Page 14 of Diary from an Inked Throne

The shock on their faces would have been comical if I hadn’t been so desperate to get to Nyah.

“Open my fucking gates,” he commanded.

For the longest of seconds, they didn’t move. They stared at him like he was a ghost. One even whispered, “But—”

Luca cut him off, “But I’m dead? Obviously not. If you want to remain breathing, I suggest you let us pass.”

I held my breath, eyeing their guns. We were completely unarmed of anything except the vial of holy water swinging from the rearview.

Unless the guards were secretly vampires, I doubted that was going to help us any.

To my surprise, they nodded obediently and stepped back, fiddling with the controls on the brick pillar. Inch by inch, too slowly for my liking, the gates swung open.

I stared at Luca as Lynx gunned it up the long driveway. “So you’re the Mafia king of the Guerra empire now?”

He gazed out the window and shrugged. “Guess so.”

I had no idea if that was a good thing or not.

But Lynx pulled into the turning circle at the top of the driveway, not bothering to park the car neatly. He left it idling and looked back at the two of us.

Luca swore beneath his breath. “His car isn’t here.”

I slammed the heel of my hand against the seat beside me. “Damnit! Where else would he go?”

Luca breathed hard and shook his head. “I don’t know. He has a house of his own somewhere. Out of state, I think. I’ve never been there.”

All I could think was my mom probably would have known where. That raw wound inside my chest that had opened up when she’d been murdered had never closed. Little pieces of it tore further every time I thought about her, each one an unbearable sadness.

But not one that could help me now. She was gone.

I had to hope like hell that Nyah wasn’t.

“We check the house first,” I declared, taking charge. “Question the staff. They’ll know. The staff always knows everything in a house like this.”

Like he knew I was thinking about my mom, Lynx reached back and squeezed my leg. Something he never would have done before but now felt completely natural.

We piled out of the car, the three of us storming the house.

Luca’s eyes raged with anger. “I hope to fuck this door is locked. I need to kick something.”

Lynx glanced at him. “You’ve barely eaten in fuck knows how long. The only thing that’s going to happen if you try to kick down a door is that you’ll break your leg.”

Luca rolled his head on his neck, something audibly cracking in it. “Yeah, well, I need to do something before I lose my fucking mind.”

To save Luca an injury, I made sure I got to the door first. The handle gave way beneath my hand, twisting to open. “Well, that was easy,” I muttered.

“Too easy,” Luca shot back. His hand went to the back of his pants, and he made a face when he remembered he no longer had a gun stashed there. “Fucking hell!”

I cringed at his shout. “Guess we aren’t sneaking in then.”

Heavy-booted footsteps came from somewhere deep in the house, and I searched for anything that I could use as a weapon. Lynx did the same, picking up a vase from a side table. I grabbed some sort of marble statue of a woman’s naked body from beside it.

Luca stood there like he didn’t give a flying fuck if his father’s men—or I guess now his men—filled him with bullets.

Viktor and Bruno rounded the corner at pace, skidding to a stop in front of us. They took us in, me and Lynx armed with decorations that didn’t come close to matching their guns.

But then their gazes landed on Luca.