Page 147 of Broken Crown

Sirens. Distant at first, then splitting the air with horrific shrieks.

Two police cars screeched to a stop at the curb, then a third, doors flying open before the vehicles had fully stopped. Officers poured out with hands on their holsters, shouting commands that tangled with the screams of the crowd.

“Indietro! Tutti indietro!”

“Secure the perimeter⁠—”

“Nobody touches anything!”

An officer charged up the steps, saw the body, and froze for half a second before his training hit.

He grabbed his radio. “Dispatch, we need homicide, forensics, and the coroner at Via Montenapoleone. Confirmed fatality. Possible suspect on scene.”

Possible suspect.

The words should have registered. Should have triggered something—alarm, anger, the instinct to explain.

Instead, I watched it all unfold with the detached fascination of a man watching a building burn from across the street.

My father was dead.

And all I felt was…relief.

More officers swarmed the steps.

One of them—young, overeager—reached for my arm. “Signore, I need you to step away from⁠—”

Rafaello intercepted him, putting himself between us with a snarl that would have made our father proud. “Do you know who you’re speaking to? That is Sebastian Diamanti. Don Diamanti. You don’t touch him. You don’t speak to him.”

The officer faltered, glancing at his superior, who had gone visibly pale upon recognizing the body.

The senior officer pushed through the chaos, removing his hat. His hands shook.

“Don Diamanti… Signore… I—” He swallowed hard, his eyes darting between me and the body. “We will need to ask questions.”

“Then ask them through our attorneys.” His gaze kept cutting back to me—to my hands.

The crowd pressed closer. Camera flashes. The buzz of a news helicopter somewhere overhead already, the vultures circling before the blood had even dried. Our security team fought to hold the line, shoving back reporters and gawkers who’d materialized as if summoned by the scent of death.

“Is that Fabrizio Diamanti?”

“I heard he was murdered⁠—”

“They’re saying his own son⁠—”

The whispers threaded through the crowd. Let them come. Let them speculate.

The senior officer barked orders—more barriers, tape up, forensics called in. The steps of the House of Diamanti were being transformed into a crime scene, blue lights strobing across the ancient stone, casting the pool of blood in alternating shades of violet and black.

An ambulance arrived, though there was nothing left to save. Paramedics took one look at the body and stepped back, deferring to the coroner’s van already pulling up behind them.

Through it all, I stood in stillness. In silence.

I hadn’t moved since Rafaello had found me.

Arcangelo arrived just as they hauled the body onto a stretcher, shoving his way through the police line with the kind of reckless force only a Diamanti could get away with. He took one look at the scene—the blood, the stretcher, the chaos.

“Fuck. So it’s true.”