Lady Cresta spoke through the sterile quiet of Nio’s temporary infirmary suite. Her gaze savored Lieve, shifted to Tazio, then lingered on Nio’s shallow breaths. Beyond her, Maresco Galt offered a small, predatory smile as his gunners fanned out, their rifles tracking Tazio’s every move. The air took on the metallic bite of gun oil, rubber treads leaving gray smears across the clean tile.
“A new steward?” Tazio’s voice was a low growl, devoid of its usual playful lilt. “You’d bring a sewer rat into this house, Aunt?”
“A rat with ambition, dear nephew,” Maresco interjected, stepping forward. His gaze, unblinking and assessing, swept over Lieve. “And a rat who understands the true levers of power, unlike your own family, who built their fortune on the slow drowning of the innocent.”
Before Maresco could finish, Tazio moved. Not towards his aunt, but towards Lieve, a quick, almost imperceptible shift that placed his body between her and the syndicate boss. It was a reflex, a primal protectiveness that startled Lieve more than the armed men. He didn’t look at her, his eyes fixed on Maresco, but the message was clear. Maresco’s smile tightened, a flicker of genuine irritation crossing his face.
Lady Cresta clapped her hands, a brittle sound. “Enough pleasantries. The boy and the girl are liabilities. Secure them. The rest of you, sweep the manor. No resistance.”
Two burly men, faces notched from old brawls, lunged forward. Tazio met the first with a swift, brutal kick to the kneecap, a sickening crack echoing in the room. The man buckled, clutching his leg, his rifle clattering against the tile. Tazio snatched it up and brought the stock down hard against the second man’s temple. The man dropped, unconscious. Lieve, moving on instinct, grabbed a heavy brass-bound anatomy tome and swung it, catching a third man across the nose, blood spraying his rubberized coat.
“Nio!” Lieve cried, glancing back at her brother, who stirred weakly on the cot, his eyes fluttering. “Stay down!”
“Don’t worry about the boy, Lieve,” Tazio said, his voice level and cold, his fingers tightening on the receiver. “He’s not what they’re after, not yet. They want us alive, Aunt wants her little show. But Maresco… he wants a clean sweep. Let’s not make it easy for either of them.”
“Kill them,” Maresco ordered, his voice suddenly sharp, abandoning the pretense of capture. “Cleanly. The woman first.”
The remaining syndicate men raised their weapons. Tazio didn’t hesitate. He pulled Lieve by the arm, yanking her behind him as he fired, muzzle flash illuminating the entryway. One gunner staggered, dark fluid spreading over his chest before he crumpled. Maresco and Lady Cresta recoiled, Maresco cursing under his breath. The element of surprise was gone. Tazio surged out into the corridor, dragging Lieve with him as the manor’s glass galleries stretched ahead.
The manor, a maze of polished stone and towering glass walls, became their battleground. Every step echoed, every distant shout reverberated. They sprinted past bronze busts and oil portraits, pursuers close behind with heavy boot heels thudding across polished flagstones. Lieve, lighter and more agile, kept pace with Tazio, her eyes scanning their surroundings, remembering every detail of the manor’s layout from her restoration work.
They burst into a long, gallery-like corridor lined with massive art displays. One piece dominated the hall: a colossal limestone carving of a mourning woman, perched on a single, unreinforced masonry block. It weighed hundreds of pounds, its base resting on a thin layer of decorative gravel, a relic of an ancient, less stable architectural period.
“That monument,” she gasped, pointing ahead. “The mourning figure. The base… if we can make it buckle…”
Before she could finish, a broad-shouldered mercenary cut around the arcade, blocking their path. He moved with brutal efficiency, cornering Lieve against a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the perpetually rainy city. His firearm was raised, pointed straight at her chest. The chill of the exterior window pressed flat against Lieve's spine.
“Not so fast, little bird,” the thug snarled, his finger tightening on the trigger. “Maresco wants you silenced.”
Tazio, seeing Lieve trapped, roared. It was not the elegant, charming sound of the playboy, but a guttural, primal sound ripped from the depths of his being. He pivoted, not bothering to aim the carbine, and hurled it with terrifying force. The weapon spun end over end, striking the man's forearm just as he fired, sending the slug into the ceiling with a shower of plaster dust. The man cursed, his wrist buckling as the gun dropped onto the runners.
Tazio didn’t stop. He was on the man in a flash, a blur of pure, unadulterated fury. He hauled the gunman up by the lapels and drove the back of the man's skull into the reinforced glass panel. Once. Twice. The thick glass shuddered, a network of spiderweb cracks appearing. A third time. The man went limp, slumping onto the floorboards with a smear left behind against the glass. Tazio stood over the crumpled form, chest heaving, his eyes wild and dark, burning with a terrifying, possessive fire Lieve had only glimpsed before.
He turned to her, his hand reaching out, not to comfort, but to grasp her arm, his grip almost painful. “No one,” he breathed, his voice raw, laced with venom, “touches you. No one even *looks* at you. I will slaughter every last one of them, Lieve. Do you understand?”
Lieve stared at him, a tremor running through her. The cold logic she lived by faltered in the face of this raw, untamed protectiveness. It was terrifying, overwhelming, and utterly disarming. She nodded, unable to speak.
“Good,” he muttered, then spun, dragging her forward. “Now, the monument. Tell me what to do.”
They reached the limestone monument. Lieve pointed to the fragile plinth. “The porous slab. It’s thin. The core has no iron pins. Crack the upper tier and the mass will do the rest.”
Tazio snatched a heavy wrought-iron stoker from a nearby hearth stand and hammered into the soft stone foundation. Chips of stone flew, dust plumed. Shouts bounded down the hall. Just as the lead gunmen rounded the corner, Tazio brought the iron down in a sharp, jarring arc. The sediment cracked down the center with a low shriek. The massive carving listed sideways, groaned, and fell forward.
It fell directly into the path of their pursuers. Cries cut short as several tons of solid stone slammed into the floor. Fragments of chiselled drapery sprayed across the corridor, shattering over discarded weapons. Silence, heavy and absolute, descended, broken only by the drip of rainwater outside.
“That bought us time,” Tazio muttered, his breathing still ragged. He approached the wreckage, his face grim. Amidst the crushed masonry, one man with braided silver on his lapels lay pinned beneath the rubble. Tazio reached into the man’s torn jacket and pulled out a thick, water-stained parchment.
He unrolled it. Lieve leaned closer, tracing the draftsman lines. It was a schematic, meticulously detailed, of the city’s freshwater reservoir network. Not just the pipes, but the dams, the distribution hubs, the emergency overflow systems. And marked in stark, red circles, were strategic points, nodes connected by thin lines, converging on the massive retention dam that held back the Upper Reaches. And next to each circle, a timestamp. Tonight. Before dawn.
“They’re not just trying to take the manor, or kill us,” Lieve whispered, her voice barely audible. “They’re going to collapse the dams. The entire city… it will be drowned.”
Tazio’s fingers traced a red line. His face, already pale, turned ashen. “Both heights and depths,” he said, his voice hollow. “Maresco isn’t just seeking revenge on my family. He means to wash away all of Vellatris.”
The full horror of Maresco’s plan settled over them, colder and more deadly than the perpetual rain outside. It wasn’t just about the Cresta empire anymore. It was about Vellatris, the millions living in its towers and its flooded districts. And Maresco planned to unleash the storm tonight.