Mist, Metal, and Ash by Gwendolyn Clare

Author:Gwendolyn Clare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Imprint
Published: 2019-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Dinner was a tense affair, for Leo at least. Aris gave off his usual air of impermeable insouciance, Vincenzo settled in as if he’d never parted ways with Aris, and even Elsa seemed to be edging toward cautious comfort at her new situation. Leo fumed inside—betrayed by his father and the universe at large, his sacrifice transmuted into a meaningless gesture.

Leo suspected Ricciotti had never harbored any intention of honoring their deal. And even if he had, he certainly wasn’t going to honor it now that Elsa had practically offered herself up to him. Good God, what a fool Leo had been to think he could prevent this. There was no shame like the shame of being rendered ineffective.

There must have been dinner conversation, but Leo heard none of it. He was too busy mentally calculating whether it would be better to confront his father later, in private, and what he could say to fix Elsa’s precarious situation. There must be something he could do.

After dinner, Ricciotti retired to his study to attend to business. Leo stood in the hall outside the closed door, hesitating, his stomach a nervous knot that threatened to reject what little food he’d managed to put into it. But he had to face his father, man to man.

Leo rallied his courage, grabbed the doorknob, and let himself inside.

Ricciotti was seated at his desk, looking over a handwritten report. “Amazing,” he said, “how quickly a situation can fall to the wolves. The French police are already tightening their grip on the port district. We’ve hardly been gone two weeks.”

“What?” said Leo from the doorway. Per usual, his father had neatly knocked him off balance. Ricciotti had a way of expecting everyone to follow his train of thought, without the assistance of any stated context—and failure, of course, was a sign of intellectual incapacity.

“Nizza,” Ricciotti said, in a tone full of disappointment at his son’s slowness. He’d been running a base of operations there when Leo caught up to him. And Nizza was where Leo had betrayed his friends.

It sparked anger in Leo’s chest, where the fuel was already dry and crisp for the kindling. “Why should I care anything for Nizza? You never even spoke of the city when we lived in Venezia.”

Ricciotti shrugged. “You still thought our name was Trovatelli then; we had a false identity to maintain. But Nizza was your grandfather’s childhood home, and he took it as a blow when the king treated with France and left the city under French rule. A wrong he did not live to correct.”

Leo’s jaw tightened as he tried not to shout. “I came to discuss Elsa.”

“What of her?” Ricciotti said. “I thought you’d be pleased. You’ve been moping ever since you left Pisa, and now one of your friends has come to visit.”

Leo ground his teeth together and managed not to say, She isn’t here to visit, she’s here to take back what I stole from her. “We had an agreement. You cannot keep her here.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.