A Fall of Water
Page 115

“Cook says that I look like an angel.”
“Then I congratulate you on your deception.”
“She gave me a cake, too.”
“Perhaps I need to speak more sweetly to Cook.”
Giovanni turned the corner and passed by the room where his son had slumbered. He pushed it open, but he was not there.
“Will I ever be as tall as you?”
“I do not know. How tall was your father?”
“I never knew my father. I only remember Andros.”
He entered the cold classroom to see his son’s blond head bent over. Lorenzo was sitting in the center of the room, reading a book as the waves crashed against the stone walls.
Giovanni leaned against a stone pillar and watched him.
“What are you reading?”
Lorenzo looked up. “Virgil. The Aeneid. Book Four.” He straightened his shoulders and lifted the book. “‘But the queen, wounded by serious love, cherished the wound in her veins, and she was consumed by the hidden fire.’”
Giovanni stared at him. Lorenzo’s face was gaunt. The shining blond hair he had always been so proud of was limp and hung around his face. His clothes were torn and stained with blood.
“She was so bitter with hate,” his son said. “Maybe even more than me. It was easy to convince her that you had plotted to murder Andros.”
“So you told her that I used amnis on you? That I used you to kill him.”
“You did use me.”
“You wanted him dead, too.”
“I did.” Lorenzo nodded. “I did. And she always hated you. I saw it even when you didn’t. The way she looked at you when your back was turned. I knew it would not be difficult to fool her.” A loud wave smacked the rocks outside.
Giovanni asked, “Did she know about the book? Did she ever really know the truth about the elixir?”
“I don’t really know. She said that she did. When I went to her—after I knew what it was—she said that Andros had told her about it, but she thought it had been destroyed. She could have been lying. She was a good liar.”
“But you knew?”
“Not at first. I only knew that Andros valued that book. It was one of the reasons I took the library. I heard him questioning Ziri once when we were in Rome. I was young, but I remembered the old vampire. After he was gone, I looked for the book that Andros was asking about. I didn’t understand it. Not then, anyway.”
“But you took it. You took it all.”
“None of it would have been mine. All those years with him, and he would have given it all to you, his precious son.”
Giovanni ignored the ache in his heart. “But you convinced Livia that she was included in his plan.”
Lorenzo shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. I played to her vanity. Told her Andros wanted them to rule the world together. With a weapon like the elixir, they could have subdued their enemies. In a few years, after the effects had taken hold, every immortal leader would have been under their thumb. Even the ancients.”
Giovanni pulled a chair over and sat across from Lorenzo as the waves crashed up the walls. “It sounds like a plan Andros would have concocted. Nicely done.”
Lorenzo cocked an eyebrow. “She’s dead, of course. If you are here, then she is dead. She really was consumed by fire, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I suppose that is good.” Lorenzo sighed. “So all the secrets have come to light.”
“Not all.”
Lorenzo looked at him in surprise. “Not all?” Then he nodded. “Ah, the books. Of course, Andros’s library.”
“Where is it?”
His son shook his head and a bitter smile touched the corners of his lips. “Does your woman live, Father?”
“Yes.”
“How happy you must be. You have everything now. You always did.”
Giovanni’s heart twisted in pain. “I did not kill her, Paulo. I did not kill your woman.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he hissed.
“Yes, it does.”
“No, it—”
“I drank from her, yes. But it was Andros who snapped her neck. He heard she carried your child.”
He saw Lorenzo blink once before he spoke. His mouth opened, then closed again and he looked off into the distance, staring into the past.
“I had an irritating moment of clarity when we were in China,” Lorenzo said. “Do you know what it was?”
“No.”
“That infuriating Elder Lan asked me how many children I had sired.”
“I remember.”
Lorenzo looked up with a glare. “Do you know what my first thought was? One.”
Giovanni’s hands clenched in old anger. “Serafina’s child.”
“I sired one child. Her child.”
“Andros never would have allowed her to—”
“She asked me—the night before she died—she asked me to run away with her. To leave this place. I told her I had to think about it. I had to weigh my options.”
Giovanni took a deep breath of the salty air. He could hear the waves growing louder. “Would you have?”
Lorenzo shrugged again. “I like to think that I might have. In my sentimental moments, I think I would have run away. Started a new life. A normal one with her as a wife, raising our child.”
“That’s—”
“But I doubt it.” A sneer lifted his lip. “I have no illusions about who I am, Giovanni. Mortal or immortal. I am who I am. But you and Andros took the one thing that was mine. And I wanted revenge.”