All Chapters of BLOOD & JUSTICE: Chapter 71 - Chapter 73

Twelve thirteen in the morning.Suede moved through the east wing corridor without a sound. Shoes dangled from her left hand. The soles of her feet, wrapped in socks, knew every inch of that floor—which boards were safe, which would groan under the wrong pressure. She’d mapped it all in her first week: three danger points along the main hallway, one more on the back staircase landing. She avoided every single one with surgical precision, like a bomb disposal expert navigating a minefield she couldn’t see but could feel through something deeper than instinct.The back gate yielded with a single touch on the keypad. The result of watching Dante’s fingers from two meters away the day he’d let the gardener through—the right angle, the right light, a muscle memory that operated somewhere beneath conscious thought. The rest was nothing but simple mechanical calculation.The night swallowed her whole the moment she stepped outside.✘ ✘ ✘A dark cab carried Suede toward the edge of the di

The Genovese ballroom had a way of making people forget they were baring their throats to wolves.That was Suede’s first thought as her heels met the marble, glossy enough to throw back the glow of three dozen Murano chandeliers. White ranunculus crowded every vase, their scent too thick to be anything but artificial. A string ensemble worked through Debussy on the far stage—loud enough to bury a conspiracy, soft enough to let the smallest friction slip through. Civility wrapped around everything in the room like silk over a blade.Five dynasties. One room. One night thick with intrigue.Suede lifted a glass of champagne from a passing tray, fingers closing around the stem only for cover, and let her gaze begin its sweep.✘   ✘   ✘The Carvajo faction owned the round table against the eastern wall the way harbor lords owned a dock. Fenrir Carvajo threw out a joke, hard-faced, and three men laughed too wide, too fast. Not humor