixteen