We lifted Marcus between us. He was heavier than he looked, dead weight held up by will alone, and I felt my back protest, felt the old shame reflex rise — you’re not strong enough, you’ll drop him, you’ll be the reason — and I shoved it down because there wasn’t room for it. Not tonight.
Damian kicked open a narrow door behind the bookshelves that I hadn’t even registered as a door, revealing a dim service corridor smelling of dust and lemon polish.
“Staff passage,” he said. “Built in 1920s so the help wouldn’t have to be seen.” A flicker of something bitter crossed his face. “Useful, tonight, for different reasons.”
We moved. Marcus’s boots dragged against the runner carpet, leaving faint smears. Behind us, deeper in the house, the gunfire had become a rolling, constant thing, underscored by shouting in two languages and the particular high, ragged sound of people running in shoes that weren’t made for running.
“Who is Castellano?” I asked, mostly to keep my mind from the tremor building in my arms.
“A man who wanted my ports and decided the fastest way to get them was to burn down the party I was hosting for eighty of the city’s most photographed people.” Damian’s voice was low, controlled, but I could hear the fury banked underneath it, held on a very short leash. “He’s counting on chaos. Chaos means no one asks why half the guest list disappeared into a warzone. It means insurance, condolences, a very sad story on the evening news, and my seat at every table in this city, empty.”
“That’s — he’s willing to kill eighty people for a seat at a table?”
“Men like Castellano don’t count the people in the room. They count the room.”
We reached a landing where the corridor split — one way toward a service elevator, the other toward a heavy fire door with an exit sign glowing weakly above it. Damian stopped, listening, his whole body gone taut and still in a way that made me understand, in one clarifying second, that whatever softness he’d shown me in the library was real, but it was not the whole of him. The whole of him was dangerous.
