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Chapter Forty-Five

CARMINE

There are ways to protect Luna that don’t involve me staring at her through the bulletproof glass of the citadel.

One, letting her sleep in peace. No one is breaching Il Blocco’s stronghold.

She’s safe from me and just about anyone else who’d try to take her.

Sam has served an intellectual function for a long time, but I have a longer memory.

The seraph has powers I could not conceive of even at the height of mine.

In my raven form, I drop onto the roof of my Lexington Avenue brownstone, where I lived when I wasn’t in Italy, and enter the building through a bird-sized hatch disguised as a vent.

The doors are locked. I was in stasis when the coded deadbolts were installed and Laro hid the keys somewhere in the Naples villa. He, for obvious reasons, can’t tell me where.

The caretaker is elderly now, but probably remembers me well enough to tell me when he comes tomorrow.

Everything looks as I left it. Almost. The appliances are new. The tube wiring has been replaced. When the front doorbell rings, there’s a little video of the man who pressed the button. He’s holding a paper grocery bag by the handles.

I open the door for the young man I made on my wedding day.

“Nunzio.” I step out of the way so he can come through. “You found it.”

“Yeah, that old guy sent us in a car.”

Us? I notice the bag has his snake in it before I have to ask.

“I’ll get you a tank for that thing.”

“Thanks.”

“Ario and Viaro are coming.” I lead him upstairs. “They’ll sleep in the basement.”

“Cool.”

Nunzio is bound to Luna by a shared humanity. The best, first way to break that bond is to kill him. It’s what I would have done for a thousand reasons a hundred years ago. Now, I can’t. Luna likes him. I cannot live without her grace.

“Your room is the first on the left. With the green walls. You can wear whatever’s in the closet.”

“Sir, why are you being so nice to me? I fucked up. I didn’t protect her.”

“Didn’t you?”

“She’s here.”

“Clean up and meet me downstairs. First, you’ll explain, and then I will.”

* * *

Nunzio and Domenico were my best made men—then Laro took Domenico.

If Nunzio is taken for any reason, I won’t have anyone to protect Luna during the day, and I have no time to make and train more.

Viaro calls this a personnel problem and—like me, and Ferrante, and the few friends I have left—has no idea how to fix it in time.

Nunzio comes downstairs in the same clothes, without his snake. His hands are folded in front of him and his eyes are softly defiant. I’ll need to refresh his thrall soon. Or not.

“Sit.” With my foot, I push out a dining room chair for him. When his weight is on the cushion, it squeaks. “Hungry?”

“The blond lady gave me a sandwich before I left.”

“Good. So, the snake?”

“My sister brought it to the villa, like for a visit, and he was on my neck when we jumped over here, so…” He shrugs, but does not offer to get rid of it.

“Was your sister in the villa when you… ‘jumped’?”

“That was the day before. She told me Puzzo would lie next to her all stretched out. She thought it was cute, but basically the snake was measuring her.”

“So Puzzo would know when he was big enough to consume her.”

“My mom wouldn’t forgive me if Tina got swallowed whole, you know? And he’s got nowhere to go, and neither do I, so I kept him.”

“And you hadn’t had a chance to get a tank for it, I presume?”

“I was going to, but I found out the Gargiulo sisters were trying to take Luna to some island.”

I cannot hide the sudden alarm that shoots into my bloodstream. “What island?”

“They didn’t tell me shit. Just that they had a way to take her where you couldn’t find her. Corrado overheard them. He said their mothers hid Strega when they were kids? Like, I don’t know, but I couldn’t just leave her there to go to a pet store.”

“Their mothers?” I’m stuck on Etta and Silvia having a secret Strega island. I didn’t lose many of the women I kept. I could count them on one hand. Were they taken by the Gargiulo women?

“I swear I got nothing else.” He folds his arms. “I know you don’t like him.”

“Puzzo?” I shake off the puzzle of lost witches. “It’s not personal.”

“If you say.” He doesn’t look at me.

Domenico reminded me that I cannot keep these men under my will for too long. They find ways to lock themselves away.

“Would you like to go home, Nunzio?”

Conflict swirling in his brown eyes, he answers with a question. “Why?”

“Why? Do I need a reason?”

“It’s hard for me to know what I want.” He taps inside his arm, where the scar sits under his shirt.

Thrall can be responsible for so many actions and desires. The resistance to having an opinion isn’t one of them. He knows what he wants. I just didn’t offer it.

“Then I’ll make it easy. Would you like to go home, or would you like to live forever?”

“Are those my only two choices?”

The inability to decide between two excellent options is so human that I shake my head. “You’re wondering about the cost.”

“I have an idea. I guess, I just don’t know why.”

“Right now, I am fighting an old enemy who wants to take Luna from me.”

“How?” He’s angry, as if the idea is an affront to him.

“By violence. By force. By manipulation. He’ll trade, but my own life isn’t as valuable to me as hers. I’ve lost too many of my kindred. After my immortality is restored, I’ll need more of my kind to defend her. You, of all the men I have made, are the best of them.”

He looks away when he thanks me. What I wouldn’t do for Luna’s gift of emotional sight.

“Look at me.”

He does it with a millisecond of delay.

His thrall needs to be refreshed, but I am in no mood for stale human blood. “You love her.”

He swallows. “It’s not what you think.”

“Tell the truth.”

Now he must. I have commanded it.

“Yes, capo.”

“I can command you to stop loving her, and you will. I’d have to take more blood first. Commanding a heart not to do something requires a deeper thrall.” He presses his lips together and looks away, so I say, “Speak your mind.”

“You don’t need to take any more blood.”

“I know you don’t like it.”

“No. It’s a crush, capo. I wouldn’t, ever?—”

“You would.”

“Not even you could make me.”

He believes this. It’s absurd.

“I was sired from one of the First Five. Do you know what that means?” I wait for him to shake his head.

“Five were breached from the seam between Vesuvius and Somma.” I pause to finger a crease in the tablecloth.

The memories are as fresh as they are ancient.

Recalling them is like excavating a corroded artifact, only to find the rust falls off easily, revealing a blade sharp enough to cut out a heart.

I run my finger along the fold in the tablecloth again and again.

“I am aware of what a man can be made to do. Carmine Giovanni Carafa was stronger than you. I was always stronger than you. So, I promise you, if I commanded you to break your dick inside her, you would.”

I don’t know what I’m trying to prove. That despite my frailty and mortality, I’m still dominant over a human man who wants what’s mine? I’ve been a king for centuries. They all want what I have. It’s a matter of my position. Human men are venal and hungry for what they can’t have.

But the horror and disgust on his face is so palpable, I can practically smell it.

“Why would you make me do that?”

I shrug. “That’s not the point.”

“No!” He stands. “It is the fucking point, capo !” He hesitates. Separated by thrall, one part of him is asking what the fuck the other part is doing.

“Go on. You will finish your thought.” Now he has to.

“It’s not what I want. Making me… us…”

“I didn’t say I would. I said I could. The point is the power.”

“No. The point is… Look, I’m not old or smart or nothing. But if I say I won’t make a play for her, then it’s not gonna happen. Guaranteed. But if you’re worried she might want me to make a play…” He pauses to take a deep swallow “…I still wouldn’t want to, but if she does, then that’s on you.”

The honesty is refreshing and his conclusions are pleasantly surprising, if faulty. It’s too bad I had to yank them out of him by force.

“Sit,” I say. He sits. “How so?”

“You’re jerking her around. You’re jerking us all around. She’ll never trust you and you’ll never believe her.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Okay, fine. But it’s really simple. Do I have to keep talking? Because I’m gonna say something you don’t like and you’re gonna slam me.”

“If I say I won’t slam you, then I won’t.”

“You never said you wouldn’t.”

“Nunzio, speak your mind. I won’t hurt you for anything you say.”

“What about killing me?”

“Won’t hurt or kill you. Guaranteed. Tell me how it’s really simple.”

He settles into his chair, leans forward with his elbows on the table and does what I’ve commanded him to do—hurt me in a way I’ve promised to not hurt him.

“Look, I’m not an expert, but Corrado? Before his fiancée came around, he slept with a lot of girls.

I mean, he was busy . And one time we were playing carrom, and he was watching out the window.

Some fucking knuckleheads were trying to get these two girls walking down the street to pay attention to them.

And the girls were like ‘nah.’ Of course, right?

But Corrado, he said, if you want a girl to love you, you have to care about what she cares about.

You can’t just talk about what you want.

You can’t pull her around. She’s gotta feel like you’re both on the same page. ”

“Did that work for you?” I ask, but he shuts down and looks at his hands. He’s hiding something, and I reach for the most obvious. “With women or men?”

“Neither. You made me tell you what I thought about that stuff. This is different stuff. You still making me?”

“I think that’s enough for tonight.” I stand. “Get some rest. There’s a TV in your room. You can watch it if you can figure out how to use it.”

“Yes, capo.” He gets up and starts walking away.

“Nunzio.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“Sure.” He leaves.

All I have to do is find a way to save my own life, avoid Charles, protect Luna, and care about the things she cares about.

Carmine Giovanni Carafa—the human with an estranged wife, mistresses, a child, and an abandoned military career—could have done it all. I am stronger than the strongest human, but my mortal self was stronger than what I became.