Chapter 59 Collateral Damage
The morning sun revealed the scars of the night before.
The courtyard was scorched black near the gate. The wreckage of the truck had been dragged aside, looking like the carcass of a dead beast left to rot. The air was still cold, biting with the chill of early winter and the lingering scent of ash.
I did not want to go downstairs. I wanted to stay in bed, pull the covers over my head, and pretend the world did not exist. But Dante had summoned everyone. Attendance was not optional.
When I walked out onto the balcony overlooking the courtyard, the household was already there. The maids, the cooks, and the guards stood in silent, terrified rows. Their heads were bowed, their eyes fixed on the cobblestones.
In the center of the courtyard, a man was on his knees.
It was Jose.
He was one of the younger guards, maybe twenty-two years old. He had a mop of curly dark hair and a smile that usually got him in trouble with the kitchen staff, but he was not smiling now.
His face was swollen and purple, his lip split open. His hands were zip-tied tightly behind his back.
Dante stood over him, holding a clear plastic bag. Enzo stood to the side, his hand resting on his holster.
"We found it," Dante announced. His voice was not loud, but it bounced off the stone walls, trapping us all in his judgment.
He reached into the bag and pulled out a cell phone.
"Under his mattress," Dante said. "Hidden. Unauthorized."
"Boss, please!" Jose sobbed. Tears cut clean tracks through the blood on his face. "It was not for that! I swear on my mother, it was not for that!"
"We checked the logs," Dante said coldly, ignoring the plea. "Outgoing messages sent three minutes before the attack. Incoming messages received one minute before impact."
"It was to my girl!" Jose screamed, his voice cracking. He looked around wildly, his eyes locking on the other guards, begging for someone to step in.
"It was Maria! She lives in the village! I was just telling her I missed her! I swear it!"
My stomach plummeted all the way to my feet.
He was telling the truth. I could see it in his desperate eyes. He was just a stupid kid who broke the rules to text his girlfriend because he was lonely.
But the timing was a coincidence. A fatal, impossible coincidence that I had created.
"You broke protocol," Dante said. He racked the slide of his pistol, the sound echoing like a gavel striking a desk.
"You brought an unauthorized device into a war zone. And three minutes later, my men died because of a leak."
"No!" Jose wailed. He tried to scramble back, but Enzo put a heavy boot on his shoulder, pinning him to the stones. "Boss, please! Check the texts! Read them! It is just love stuff! It is not coordinates!"
"Code," Dante said dismissively. "Spies do not text instructions. They text 'I miss you.' They text 'Goodnight.' It is all code."
He raised the gun.
I gripped the stone railing of the balcony until my knuckles turned white.
Stop him.
The voice in my head was screaming.
Tell him. Tell him it was you. Tell him Jose is innocent. You cannot let him die for this.
I opened my mouth to speak. "Dante."
The word caught in my throat, coming out as a dry croak.
Dante did not look up. He was focused entirely on Jose.
If I spoke, if I confessed, I would be the one on my knees. I would be the traitor. Dante would look at me with those cold, dead eyes, and everything I had built here would turn to dust.
Lucrezia would smile. And Jasmine would be left alone in this house of monsters without anyone to protect her.
Fear, cold and selfish, clamped its hand over my mouth.
I watched Jose. He was crying, snot and blood running down his face. He looked so young.
"Please," he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut.
"For the men we lost," Dante said.
BANG.
The sound was louder than the explosion had been.
Jose’s body jerked back violently, then slumped forward onto the cobblestones. The silence that followed was absolute.
A flock of pigeons, startled by the shot, burst from the roof, their wings flapping frantically against the grey sky.
Dante holstered his gun. He looked at the body for a moment, devoid of emotion, as if he were looking at a broken piece of furniture. Then he looked up at the balcony.
He looked at me.
"It is done," he said. "We are safe."
I stared at him. I stared at the dead boy on the ground who had died because I wanted to send a text message.
I felt sick. I felt hollowed out, as if my organs had been removed and replaced with lead.
I turned away from the railing, stumbling back toward the glass doors, unable to look at the blood spreading across the stones.
Lucrezia was standing there. She had been watching the whole thing from the shadows of the archway.
She stepped into my path. She looked at my pale face. She looked at my shaking hands. She looked down at the dead guard, then back at me.
She did not know the specifics. She did not know about the burner phone I had destroyed or the toilet I had flushed. But she knew people. And she knew guilt.
A slow, cruel smile spread across her red lips. She leaned in close, so close I could smell the lilies on her skin.
"Welcome to the family, Lilith," she whispered.
She reached out and patted my cheek. Her hand was freezing cold.
"Now you have blood on your hands, just like the rest of us."