Page 98 of Blood Debt
My gaze sweeps over the basement—row after row of metal cages, their bars dark with rust… and other stains I know aren’t rust. Each cage holds something different: a pair of blood-stiffened gloves draped over a chair; a bent knife, its handle cracked; a torn dress shoe, the leather split and darkened; a single earring dangling from the bars.
“This is where my family keeps people who betray us,” Cristofano says, his tone casual—almost conversational—but there’s tension under the words.
I force my voice to stay steady. “And what’s in the cages now?”
He doesn’t stop walking. “Memorabilia.”
The word lands cold. I step closer to a cage, my eyes catching a glint in the dim light—a silver ring, delicate, engraved with YLA.
My lungs constrict. Isla. I know every curve of that band—the engraving YLA etched along the inside, the way it used to catch sunlight on a warm afternoon in Naples.
Because I bought it.
I slipped it onto Isla’s finger on her twenty-first birthday, laughing as she called it her lucky charm. She never took it off.
My nails dig into my palm hard enough to sting, but my face stays still, the perfect mask.
I don’t have to imagine how it got here. The picture blooms in my mind whether I want it to or not: Isla on her knees, wrists bound in front of her, that ring catching the dim light of this place while men circle her like wolves. One strikes before another wrenches her hair back, forcing her to meet the eyes of the man sitting in the shadows. Cristofano.
I can almost hear her voice breaking under the strain, almost see the moment when pain turns to pleading, and pleading turns to silence.
And the ring, sliding off her limp hand, rolling against these bars like an afterthought.
A sick, twisting question coils in my gut. How did he even find her? She was careful—just like me. The only reason he would have hunted her down was if she had gotten too close. Maybe she’d found a thread in her investigation that pointed straight to him. Maybe she was about to expose him, and he’d decided to cut her voice from the world before she could speak.
I can almost hear her voice breaking under the strain, almost see the moment when pain turns to pleading, and pleading turns to quiet. And the ring, sliding off her limp hand, rolling against these bars like an afterthought.
I keep my face still, even as a sharp twist of grief and fury burns behind my ribs. My hand itches to reach through the bars, to grab the ring, but I step back instead, schooling my features into mild curiosity.
“And what do you do to people you bring here?”
Cristofano stops, his gaze sliding over the cages like he’s cataloguing old friends. “We strip them of what they love. Break them. Piece by piece. And when they’re begging for it to end…we let them die.”
My mind paints the image—Isla’s face contorted in pain, his men circling, his steel-gray eyes watching without blinking.
A brittle laugh escapes me. “Will you put me here?”
He turns to me, and for a moment, the warmth he’s shown before is gone, replaced with something cold enough to freeze bone. “If you betray me…yes.”
I nod slowly, tilting my head. “Noted.”
He studies me for a heartbeat too long, searching for something in my eyes. He won’t find it. My rage sits deep, masked under obedience.
Without a word, he takes my hand again and leads me upstairs.
In his study, he moves to his desk and presses something beneath it. A faint mechanical hiss fills the air. The polished tileat our feet shifts and slides open, revealing a spiral staircase plunging into darkness.
His eyes find mine. “Go down.”
The words aren’t loud, but they wrap around my throat like a tightening noose.
The stairwell narrows as we descend, each step echoing against cold steel. When we reach the bottom, the space opens into a chamber that hums faintly, as if the walls themselves are alive.
Light floods the room—not the warm gold of chandeliers, but the sharp, sterile glow of recessed LEDs. Every surface gleams with brushed metal, the air tinged with the faint scent of ozone. Floor panels glint underfoot, separated by narrow seams that hint at hidden mechanisms. Against the far wall sits a single matte-black safe, its edges trimmed with a faint blue light that pulses like a heartbeat.
Cristofano moves toward it, his broad shoulders blocking half my view. He presses his palm to the panel. A thin, mechanical whir fills the air before the door slides open with an unnervingly soft click. From within, he lifts out a box unlike anything I’ve ever seen—sleek, rectangular, with edges beveled like a gemstone. A thin strip of light runs around its perimeter, flickering once as if acknowledging him.
“This,” he says, “is the Black Book.” His steel-gray eyes find mine. “The source of the Bellarosa power. The one thing that must always be protected.”
