The Dark Knight (4 page)

“I have no friends on the Council,” he corrected, his voice clipped and precise. “They are men who owe me favors or fear the consequences of my displeasure, or both. All have sufficient motivation to reject the petitions out of hand, but Chiavari has involved not only the Pope in his cause, but England’s sovereign as well. One or the other might be dismissed, but together their words are hard to set aside without raising more suspicion.” He folded his arms across his chest and gave her a hard look. “My spies say Chiavari has at least one witness who will swear they have firsthand knowledge that I planned my brother-in-law’s murder to gain his fortune, and then falsely accused his wife of the deed.” He slanted Donna Maria a meaningful look. “There is only one person still alive who could give such testimony.”

Her hand went to her throat. “You cannot believe I would do such a thing! Lorenzo, I could not survive without you. My loyalty is yours until I die! When have I ever—”

He held up one hand to silence her. “You know me too well to betray me. ’Twas only a thought.” He gave a nod that seemed to confirm his belief in her innocence. “So it seems Chiavari intends to produce false witnesses, which means it will be possible to buy a different story from their lips, else silence them altogether.”

“He cannot possibly produce anyone who would tell the truth,” she assured him, looking slightly more relaxed.

He went to the table and filled two goblets with wine, then handed one to Donna Maria. “We must still make
preparations to move the children and enough wealth out of the city to survive in comfort, should we need to flee. You have a keener eye than I for such things, and a rare talent for knowing the cost of anything that crosses your path. Tomorrow I want you to go through the palace and the treasury. Make lists of everything of value that can be moved. I will have a ship ready to sail within three days. The estate in Dalmatia should be remote enough.”

Donna Maria sat down hard on one of the stools next to the table. “You actually think Chiavari might succeed?”

“I think he is more determined than I anticipated, and has thus far proved impossible to kill.” Lorenzo took a deep drink of wine, and then rubbed his forehead. “I sent countless men after him over the years, but only a handful returned. Their reports say he works as an assassin for England’s king.”

“I
told
you those ‘harmless children’ would one day prove troublesome.”

Lorenzo held up his hands as if he had heard the complaint more often than he cared to. “There were enough questions about the deaths of their parents, and it wasn’t as if we were murdering peasants. The Chiavari family is as old as Venice itself. Three more Chiavari murders within the city would have made it impossible for my ‘friends’ on the Council to vote me innocent in the matter.” He lifted one shoulder. “I paid a fortune to make certain the Chiavari siblings never reached England alive. How was I to know they were clever enough to pay an equal fortune to ensure their own safety on the voyage? Even so, the girl was never a real threat, only the two brothers. Then Dante disappeared soon after Roberto’s death and I thought him dead as well until a few years ago.”

Donna Maria shook her head, as if having trouble accepting the truth of their situation. “All these years he has been biding his time, waiting until he was certain he could ruin you. Ruin us both!”

“ ’Tis no certainty I am bound for the gallows,” he said, before taking another drink. “There are still those on the Council who are loyal to my cause, who must remain loyal to make certain their own secrets remain safe. Many of those same men branded Dante Chiavari a bastard and his mother a murderess. None of them will be in a hurry to admit such a grievous mistake.

“For the Council members I do not control, they are no more than sheep to be herded. The Chiavaris’ fates were sealed the day I married Gian Chiavari’s sister, and everything worked out just as I said it would. Chiavari is dead. The Council believes his English wife admitted under torture to poisoning him, as well as to having a lover that fathered her three children. She died before she could be brought to trial, and the children were named foreign bastards and exiled. As the only remaining Chiavari, my wife inherited everything. As her husband, I own everything that belonged to my wife. The Council ruled all of this in my favor. Their rulings still stand. Dante is no longer a Chiavari or even a Venetian in the eyes of the law, but he has ample reason to manufacture the evidence he brought forward. Unfortunately, he also has ample wealth and influence, but I will prevail in the end. Have faith that the Council will once again believe what I wish them to believe.”

He took a seat on the stool next to hers and reached out to pat her hand. “No one will take what I have made my own, and Dante Chiavari will die no more than a day after he sets foot in Venice to testify before the Council about these charges. Once he is dead, there will
be none left to support his claims. All will return to normal.”

Lorenzo finished what was left in his goblet and set it down on the tray while Donna Maria took a smaller sip of wine and appeared to contemplate his words.

“We must proceed with caution,” she said at last. “If Chiavari is as clever as you say, he will—” Donna Maria tilted her head to one side. “What is wrong with you?”

She scarcely had time to stand up before Dante was through the door and standing right behind her. He put one arm around her waist, then reached over her shoulder and drew his blade across her throat in one smooth motion. His gaze never left Lorenzo’s wide-eyed stare as he lowered her gently to the floor until she lay at his feet. He bent to wipe his dagger on Donna Maria’s skirts, and then smoothly stepped over the body to take her place at the table.

Lorenzo was still seated, a look of shock frozen on his face. He was trying to stand up but his body wasn’t cooperating. At last he slumped forward until the upper part of his body lay sprawled across the table. His arms were spread wide, and one side of his face lay pressed to the polished mahogany surface. Dante moved his stool closer to Lorenzo’s, then leaned over to look him in the eye. “Did you really think I would show myself in Venice while you were still alive?”

The muscles in Lorenzo’s arms jerked of their own accord and his mouth moved wordlessly, a landed fish that was losing its fight.

“I had hoped you would be the one to drink the most poison,” Dante went on, unconcerned by his prey’s lack of response. He glanced over his shoulder at Donna Maria. “The one who drank the least had to die quickly, but you both have Chiavari blood on your hands so in the end it doesn’t really matter who died first. I just
wanted to see your face when you saw mine. I am told that I look exactly like my father, the same dark hair and tall build, the same green eyes. ’Tis said we even sound alike. How does it feel to face a ghost from your past?”

A small movement on the floor drew his attention. Donna Maria’s leg twitched again, an involuntary movement that he’d witnessed before from those in the throes of death. There was no longer anything to worry about from that quarter, so he turned again to look at Lorenzo. “Did you know that your whore made sure the three children you had with my aunt were smothered within days of their births? Donna Maria made certain you would have no legitimate heirs with your wife so you would adopt the bastards she gave you and make them your heirs. Many believe she also poisoned my aunt to make certain she died in childbirth that last time. If the pair of you had your way, the next generation of Chiavari would not have a drop of Chiavari blood. How could you think I would allow this to happen?”

Dante continued without pausing. It was pointless to wait for a response from Lorenzo that would never come. “I would have preferred the public trial you had so dreaded. I wanted you both tried and publicly executed for what you did to my family. However, I no longer trust that justice will be served through the usual channels. You taught me that lesson well,
Uncle
. Indeed, I learned long ago that an honorable man cannot best you, so I have molded myself into the same sort of fiend that destroyed my family. How does it feel to know you have forged your own killer?”

Dante propped his arms on the table and rested his chin atop his folded hands. Lorenzo’s mouth had stopped working up and down, but he could still smell wine on the faint puffs of his breath. He would not leave
until he was absolutely certain this man would breathe no more.

It was an interesting experience to finally say anything he wished to say to Lorenzo Mira’s face, knowing his enemy was helpless to do anything but listen.

“I saw my mother before she died,” he went on, in a voice no more emotional than if he were speaking of the weather. “No matter how much torture was inflicted upon her, she would not confess. She knew she would die either way, and suffering days of torture gave her children time to escape from Venice, time to escape from you. A child’s last memory of his mother’s face should not look like mine. For that, I swore I would make you suffer every pain I know how to inflict in the hours before your death, and I assure you, my knowledge is considerable. You might be paralyzed, but I know you can feel everything as you lie here, helpless to stop me.”

He leaned back and drew another small, thin-edged dagger, and then he sank the tip of the blade into the tender part of Lorenzo’s armpit before quickly removing it. “I can see by your tears that it hurt. Imagine the hours it could take to inflict hundreds of those knife pricks all over your body. Is your heart beating faster in fear?”

Dante watched a few silent tears spill onto the table. “The harder your heart beats, the faster the poison spreads.” He slid the flat of the blade along Lorenzo’s face, leaving a smear of blood on his cheek. He kept his voice low and soothing. “Now can you imagine the fear you instilled in my mother before she died?”

Lorenzo’s gaze remained fixed; not a muscle in his body moved. He would be dead within a few more minutes. If the poison in the wine did not finish him, the poison on the dagger’s blade would. It was over at last and time to make good his escape, yet he could not resist the urge to taunt the man one last time.

“Your foul deeds have come to naught, Lorenzo. This palace along with all of my family’s wealth and holdings will be mine. The Chiavaris have their revenge. You die with nothing.”

Dante pushed away from the table, but stared long and hard at his handiwork before he returned to the secret room to retrieve a coil of rope. He closed the hidden door and used the cuff of his sleeve to wipe away his handprints from the wood, his movements calm and methodical as he moved across the bedchamber to the doors that led to the balcony. Once outside he took several long, deep breaths of fresh air to clear his head. The bedchamber reeked with the scent of Donna Maria’s blood and death itself.

He tried to remember the last time he had stood on what had once been his parents’ balcony. Scores of palaces lined the canals of Venice, homes of the city’s prosperous merchant princes, but the largest and most impressive palaces surrounded him on this bend of the Grand Canal. Beyond the neighboring rooftops was the dome of St. Mark’s, easily visible in the moonlight from his vantage point three stories above the water, but the canal itself was cloaked in mists that had rolled in from the sea at dusk. Dante gave a short whistle that was echoed a moment later by someone far below him in the fog. He uncoiled the rope and tied one end to the railing, then sent it over the edge. The rope suddenly went taut and Dante gave two quick tugs to signal that all was well. He returned to the bedchamber and dispassionately studied his enemy.

Lorenzo’s face was the color of wax and his nail beds had turned a dark shade of blue. The breaths that had fogged the polished surface of the table near his mouth had disappeared. Dante sat down again to wait, unwilling to leave the chamber until he was certain he had
accomplished his goal. At last a long, shuddering breath left Lorenzo’s body and then a milky film began to cloud his eyes.

Lorenzo Mira was dead.

Dante silently repeated the fact several times, but it still didn’t seem to take hold in his head. Bringing this man to justice had been the entire focus of his life since he was a boy. Lorenzo had now paid for his crimes. He looked at Donna Maria’s body and felt the same hollowness at his core. She had murdered his cousins and possibly his aunt, thus she, too, had paid for her crimes. He felt no remorse.

Mordecai had trained him to never let emotions become involved in any assassination, but he had thought these deaths would somehow be different, that he would feel some great sense of satisfaction or at least a sense of relief. He should be glad that he had finally managed to carry out the sentence that should have been imposed upon them years ago. Instead he felt … nothing. In the end, he was simply an executioner doing his job.

A familiar sound brought him out of his thoughts, a metallic
clink
that came from the direction of the door, the sound of a small metal cup knocking against a metal spoon. Dante felt a chill go through him.

The child might have rolled over in his sleep, but the odds were just as good that he was awake and had overheard Dante talking to Lorenzo. Perhaps these deaths had affected him more than he realized. This was the first time he had been so careless.

He moved silently to the door, his ears straining for any other sounds from the opposite side. There was only silence.

He should have taken care of the boy the moment he was done with Donna Maria. Instead, his decision to
taunt a dying man could have easily resulted in his own death. It still might.

Now he had a different decision to make.

He could well imagine the child’s fate when the bodies were discovered in the morning. Likely the boy would be beaten until he gave a false confession and admitted that he allowed someone past him without raising an alarm. The chances of him surviving such a beating were remote. The chances of Dante freeing the boy before he made some sound of alarm that would get them both killed were just as remote. The best he could do was provide a quick, painless death for the child. Although a part of him rebelled that Lorenzo’s life should cost the life of yet another innocent, he drew his dagger and opened the door.