15

Ares

It’d been nine hundred and fifty seconds since I'd left Talia in the garden… four hundred seconds since I took a seat across from my father. My blood was still screaming from the interrupted moment in the garden, and I was a hair’s breadth away from losing my mind. If the old man had interrupted for anything less than a surrender, I was going to snap.

He didn't acknowledge me at first. He just sat in his high-backed chair, slowly swirling a glass of amber whiskey, the ice clinking with a rhythm that grated my nerves. It was a power move… the oldest one in his book… meant to make me feel like a child waiting for a lashing. It didn't work anymore, but he kept on trying.

My eyes drifted to the chessboard on the low table between his chair and mine. To Cesare, this wasn't a game; it was an altar where he played god. Over the decades, he had offered every man he marked for death one final, cruel hope: beat him at chess and keep your life. He loved the smell of their desperation, the way their hands shook as they made their moves, knowing their heartbeat was tied to the ivory pieces. It was a sick ritual of mercy that always ended in blood, because no one beat the devil at his own game.

The silence was finally broken by the wet, sickening rattle in his lungs. My father's chest heaved as a racking cough tore through him. He doubled over, the whiskey glass nearly slipping from his hand as he pressed a white handkerchief to his lips. When he pulled it away, it was ruined with a mocking spray of blood. He was finally getting the agonizing end he had earned over a lifetime of cruelty, and my only regret was that the cancer wasn't working faster.

I was the only one among the five of us who knew the details of his condition. Not because he had the dignity to tell me. My father was too proud to admit any weakness, too obsessed with his own myth to admit he was rotting. I’d found out nearly eight months ago, pressed against the doorframe outside this room while he begged the doctor to do everything to save his life. Hearing the great Cesare Marcelli crumble in secret made me feel a dark, hollow satisfaction.

He leaned back, gasping, his eyes watering but still burning with a dying man’s spite. He saw me staring at the blood and gave a wet chuckle.

“Patience, Ares,” he croaked, dabbing at his chin. “The ultimatum was that you marry the girl, yes. But I’ll retire when I’m satisfied my legacy is secure. Not a moment sooner.”

‘Then why the fuck did you call me in here?’ I signed. Leaving Talia to hear whatever bullshit he had to say, especially now that it was clear he had no intention of giving up his throne, felt like a bad investment. Every second I spent in here was a second she spent cooling off, and that thought made the rage under my skin itch.

He chuckled, a wet sound that bubbled in his throat. “Someone’s getting cozy with his bitch.”

The air in the room turned arctic. Sometimes I doubted it would be the cancer that finally killed him. He knew I contemplated slitting his throat every waking dawn; it would save us the stress of wasting money on delaying the inevitable. My hand twitched toward the blade hidden at my lower back.

‘Watch your mouth,’ I warned.

He laughed, but the sound was cut short by another cough that left him gasping. I’d seen enough. This wasn't worth the breath he was wasting. Hopefully, Talia would still be waiting, and she’d let me finish what we had started.

I turned to leave, but his hand shot out, surprisingly fast for a dying man, and gripped my wrist. His eyes were bloodshot, the whites yellowed by the rot spreading through his organs. There was no fatherly warmth in that gaze, only a cold malice that refused to dim even as his body failed him.

How could a man despise the very seeds he had brought into this world?

“Don’t think I don’t know what you did to that girl,” he hissed, his voice dropping to a rough whisper.

He leaned back slightly, a flicker of sick anticipation in his eyes. He expected this to be his checkmate moment, the blow that would finally bring me to my knees, pleading for his silence. But my father had become painfully predictable, and he was playing an old game I had already memorized. He thought he was holding a knife to my throat, but all I felt was the desperate, shaky grip of a man who knew his time was up.

I let him look deep into my eyes and find the absolute void he'd spent over twenty years carving into me. I was a mirror of his own cruelty, a legacy he was now terrified to leave behind because he knew I would be the one to piss on his ashes. I played by my own rules, and Valentina had been nothing more than a loose thread I'd had to burn.

Seeing that his leverage didn't move me, the smugness in his eyes sharpened into something more lethal. He realized I didn't care about the ghosts in my closet, so he reached for the only thing I had that still felt like life... the one corner of the world that made the darkness inside me feel like a choice I could finally walk away from.

“What about… her?” He gestured vaguely toward the door, toward the direction of the garden where I had left Talia trembling and wanting. “A sweet little thing, isn't she?”

His grip tightened, his bony fingers digging into my skin.

“One word.” A thin trail of blood stained his lip as he spoke. “And she’ll despise the very air you breathe. I made you, Ares. I can still unmake you before I take my last breath.”