Silent Scars

CHAPTER 101

The doors opened without knock.

Not the banquet hall doors. These were heavier, quieter, the kind meant only for men who didn’t wait for permission.

The secretary’s hand lingered too long on the handle. His palm was damp, his chest tight. He stepped aside quickly, not daring to meet the man’s eyes as he entered.

Montagna moved past him without a word.

He was younger, no more than thirty, but there was nothing young about him. His stride was deliberate, claiming the ground before he walked it. The cut of his black suit was severe, precise. His dark hair combed back without a single strand astray.

But it was his eyes that made Dmitri’s throat tighten. Pale, cold, unblinking. They did not wander. They seized.

Even the guards at the wall bowed their heads without realizing they had.

Montagna crossed the chamber, lowered himself onto the leather couch with the ease of a man who owned it already, and leaned back. Dmitri swallowed his pride and took the chair to his left, smile sharp, forced.

"We thought..."

He began.

"You thought I wouldn’t come?"

Montagna’s voice cut across him, low and clean as a blade.

Dmitri laughed quickly, too quickly.

"Not that. Never that. When men like you choose to move, the world notices. It’s only that…"

He leaned in slightly, voice dropping.

"…it has never happened before. A Montagna at another family’s table."

Montagna turned his head a fraction. The firelight caught in his eyes, pale and unreadable.

"I had business here."

Dmitri’s laugh came too fast, cracking halfway through.

Business? What business?

His mind raced trade, contacts, hidden allies but nothing settled. The not knowing burned.

The secretary hurried forward with the brandy, hands shaking. The bottle’s neck clicked faintly against Montagna’s glass.

A glance. That was all Montagna gave him. But the man froze as though that look alone had placed a blade at his throat.

Montagna lifted the glass, turned it once under the light, then set it back untouched.

"And curiosity."

Dmitri stilled.

Montagna’s gaze did not move.

"I was curious why Florence. Not Moscow. Not Petersburg. Your empire is Russia. Yet you invite the world here. You invited me."

Dmitri forced his grin wider.

"Curious?"

He stepped closer, lowering his voice, his words like steel wrapped in velvet.

"I’ll explain."

He lifted his glass and turned back toward the window, the banquet hall flickering below. His hand rose, gesturing toward Hastings like a man pointing out prey to be hunted.

"Florence is their pride. Hastings believe it untouchable. But it’s just stone, marble, like any other city. Tonight, the other families will see me strip it bare. They will whisper of Volkov, of the night the crown fell."

He turned, this time fully facing Montagna, his voice steady, controlled, yet carrying that manic edge he could never quite hide.

"But this…"