Page 148 of Broken Crown

A flicker of guilt cut through the numbness. My brother had learned the news from—where? A phone call from a friend? A breaking news alert? A fucking social media post?

I hadn’t called him. Hadn’t called my mother. Hadn’t called my sister. I hadn’t called anyone. I’d just stood there over the body with blood drying on my hands while the world descended into chaos around me.

Arcangelo’s gaze swept over me, cataloging the blood, the stillness, the absence of grief on my face, but unlike Rafaello, he didn’t ask. Didn’t flinch.

He simply asked, “What do we do now?”

The blood under my fingernails dried and tightened. “What we’ve always done. Protect the House of Diamanti. At all costs.”

He shook his head. “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

As the coroner jerked the stretcher forward to engage the wheels, our father’s right arm slipped out from beneath the tarp. Arcangelo moved without hesitation, leaning forward and slipping the Diamanti signet ring from the dead man’s finger.

He held it out to me. The gold was still warm from a body that was already cooling.

“The king is dead. Long live the king.”

I took the ring with bloodstained fingers and forced it onto my hand. It was tight. I had to shove it past the knuckle, the metal biting into skin already raw.

I looked down at the congealing blood beneath where my father’s ruined throat had been. At the way it pooled in a macabre halo where his head had lain.

He had become a liability. An increasingly dangerous problem.

And now I'd solved that problem.

Rafaello grabbed my elbow and pulled me toward the building’s side entrance, away from the cameras, away from the growing circus. “We need to get you inside. We need to get you cleaned up.”

His jaw tightened on those last two words, loaded with implication.

I let him lead me.

At the door, I paused. “Have security lock down all footage from every camera on this block. Internal and external. Before the police request it.”

We needed to control access to that video. It could never be made public.

Rafaello stared at me. “Sebastian⁠—”

“Do it.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. He nodded once, sharply, and made the call.

Inside, the marble foyer was a maelstrom. Locked doors and barked orders from security guards met the employees arriving for their morning shift. Some were crying. Some were on their phones, whispering frantically. A woman in accounting fainted and had to be caught by a colleague.

I walked through all of it, blood drying on my hands, my expression a mask carved from stone.

Rafaello kept pace beside me, radiating tension. “We need to call Mother. And our sister. Before they see it on the news.”

The guilt sank its teeth in deeper.

And still, I felt nothing for the man on the stretcher.

He lowered his voice, leaning close so only I could hear. “What am I going to tell them, Sebastian? What am I supposed to say when they ask me what I saw?”

I stopped walking. Turned to face him.

My brother, who had always been the conscience I lacked.

“Tell them the truth, Rafaello. You arrived, and our father was dead.”