Steel shrieked. Cables whipped through the gala air like severed nerves.
Isola did not scream. She shoved the champagne table into Teodoro’s knees, sending him sprawling across the marble, then dropped flat beneath the reinforced mahogany banquette.
The lighting truss hit the floor with the force of an artillery shell. Glass canisters detonated in blinding, deafening flashes. The air ripped open with sulfur and heat, hurling chunks of gilded plaster into the screaming mob. Heavy iron sheared off the booth’s corner, missing her temple by inches.
A heavy hand seized her arm, dragging her clear of the embers. Visconte barked once, low and sharp. Zeno stood over her, his tailored coat already scorched, an onyx-handled revolver clearing his holster before the smoke could settle.
"On your feet, Principessa," Zeno commanded, voice level and low.
Across the pulverized floor, Teodoro scrambled to his knees. His shirt was torn, soot smearing his cheek. He reached out with trembling fingers toward the hem of her obsidian dress. "Isola... God, Isola, you're alive—"
She stepped cleanly over his outstretched hand without breaking stride, her diamond-heeled pumps crunching on crushed Swarovski crystal.
"Clear the exits," Isola told Zeno, brushing ash from her shoulder. Her pulse remained unhurried and flat. "No one leaves until I inspect the rig."
She knelt beside a twisted hunk of aluminum support. Beneath the scorched clamp, a rectangular plastic pack clung to the metal by magnetic strips. The blast had torn the casing open. Inside, stamped across the stabilizing gel in sharp scarlet ink, was an emblem: a needle threaded through an open eye.
Her family's mark.
Batch number S-889. Chemically marked with antimony tracer powder, produced exclusively in the subterranean foundries beneath the Seta di Sangue fortress.
"What is it?" Zeno asked, looming beside her, his dark gaze tracking the terrified patrons fleeing into the rain.
"The explosive never came from Bianca's cartel," Isola said, her tone flat as winter slate. "It came from my personal foundry. There is a rot in my house."
***
Forty minutes later, the air inside VIP Dressing Room Three smelled of crushed lavender and copper.
The room had been designed for private fittings with European royalty—triple-layered soundproof padding, floor-to-ceiling brass mirrors, and plush velvet seating. Now, a man hung by zip-ties from the ceiling support bar, his knees scraping the Persian rug.
Zeno wiped brass knuckles on a raw-silk handkerchief. He looked untired and utterly bored, like a butcher pausing halfway through a shift.
"He was the rigger on the north balcony," Zeno said, tossing the red-stained linen into a wastebasket. "He claims he was paid in bearer bonds. But his phone told a much prettier story. Show her, Gianni."
A guard tapped a tablet screen and held it before Isola. She sat perched on an emerald ottoman, Visconte resting his chin upon her knee, red eyes unblinking.
The message thread on the screen was short, timestamped three hours before the gala.
*The rig will fall at 22:15. Ensure she sits in Booth Four. Do not disappoint our family.* Sent by: *M. Donati.*
Attached to the message was an internal access code that bypassed the Palazzo di Seta’s security vault—a code known to precisely three living people.
Isola tilted her head. "Marcello Donati. Bianca's maiden uncle. But the digital token used to authorize the munitions transfer belongs to someone else."
Zeno stepped behind her, resting two gloved fingers against her collarbone. "Your golden boy. The one who cuts your patterns. Marcello's nephew through marriage. Bianca's first cousin."
Her cutter.
Her lead atelier master. The boy she had pulled from a Florentine gutter five years ago, whose hands she had personally trained to draft the indestructible ballistic silk of the Chiaromonte line. The same youth who carried espresso to her drafting table through long nights after the split.
"Bring him here," she whispered.
Before the guards could turn, the door banged inward.
Teodoro tumbled into the suite, held roughly by two Caccini enforcers. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, his knuckles skinned raw, his tuxedo trousers torn at the thigh. He held a leather courier satchel dripping greasy engine oil.
"Get your hands off me!" Teodoro snarled, wrenching an arm free. His eyes fixed on Isola, frantic and burning with a desperate, pathetic hunger. "Isola! Look at me! Look at what I did!"
He threw the satchel onto the floor. It split open, spilling military-grade detonator chips and stamped bills of lading onto the velvet carpet.
"I tracked Bianca’s driver," Teodoro panted, taking a ragged step toward her. "At the docks. I waited outside the warehouse while the gala burned. I knew she'd try to move the backup crates. I took them. By myself. Isola, I took three bullets through my car door for this! I did it for you!"
He fell to his knees in front of her ottoman, looking up like a starved dog waiting for scraps from the table he had once owned.
"I refused to believe her when she told me you were cold," he begged, voice cracking down the middle. "I failed to see the danger around our unborn heir... I was blind. Blind, Isola! I will tear down the entire Galiano syndicate. I will throw Bianca into the canal with my own hands. Just tell me you see me. Just tell me you forgive me."
Isola leaned forward slightly. She looked at the blood drying on his sleeve, then at the manifests. They were authentic. He had genuinely risked his neck against a dozen armed Donati thugs, driven by an agonizing, delirious realization of what he had thrown away.
She looked into his eyes and felt only arithmetic.
"The manifests are useful," Isola said evenly. "The serial numbers confirm the Donati transport route through Genoa. Thank you, Teodoro."
Teodoro’s face cracked into a desperate, hopeful grin. "Then... you'll let me come back? You'll let me help you?"
"You will leave the city by dawn," she replied, her voice smooth as chilled marble. "If you ever approach my staff or my property again, I will let Zeno feed you to the harbor crabs. You are not my protector. You are a discarded signature on a legal document. Now get out."
The grin slid off his face, replaced by a gray, hollow stupor. He stared at her, drowning in the sudden, sickening realization that no display of bravery, no amount of blood, and no degree of suffering would ever rebuild the shrine he had smashed with his own arrogance.
"Isola... please..." he whimpered as the guards dragged him backward through the threshold, his boots scuffing the doorway.
She never watched him leave.
She rose, smoothing the creases of her skirt. The surviving 95 days of the treaty no longer mattered as a defensive buffer. If the rot was inside her gates, waiting would only tighten the noose.
"Change of strategy, Zeno," she said, turning toward the mafia boss. "We do not wait for the treaty to expire. We launch a hostile liquidation of the Donati cartel before Sunday. Every warehouse, every safehouse, every shell company. We strip them until Bianca has nothing left to hide behind."
"A bloodbath," Zeno murmured, a dangerous, appreciative smile curving his lips. "I like you when you're aggressive, Principessa."
The side door clicked open. Two guards shoved a slender, weeping figure into the room.
Matteo fell onto the carpet. His glasses hung crookedly from one ear; his hands, normally so deft with fabric shears, trembled violently against his chest.
"Signorina... please," Matteo sobbed, curling into a ball at her feet. "They said they’d kill my mother... Bianca said she’d drown her in Lake Como unless I swapped the firing caps... I had no choice, Isola! I swear on my life!"
Visconte growled, a low vibration that vibrated through the floorboards. The Afghan hound took two paces toward the boy, lips peeling back to expose razor-sharp teeth.
Zeno stepped forward. From the inner pocket of his coat, he drew a gold-plated semi-automatic pistol, racked the slide with a clean, heavy metallic clatter, and extended the grip toward Isola.
"The syndicates are watching this floor right now," Zeno whispered into her ear, his breath hot against her skin, his grip immovably rigid. "A leader who forgives treachery within her own walls cannot hold a crown. If we merge our houses, your hands must be as lethal as mine. Put a bullet between his eyes right now, or the Caccini walk away tonight."