The iron wolf insignia gleamed beneath the harsh purple flare of the dying core, mocking every sweet lie Miro had ever swallowed. "Donato built the bomb," Cosima whispered, her soot-stained knuckles brushing against his wrist. "He took you in out of malice, not amusement, Miro. He wanted an alibi with your fingerprints all over the wreckage." Miro remained mute. His hands shifted across the pressure manifolds with mathematical detachment. The boy who gave away treats and laughed at poisoned cups was gone; in his place stood an architect dissecting his own slaughtered creation. He wrenched the primary coolant intake backward, snapping the brass cotter pins and forcing the liquid freon into the hot exhaust chamber. Frost bloomed across the glass dials. The purple vortex hissed, curdling into a dull, calcified violet as the cryogenic feedback loop bit into the runaway ether. "Sixty minutes," Miro said, his voice flat, stripped of its songlike bounce. "The reaction is starved, not quenched. In an hour, the frost shatters, and the canal will boil." He threw the heavy chamber latch. The blast doors hissed upward, releasing a plume of vapor into the Grand Antechamber of the Vanzetti estate. Silence met them—not the silence of an empty tomb, but the suffocating hush of an execution ground. Black-jacketed private soldiers ringed the perimeter, their magazine-fed carbines leveled at the marble floor. Kneeling in a pathetic, shuddering row upon the mosaic crest of their own house were Miro's kin. His mother, Donna Beatrice, had torn the lace of her evening gown against the stone, weeping openly. His father, Baron Vanzetti, stared at the carpet with slack, gray jowls, trembling under the cold bore of a rifle pressed against his nape. And Gallo. Favored Gallo, whose tailored coats never bore an oil smudge, was curled like a beaten hound. Snot ran down his lip, mingling with the soot from his scorched eyebrows. Standing above them, tapping an ivory cane against the parquet floor, was Donato Ferox. "Ah," Donato purred, his eyes scanning Miro’s frozen posture, taking in the grease, the frostbitten knuckles, and the grim stillness in his ward's stance. "The prodigy emerges intact. You managed to stall the core without my instruction, boy. A masterstroke. You meant to let them stew in terror before the coup de grâce, eh?" Miro stepped forward. The heavy soles of his work boots cracked loudly against the shattered floor tiles. His mother lifted her red-rimmed eyes toward him. A desperate, sickening sob tore from her throat. "Miro! Miro, my sweet boy! Look at you—alive! God heard our prayers!" She crawled on her hands and knees toward him, diamonds clattering against marble, ignoring Gallo entirely. She reached out, trying to clutch the hem of his grease-stained trousers. "Forgive us, Miro," she pleaded, her face warped with terror. "We were blind! We were misled! Gallo lied to us, he took credit for your genius! We see it now! You are the true light of this lineage. We'll strip Gallo of his titles tonight. Everything belongs to you! The title, the master suite, the foundry—just tell Lord Ferox to call off his men! Save your blood!" Baron Vanzetti raised his trembling head, his voice cracking like dry timber. "Son. Miro, my boy. A father makes mistakes. We favored the wrong twin out of pride. Take your rightful seat. You are the Vanzetti heir. We'll announce it to the city tomorrow!" Miro looked down at the woman clawing at his boots. His face was entirely unreadable. He felt no flare of ancient warmth, no sudden rush of vindication—only a cold, hollow pity that tasted like ash. He drew his boot back, leaving her bejeweled palms to slap against the bare stone. "You smell like burned sugar and fear," Miro said softly. The matriarch froze, staring up at him with unblinking horror. "For ten years," Miro continued, his tone conversational, quiet enough that the soldiers strained to hear, "I slept in the crawlspace beneath the foundry flue. When the winter frost cracked the glass, I asked for extra coal. You swore soot had no place in the front parlor. You gave Gallo my blueprints, and when his hands trembled over the solder, you called him a prodigy and called me a defect." Gallo scrambled forward on his knees, his hands clasped as if in prayer before an altar. "Miro, please! I'm sorry! I took your notebook, I know I did! But the core—look at the dials, Miro, it's screaming! You built it! You can fix it permanently! Don't let it kill me!" Miro tilted his head. A faint, razor-thin smile touched the corners of his mouth. It was not his old, innocent grin. It was the smile of a butcher who had weighed the meat. "Fix it yourself, Gallo," Miro whispered. "You signed the blueprints. You took the checks from the city council. The math is quite simple. You only need to balance the kinetic variance against the thermal bleed. Go on. The tools are right inside." "I can't!" Gallo shrieked, tears carving pale tracks through the soot on his cheeks. "I don't know how! Miro, please, I never understood the symbols! I don't know what any of it means!" "I know," Miro said. "Everyone knows now." Donato threw back his head and laughed, a dry, barking roar that echoed off the vaulted ceiling. He approached Miro, clapping a heavy, fur-lined glove onto the boy's shoulder with genuine reverence. "Magnificent," Donato breathed, his predatory gaze devouring the broken family. "Pure, cold-blooded theater. To let them beg for scraps at the foot of their own throne. You stripped away their pride, their lies, their very name—all without raising a blade. You are my true heir, Miro. Not by blood, but by venom." Donato reached beneath his velvet-lined greatcoat and pulled free a heavy, silver-inlaid revolver. The barrel was engraved with the same iron wolf biting an anchor that Miro had just scraped clean from the detonator inside. Donato pressed the grip into Miro’s palm, closing the young inventor's grip around the checkered walnut. "Finish it," Donato commanded, nodding toward Gallo, who had collapsed flat against the tiles, sobbing into his palms. "A clean break from your past. Put a lead seal on the Vanzetti name. Prove you belong to the house of Ferox." Cosima stepped forward, heel grating on mortar as her hand reached out. "Miro..." Miro raised the revolver. The metal was warm against his callous-hardened palm. Gallo looked up, staring into the black void of the muzzle, his eyes rolling back in sheer, unadulterated panic. The entire room went dead still; even the matriarch ceased her wailing, clamping both hands over her mouth. Miro stood steady, his arm locked, the gun aimed straight between his twin brother's brows. Then, slowly, deliberately, Miro pivoted his wrist forty-five degrees to the left. The silver barrel moved away from Gallo's shivering skull, tracing across the open blast doors, and locked directly onto the frosted glass of the primary cryogenic tank.

Begging for Scraps