Chapter 13 - The Echo of the Catacombs
He didn't let me walk until we were through the heavy, reinforced oak door behind the dais—a servant’s passage I had scrubbed dozens of times, but had never realized concealed a pneumatic steel sliding hatch behind the wallpaper.
Marco shoved the heavy steel bar into place. Outside, the muffled thud of an explosion shook the stone foundations, raining fine centuries-old plaster onto our heads.
"Where are the rest of the guests?" I managed to ask, my throat raw as I leaned against the cool wall, trying to steady my trembling knees.
"The panic rooms under the west wing," Marco answered, checking the magazine of his submachine gun with a sharp click. His face was streaked with soot and sweat. "They're safe. The strike team isn't interested in collateral bloodlines tonight. They bypassed the VIP wings completely. Every single thermal signature our outer sensors caught was tracking the east wing. Toward her."
Marco’s dark eyes flicked toward me, not with blame, but with grim realization.
"How?" I breathed, hugging my arms over my chest. The torn velvet of my dress felt cold against my skin. "I was just a cleaner. A girl who dusted their china and scrubbed their spills. Why would the Old Guard sacrifice an entire strike team just to put a bullet in me?"
Dante walked over, his heavy combat boots echoing on the concrete ramp leading downward into the sub-basement. Without a word, he reached out, his leather-gloved fingers cupping my chin and tilting my face up into the emergency red auxiliary lights that suddenly hummed to life along the baseboards.
His thumb brushed gently across my cheekbone, wiping away a smear of black powder I hadn't realized was there.
"Because you didn't just save my life at the gala, Cora," Dante said, his voice low and vibrating with dark gravity. "You recognized the aconite."
"Anyone who grew up in the valley knows the scent of bitter almond and burnt honey—"
"No," Dante cut in softly, his eyes boring into mine. "Ordinary aconite doesn't smell like honey, Cora. Wolfsbane is bitter, metallic. The only strain in the world that leaves a faint trace of clover and wild honey is the hybrid perfected thirty years ago by the syndicate's chief apothecary in Sicily."
My breath hitched. A cold, long-buried memory stirred in the dark recesses of my childhood—a wooden shed behind my grandfather's cottage, the smell of dried herbs hanging from copper wires, and the glass vials filled with clear, pale-amber oil.
"My grandfather..." I whispered, my voice trembling.
"Matteo Vane," Dante confirmed, his jaw tight. "He was the greatest toxicologist the Five Families ever had. When he realized the Old Guard intended to use his creations to poison an entire generation of rival leaders' children, he vanished. He changed his name, hid in the rural valleys, and took his formulas with him. The Old Guard spent twenty years hunting the bloodline that held the key to both the deadliest poisons and their untraceable antidotes."
Dante leaned closer, his forehead resting lightly against mine for a fleeting, sacred second.
"Julian and Genevieve didn't concoct that poisoned vintage on their own," Dante murmured. "They bought it from the Council of Elders. And when you shattered that decanter, you didn't just expose their treason—you exposed your own existence to the monsters who slaughtered your family. They know the Vane bloodline is alive. And they know that as long as you breathe, their greatest weapon is completely useless."
Before I could process the weight of his words, the heavy steel door above us groaned. A dull, mechanical whining sound began to chew through the lock cylinders.
"They're burning through the hinges," Marco said, lifting his weapon. "Thermite drill."
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Dante pulled away, his eyes hardening from tender warmth into cold, merciless obsidian. He racked the slide of his customized Beretta.
"Marco, take the lower corridor. Flush them toward the secondary courtyard." Dante reached down, pulled an ivory-hilted stiletto from inside his boot, and pressed it firmly into my hand, closing my fingers over the grip. "Cora. Walk beside me. Tonight, we finish what your grandfather started."
