Page 99 of Fastest Kill

The mad energy of the Alesci house hit Dario the moment Frederica opened the door. It was a wave of warmth, noise, and the organized chaos of too many people who loved each other trying to occupy the same space at Christmas.

Dario had been looking forward to coming back to Rhodes for weeks. He was particularly interested in seeing Frederica's collection of knights.

Rodrigo and Giana had claimed the dining table, a tablet between them, because Rodrigo didn't know how to be entirely off duty on a holiday, but Giana was rubbing her temple with two fingers in a way that suggested this particular negotiation would end in her favor before dinner.

She looked up when they came in, grinned, and held up her wine glass. Rodrigo acknowledged them with a nod, barely looking away from the screen. Typical. Dario would make sure that the tablet mysteriously disappeared in the next twenty minutes.

Leo and Dante had taken the long couch in the sitting room, Leo's head on Dante's shoulder. His little brother used to carry himself with a kind of coiled readiness even at rest, always moving, always running a calculation somewhere behind his eyes. Now, he looked almost like a normal person.

In the corner, Athena was arm-wrestling Silas across the low table with focused aggression. Kon stood behind her, offering commentary because he had learned long ago that participation was optional and observation was safer. Iz was watching from the armchair, with an amused grin as her man and his daughter fought it out.

Altun and Julian had the window seat, heads bent close over a leather-bound text. Serapis… Lucius, Dario reminded himself, the name still requiring conscious effort after months of the other one, sat across from them.

The three of them were deep in whatever they had been working through for weeks, tracing Agrippa's acquisitions backward through paper trails, rumors, and scrying. The work suited all of them. It kept Zio Lucius busy, and it was what he needed while he tried to find a new life's purpose.

He caught Dario's eye across the room. There was something in the old man's face that Dario had been watching develop over the past weeks. It was a tentative hopefulness like he wanted to belong in the family again, but he didn't quite trust that he was allowed to.

Dario nodded at him and gave him a smile that said, You're here. You're welcome. Don't ruin it.

His uncle winked at him and turned his attention back to Altun.

"Don't get comfortable and start talking," Frederica said in his ear. "Despina is going to want you in the kitchen."

"Gladly." He turned to hang his jacket. "Maybe this is finally my chance to get the kourabiedes recipe."

Frederica gave him a look of genuine pity. "Tore has been trying to steal that recipe for thirty years. He is a world-class thief, and he has failed every single time."

"He lacks my charm."

"You're going up against Despina." She patted his arm. "Good luck."

Despina didn't give him the recipe. She did, however, let him cut the honey cakes while she and Tore worked on either side of him, and the interrogation that ran alongside the cooking was thorough enough that by the time the first dishes went to the table, Dario had been questioned on his finances, his long-term plans, his feelings about children, and his medical history.

Tore contributed occasional observations from the stove and twice caught his eye with a pitying look. He had survived a lifetime of his wife's questioning and wanted Dario to understand that it did get easier. Dario didn't mind any of it.

Dinner was loud with more people at the table than it was designed for, and nobody cared. Despina had cooked enough to feed twice their number, and at some point, Lucius ended up in a quiet argument with Altun and Tore about the provenance of a bronze lamp he had stolen in 2019, an argument so contentious that it stopped three other conversations around the table.

After dinner, gifts were tossed back and forth between them in the lounge room. Dario had spent longer on Frederica's than on anything else. The silversmith in Florence had taken three weeks to make the pendant, and the description he had given her of a lady knight, fully armored, kneeling and holding a long sniper rifle upright in a traditional sword pose, had produced something that was both slightly absurd and entirely perfect.

When Frederica opened the box and looked at the necklace, she laughed, then grew quiet, as if she were feeling something she didn't want to show the others. Dario clipped it on for her and placed a sneaky kiss on the back of her neck.

She gave him two things. The first was a small gold pendant, shaped like a casing, open at the top, and sized to hold the love heart bullet casing. The second was a locket. He opened it and found the velvet interior shaped for the Thriae Bee, which he hadn't taken off since Venice.

"So you don't have to worry that the velvet bag is going to fall off the chain all the time," she explained and fitted them on his father's chain.

"I love you so much," he said.

Frederica pinched his chin. "I know."

More drinks and sweets came out, the house got louder, and Dario took the moment to slip away before the second round of cake was handed out.

Outside, the garden was cold and still after the overheated rooms inside. Rhodes in December was nothing like Prague had been. It was warmer, at least while the wind was down.

The herb beds along the far wall were cut back, but present. The small olive tree in the corner held its shape against the sky. The jasmine on the stone wall had lost its flowers but kept the vine, twisting over the old stones as it had for as long as the house had stood.

Dario walked the garden's length without hurry, listening to the noise of people laughing, something that sounded like Athena winning an argument, and the particular timbre of Leo's voice when he was telling a story.

Dario stopped at the Hermes statue. According to Frederica, the herm had originally come from Delphi. Tore had liberated it from a private London collection back in the early 80s. The old pillar with Hermes's face was worn by centuries of weather and hands. A crossroads god for a family that had always lived at crossroads: the intersection of law and crime, of violence and love, of the world that most people saw and the one that moved underneath it.