“I’ll talk, okay? For fuck’s sake, I’ll talk!” Kurt cries.
Whatever loyalty he once felt to the Grand Ball Sack has clearly faded under the assault, and it seems that having two of us in the room with him has pushed him over the edge into honesty.
“I was getting the Calls,” I say slowly. “I was tired, wiped out. I could have slipped, could have been killed. How was it different for me?”
“The others, it was like… gangs of vamps. Or skilled vamps. Ambushes, like the Bianchi girl. The Agostini Seer was next—we’d infiltrated the place where she lives. If she’d gone home to her apartment instead of flying off to fucking Cairo, she’d be dead by now as well.”
“Paola’s not dead.”
“Good as. She was… Well, she put up a lot more of a fight than we expected. I wasn’t there—I swear I wasn’t there—but she took down four vamps on her own, and when they threw her off that balcony, they assumed she was finished.”
“Too bad she’s strong and she’ll recover. And when she does…” I shake my head and let out a low whistle. “I pity anyone who was involved in what happened to her.”
Pausing, I frown. “So all the Calls I’ve been getting… They’ve been—what? Fake?” They didn’t feel fake. They felt hard and bloody and exhausting.
“Not fake, no. They were just… controlled. I found the vamps and encouraged them. Made sure they did enough bad shit to get your attention. But you must have noticed that none of them were A-listers. They were easy kills, all of them.”
He’s right, I think, looking back over the last month. None of them were a real challenge. It was the sheer volume that posed the danger. I suspect the onslaught also had another side benefit for the Grand Ball Sack—it kept me distracted. Like a magician, he kept me looking at the right hand while he fooled me with the left.
“Why you, Kurt?” I ask, pushing his bloody chest so he sways in front of me. “What did you do to earn the Grand Ball Sack’s trust?”
He looks confused, so I clarify. “Tomasso. My fucking grandfather.”
“I don’t know, honest! I’ve been on the edges of things for a long time. I tried to get into the Venice Cosca, but no dice. So I set up my own crew—small, but good. We did a job for some guy in Cleveland. It went well, and we started getting calls from your… the, uh, Grand Ball Sack. That was, like, I don’t know, maybe ten years ago. We’ve been doing stuff for him ever since. A couple years back, he started planning this. Been a lot of logistics, you know? Lot of moving parts. Was going well until…”
“Us meddling kids got in the way? Kurt, out of curiosity, what did you do before you were transformed?” I would have guessed lifelong petty criminal, but the way he said “logistics” sounded too natural.
He spits blood on the floor, along with a tooth. “I managed a chain of copy shops in Atlanta.”
Kurt, the copy shop killer. I fight down a laugh. If I start, I won’t be able to stop. I will become hysterical, and that will help nobody. My evil Ball Sack mastermind of a grandfather thought he was being clever by going outside the family, sidestepping Pietro, keeping Kurt off the books. But while the Grand Ball Sack might be a mastermind, but he can be as stupid as horse shit. Blinded by age and arrogance. His sense of superiority.
I turn my back on the piece of meat hanging from its hook. I’ve had enough.
Luca’s hand goes to my shoulder, and his eyes are dark with concern as he leans down to kiss my forehead. “You okay?” he asks so gently, so sweetly, that it takes my breath away. Even here, amid carnage and violence, amid blood and guts and gore and the raw evidence of my grandfather’s betrayal, Luca has the power to make me feel loved. Cherished. Safe in a way I haven’t felt since my parents died. Since I lost Serena.
I squeeze his bloody fingers. “Yeah. Get everything you can from him—all those dates and names he mentioned. I’m going to need to tell the other Vecchissime about all of this, and it won’t be an easy sell. They worship him, and I’ll need to have proof to back up my claims. I’ll be upstairs, all right?”
He nods, his pleasure obvious. “Don’t worry, bella, I will get everything. And I’ll enjoy it a lot more than he does.”
I leave him and find the others in the living area. They’re just about to sit down at the big dining table. Donatella has showered and is dressed in a velvet leisure suit that tells the world her ass is Juicy. Her long blond hair is fluffy and rumpled, and she still looks like she could be on a catwalk. Moonface sits at her feet, gazing up at her with adoration, and Pietro is already propped up on a chair, working away on a laptop.
Matteo is on the phone, and he pauses his conversation to say, “Minnie’s on her way. She wants to know what flavors of ice cream you all like.”
“Who’s Minnie?” I realize that I’m still holding the eyeball scooper from the dungeon and set it to the side with a grimace. “And pistachio.”
“Strawberry for me,” says Donna, scratching Moonface’s soft, scarred ears. One corner has been completely torn off, poor baby.
“Vanilla,” Pietro adds, not looking up from his screen.
Matteo finishes up the call before addressing my question. “Minnie is a witch. But she’s a good witch.”
“Like Glinda?” I quip.
“Ah… Not really. She lives at Vincenzo’s court and works for him, but also hates him.”
I nod. “Pretty much like you and Luca then?”
“Pretty much,” he agrees. “Anyway. She says he’s busy, distracted, that he’s set up some kind of war room in his chambers—you know, like a big table with maps and little soldiers he pushes around with a stick?”
