Chapter 3: Every Bruise Is a Bill

The vault was cold, and the cuffs they used were the old kind—iron, hinged, designed to bite. Serena came down at 3 a.m. to watch them tighten. "Tighter," she said. The iron ground into my wrist bones. I bit through my lip. "Tighter. She's stronger than she looks. She survived my mother's belt for fifteen years." The guard hesitated. "Miss Ashford, the Don said—" "The Don is not himself. That's rather the point, isn't it?" She crouched in front of me and lowered her voice to that syrup she saves for when no one important is listening. "Do you know what your problem is, Elena? You never learned to stay small. You always had those eyes. Even when we starved you. Even when I told everyone your parents were addicts who dumped you at a shelter." She smiled. "Tomorrow they'll open you up on the Founders' altar. And when you're gone, I'll be Luna of this house." She reached out and pushed her thumbnail into the cut on my cheek. I let the tears come. Real ones. It doesn't take much acting when someone's nail is in your face. But behind the tears I was doing math. Go on. Press harder. Every gram of pressure you put on me lands in him. Upstairs, something hit the floor. Then something else. Then a lot of somethings—glass, a table, a shout. Serena straightened, confused. "What—" The vault door came off its hinges. Dario Moretti stood in the doorway with blood running from his nose, his shirt soaked through at both wrists, and marks on his skin exactly where the iron was eating mine. The whole room went to its knees. Except me. I was already there. He crossed the floor and took Serena by the throat. "Don—" she choked. "Don, it's a trick, she's—" "You put iron on her." His voice was almost pleasant. "Do you know what I've been doing for the last forty minutes? Lying on my own floor. Convulsing. In front of my own men." He dropped her. She hit the ground and scrambled backward like a dog. "Touch her again," he said, "and I'll erase your entire bloodline from the city registry. That is not a threat. That is a schedule." Then he turned to me. And the King of the eastern half of the city knelt down on the vault floor in a five-thousand-dollar suit and unlocked my cuffs himself. His hands were shaking. Not from rage—I've seen rage. From pain, the leftover kind, the kind that hollows you out. He turned my wrist to the light. Iron had scraped it raw down to the tendon shadow. "How long have you been walking on this," he said. Not a question. His thumb hovered above the wound, careful, unbearably careful, like touching it would break something in him. He tore the lining out of his own jacket and bound my wrist with it. A tyrant playing nurse to his own prey. I almost laughed. I almost did something much stupider than laughing, because nobody—nobody—in twenty-four years had ever wrapped a wound of mine. Footsteps in the corridor. Slow. Ceremonial. Matteo Bruno came in. Consigliere. Keeper of the Code. Seventy-one years old, thirty of them spent making sure this family's ancient rules ate whoever they were pointed at. He looked at Dario kneeling on the floor. He looked at my unbound hands. "So," he said. "It's true. Our King is leashed to a stray." "Watch your mouth, old man." "I've watched it for thirty years, Dario. Now you'll watch mine." Matteo's cane struck the marble once. "The Council convenes at Founders' Night. Three days. This woman claims nothing, proves nothing, and holds the King of this house by the nerve endings. The Code calls that sorcery, and the Code has one answer for it." "The Code answers to me." "No." The old man smiled thinly. "Your ring answers to the Code. Shield her and they'll take it off your hand. Three days, my boy. She proves what she is on that altar, or she bleeds on it." He left. Dario stayed kneeling in front of me a long moment. Then he stood, and the softness went out of him like a light switching off. "Get up," he said. "You're coming with me." "Where?" He picked a blade off his dead guard's belt and turned it once in his hand. "Somewhere private," he said. "I'm going to find out exactly how honest you are."