by Lauren Kate
She knocked on his door but got no answer. After a moment, she tried the knob. It was unlocked. Mino sat before a fire on the far side of the room. He had bathed, shaved, and dressed in an older man’s clean clothes. His eyes were fixed on the table before him so intently he did not see her come in. She knew what he was looking at.
Mino was aware that a story of his provenance was coming, and he knew it was not the lovely tale he used to dream of as a boy. He would understand the truth in good time, but for now, it was enough to gaze upon his half token made whole.
Violetta came close, and together they stared at the two pieces lined up to make the siren.
“Mino.” She touched his arm.
He looked up at her. Letta, luminous, a little wild. She still made him nervous. He used to feel his life’s work was earning her esteem. Then, after their split, when he met Ana, he put the same energy into earning hers. He had done all he could to deserve his wife’s love, which was honest and loyal and good. But he had never loved her like this.
“Before you speak,” he said, a tremor in his voice, “there is something you must know.”
Violetta sat in the chair beside him. She took his hand. “Go on.”
“I have a daughter. I cannot leave. I cannot leave her.”
Violetta slid onto Mino’s lap and wrapped her arms around him, threading her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. It felt so good to touch him again.
“Mino,” she said, her face tipped close, her lips brushing his. “We’re not leaving Farfalla. We’re going to take her with us.”
Mino’s eyes widened. His heart swelled with relief and amazement. “You know?”
Violetta nodded. “I went to look for you. I held her in my arms today.” Her throat tightened. “She is beautiful. She is waiting for you.”
Tears streamed down Mino’s cheeks. Violetta wiped them with her thumbs.
“It will be all right, Mino.”
He could not speak through his emotion. He needed to see Letta’s face. He reached for the ribbon to untie her mask.
She pulled away. “Let’s wear them. Put yours on,” she said. It was too much at once. Soon she would tell Mino every secret she knew—Federico, La Sirena, his mother. She felt a need to hold on to some of her mystery, her mask.
He shook his head. “Let me see you.”
“I’m not the Letta you used to know.”
“You are the Letta you are today, and tomorrow you’ll be different. I won’t try to stop you changing. I only wish to see you.” He pulled the ribbon.
She let the mask fall, tears in her eyes.
His gaze swept over her face. “Why are you crying?”
He reached for her. He held the back of her head with one hand, the curve of her hip with the other. She felt their bodies come together as he kissed her tears, softly, then her lips, firmly. She opened her mouth to him. She felt his tongue on hers. She put her arms around him, and her touch at the back of his neck made him moan, and his moan made her shiver. Their kiss was deep and heavy. The touch of their skin as electric as the first time they’d touched years ago on the roof. But it transported neither of them back there. They were here, now, together at last, as hungry for each other as they’d been then, only this time their hunger did not scare them. All this desire, and they knew what to do with it. Violetta took off his shirt, ran her hands over his shoulders, the muscles of his arms. Mino’s skin pricked with goose bumps as his mouth trailed down her neck.
Back on the roof, they used to speak a secret language made of music. They were older now, so different from the orphans they had been. They fell on the bed in a tangle, a new music between them building to crescendo.
TWENTY-SIX
VIOLETTA ROLLED OVER IN BED, reaching for Mino through half sleep. Her skin tingled with the memory of their bodies twined together. The pleasure had not been in the transgression of the act, but in the unparalleled wholeness she had felt. She remembered his mouth on the back of her neck. The calluses on his fingers. Her thumb in the notch of his collarbone. The heat of him, how it filled her until she cried out. And afterward, those kisses. That blissful, exhausted peace.
She wanted to draw against his warmth and stay there. Always.
But his place in the bed was empty.
She bolted up. His clothes were gone from the floor where he’d shed them. She suddenly remembered the rest. Their conversation as they’d shared one pillow, facing each other in bed. He hadn’t wanted to believe her words. It wasn’t the story he’d imagined. He’d argued bitterly that the other half of the token alone did not prove his mother’s murder. He’d reminded her that Federico had confessed to nothing. What if she was wrong?
She was not wrong.
“You don’t know him like I know him,” she said.
“If you knew him like that, then why did you stay? Why were you with him?”
She’d stiffened, and he’d caressed her face, then closed his eyes and shuddered.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You make me feel as if we’ve never been apart.”
“Speak to me as if we haven’t,” she insisted. “That’s how I’m speaking to you.”
She drew the necklace out from her dress pocket, and Mino remembered it. He held it in his hands and wept. It broke her heart.
“We’ll get Farfalla,” she’d said, holding him to her. “After sundown. Then we’ll be gone from all of this.”
She’d felt him nod and hold her tighter, too exhausted to respond.
When they’d fallen asleep soon after, it had been the middle of the day. Now dusk painted the sky rosy and the fire in the hearth had burned low. Violetta didn’t think Mino would have gone for his daughter without her, but where else would he be?
The answer came to her like a punch in the stomach, and she was out of the bed, hurrying back into her clothes and her mask. She bounded down the stairs of the palazzo.
“Violetta.”
“Elizabeth—”
“The boat is ready. John will meet us—”
“First we have to go to La Sirena.”
“What?” Elizabeth said. “It’s too dangerous.”
Violetta took hold of Elizabeth’s elbows. “Mino is there.”
Elizabeth blanched, her eyes losing their sparkle. “Madonna,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”
* * *
IT HAD COME to Mino in Letta’s arms. The only way out was the most unfathomable. All his life, he’d sought his family. And now? His father lived and breathed just down the calle. Federico. The dark-haired, unmasked, fearsome proprietor of the casino, whom he had seen in passing at the bar.
At first, Mino hadn’t wanted to accept the darkest parts of Letta’s story, but then he’d held that opal and remembered. It had been his mother’s. He had a memory of his hands around the back of her neck—the feel of her hair above the thick gold chain. His fingers used to trace the chain down to that blue-black stone at her breast.
She had cherished it. She would have to be dead for someone to take it from her.
So. The same man who had murdered his mother now threatened Letta. What other choice did Mino have? He had to kill his father.
If he didn’t, Federico would come for them. No borders could stop a man like that from pursuing a woman like Letta. Even if they went to London, even if they started everything anew, they would always be looking over their shoulders. Unless Mino ended it tonight.
He must prepare himself to break the dark chain of his family’s past. Then flee the city he loved. He would be haunted no more.
He hurried past the boy lighting the calle rushlights, past the fishermen coming home with their full buckets. He could still smell Letta on him, could still feel her under his fingertips. He would return to her as soon as this was done.
Mino’s whole life had been preparing him to love her, not as a ch
ild but as a man. Now he had loved her in that bed, and he trembled to recall it. Again he desired her. Again and again. He wanted all the time in the world. But he was no man if he could not put her peace above all else, if he could not protect her.
What if she woke while he was gone? This thought troubled him, but then, he couldn’t have risked waking her. She would never have let him go.
Farewell, Venice. Farewell, one thousand moons on the canals. He knew nothing but this city, yet he felt no sorrow at leaving. If he had Letta and his daughter, if he had Sprezz, he’d have all he desired. If he could end the fear he’d seen in Letta’s eyes, he would feel worthy of loving her.
At the entrance to the casino, the doorkeeper glanced at Mino’s simple mask and fine clothes. Elizabeth’s husband’s shirt had lace at the wrists and throat, and his wool britches were cut in the French fashion. The doorkeeper nodded Mino in. The blue glass lantern cast a spell over the siren’s tail, and Mino traced it with his fingertips as he entered.
It was early yet, and the casino was quiet. He scanned the dark room’s velvet cushions, then the bar, uncertain where to find Federico. He had anticipated nothing but the brute rage that would carry him through the act. But now, drifting alone in the place where he had spent so many evenings, his confidence waned. Discreetly, he lifted a mostly empty bottle of wine off a table. He tucked it behind his back.
At the rear of the room, barmaids moved in and out of the door to the storerooms and back exit. Mino had been led out of it twice when he couldn’t pay his bill, on nights when the barmaid had been feeling kind and Federico had been elsewhere. He knew there were anterooms back there, offices. He needed to find Federico alone.
The next time he noticed both barmaids engaged with customers, Mino slipped through the door. He stood alone in the candlelit hall.
He passed a storeroom, then another, and then, before the exit, he came upon a closed door. His brow dampened. He swigged the last of the wine from the bottle. He could feign drunkenness, claim he was looking for the door to step outside and piss.
He shattered the bottle against the wall until he held a jagged shard. The sound shocked him: he was actually going to do this. With his other hand he turned the knob.
* * *
BY THE TIME Violetta and Elizabeth got to La Sirena in the burchiello, the sky was just growing dark. She hadn’t been expecting the small crowd already outside the casino.
“Do you want me to come in?” Elizabeth asked.
“No,” Violetta said quickly, rising from the sofa in the boat’s cabin. “Wait for me here. Be ready to leave as soon as I find Mino.”
She kissed Elizabeth quickly and moved to the back of the line, eyeing the group at the casino door. It was a performance night, and surely some among these maskers expected to hear her sing inside. How hot would Federico’s anger toward her be by now? How much money had she cost him?
She could not think what darkness would transpire if she didn’t reach Mino before he found Federico. She shifted miserably, watching the doorkeeper argue with two barnabotti.
Violetta considered revealing herself to get inside. She could say her stage name and the doorkeeper would make the crowd part for her. But then the guards would be upon her. Even if she found Mino more quickly, they’d never make it out. There had to be another way.
From the burchiello, she saw Elizabeth’s white-gloved wave. She glanced about her—no one watching—and approached the boat again.
“The back door,” Elizabeth said.
* * *
FEDERICO LOOKED UP from a stack of books when Mino opened his door. His expression was weary, and in the moment it took for displeasure to cloud it, Mino saw the resemblance. The set of his eyes and his long, slender face, his jaw—all of this was mirrored on Mino like a cloud upon a canal. Uncanny that he had not seen this parity before. He had never known to look. How undeniable it was.
Warmth spread through his chest. He tried to extinguish it, but it overwhelmed him.
“Father,” he whispered.
“Get out,” Federico said automatically. Then he looked again at Mino, narrowing his eyes. He rose slowly from his chair.
In one hand Mino held the broken bottle. In the other, he reached into his pocket for the proof. He held the token out, against all reason, for the man to see.
Federico’s jaw tensed. “Where is she?”
“This is between you and me.”
Federico swallowed, his expression enigmatic. He seemed to be waiting for Mino to make the next move, but Mino felt paralyzed. It was one thing to plan to kill a man. It was another to look your father in the eyes and raise a shard of glass.
“You look like your mother,” Federico said in a quiet, distant voice. “Do you know that? There is much I could tell you about her. Antonia. There was no one like her.”
Mino wanted to nod but couldn’t move. Looking closely at Federico’s face, he remembered his mother more clearly than he had in years. He felt a sweetness that predated his memory, one he had not known since his mother held him as a child. He was not no one. His daughter was not no one. He was the descendent of this brutal man, but he had come from a good woman, and Farfalla had, too. A tear slipped down his cheek.
Federico watched it patiently. “Put the bottle down, son. A man needs both hands to embrace.” He extended his arms.
Mino felt a slow, undeniable pull toward his father. He looked at the glass in his hands. He stepped closer.
* * *
VIOLETTA RACED UP the dock toward the back entrance. Before she reached it, the door flung open. Fortunato stood before her.
On instinct she recoiled, ready to run, but he caught her by the wrist. She felt his brute strength and shuddered. She fought against him. She was terrified—until she looked in his eyes.
“La Sirena,” he whispered. His face was ghostly white. “I’m sorry.”
“What happened?” She gripped his elbows. “Where is he?”
He took a breath, visibly struggling for composure. “He is dead.”
Violetta cried out in anguish. She was too late. She staggered, barely standing, as a memory assaulted her, heavy and bright:
Mino on the roof that first day. His knee touching hers. His laughter, like he didn’t know what worry was. She remembered the shock of his hair against her fingers. She hadn’t wanted to let go of him then. She never should have.
How could it be that she’d gotten him back only to lose him forever?
Farfalla. She thought of his daughter, that beautiful baby. How close Mino had been to returning for her. To claiming his family at last.
I will go to her, she told him in her heart. I will be her family, and in that way, I’ll still have you.
She wanted to run from Fortunato, down the dock, straight for the child. If she stepped inside this casino, she’d never get free. But she couldn’t leave Mino in there.
“Come,” Fortunato said, taking her arm more gently than she expected. Nausea swept her as he helped her down the hall. When she saw Federico’s open door, her feet picked up speed and she swerved inside. In the doorway, she stopped short.
Two men lay on the floor. Father and son, each curled toward the other. There was blood everywhere. Violetta fell to her knees. She put her hands on Mino’s feet as she came closer. His legs. His hips. Elbow. Cheek. His eyes were closed. Federico’s were open, staring up, and that’s when she knew he was dead. He held a dagger in his hand, but no blood stained its blade. What had happened? She fell upon Mino’s breast and clutched him, racked by sobs.
“My love,” she said.
And then she felt Mino shift beneath her. His arm came around her and his eyes opened. She gasped.
“Where are you hurt?” she asked, her hands probing his chest, his stomach.
He pressed his hand to his heart. There was no wound.
“He tried to . .
.” he whispered, and Violetta followed Mino’s eyes to the knife in Federico’s hand. “What have I done?”
Now Violetta saw the base of the wine bottle protruding from Federico’s gut, the wheel-shaped wound in his core. His face—the frozen, dead outrage—sickened her more. She turned away, telling herself to breathe, that it was over. Mino was alive.
“Come away,” she told him. She kissed his cheek.
“I can’t,” he said. “My father.”
Violetta pressed her face to Mino’s, turned him away from Federico.
“Farfalla,” she said.
His daughter’s name seemed to wake Mino from the nightmare. Silently, he rose. He helped Violetta up, but there was no strength in his touch. His face was drained of color and emotion. It frightened her.
“Sirena?” Fortunato spoke from the doorway, barely audible.
She looked up at Federico’s servant. She had forgotten about him, and now her body tensed. What would it cost to get free now? Her eyes returned to the glass bottle shoved into Federico’s belly. What lengths would she go to for Mino?
It confused her that Fortunato had not attacked Mino, that she had found the two of them lying alone, still in the aftermath.
She raised her mask and looked at Fortunato. She saw the conflict in his eyes.
“You’ve done worse at his request,” she guessed.
“I was not an orphan like you,” Fortunato said, “but Federico was the closest thing I had to family, despite the awful things he . . . we—”
“Have mercy on us,” Violetta begged him. She put her hand in Mino’s. “This is Antonia’s son. Let us go in peace. I will pay you—”
Fortunato waved her off. “Leave now. Be free.”
She kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Fortunato.”
“Farewell, Sirena.”
