Page 51 of A Dangerous Bargain

It’s the Medici’s private home and the headquarters of their bank.

Niccolo works here? For them? After they hoodwinked our father, threatened to take our home?

How could he? A grief that’s as much anger as sadness washes over me.

I knew he was in their employ, but it’s one thing to be tangentially employed by the Medici and another to be working at their goddamn house.

“There’s a party.” Leonardo nods toward the snaking queue of coaches. Guards dressed in Medici livery attend a side door, helping elegant patrons inside and checking their names on a list. Each time the door opens, a slice of gold spills across the street, a release of spice and laughter that chases the shadows away. On principle, I hate every person inside already.

“We could get in.” Leonardo suggests this like it’s perfectly reasonable.

“Absolutely not!”

“Why not? There’s dozens of people here. I doubt they’d notice two more.”

Before I can stop him, he’s striding across the street. A guard notices him with a scowl. “Begone!” He shoos us, like we’re two sad-eyed dogs hoping for a biscotti crumb. “This isn’t for the likes of you.”

Leonardo’s smile is big and bright and utterly mesmerizing. He sidles closer, hands clasped penitently. “We were hired to help serve.”

The guard takes in the charcoal under Leonardo’s nails and crosses his arms suspiciously, weighing whether or not we’re lying against how upset the Medici will be if they have to wait to have their wine cups refilled.

The movement draws my attention to the sword at his hip. It’s shockingly nice for a guard’s blade, the crosspiece a wonder of twisted silver. It has an unnatural shine in the dull twilight. Is the blade magicked? I can’t recall if I’ve heard of an angel being pledged to a silversmith before, but an artist’s workshop could’ve done it just as well. The design on the pommel is oddly familiar, a stylized skull with two red gems in the eye sockets—

I gasp. ’Tis the same design on the key I stole from—

“… Lorenzo de’ Medici. He’s the one who put this together to welcome Signore Soderini to Florence,” the guard says.

Leonardo and the guard are nearly brow to brow now, the man sucked in by Leonardo’s easy charm. I grab his arm and tug.

“We’ve gotten this all wrong,” I say.

Leonardo’s brows shoot upward. “We have?”

I tug him again, harder. He’s more solid than marble and apparently, in this moment, just as dense. “Yes, wrong house. Let’s go.”

I yank again, and Leonardo finally stumbles after me. I don’t let go until we round the corner, well out of the guard’s sight line. He crosses his arms and scowls. “Oh, come now, I almost had us in!”

“The guard’s sword pommel has the same design as the stolen key.”

“So?”

“I had a bad feeling about it!” I flap my hands, unable to explain more than that. “And Lorenzo has seen us before. If he recognized us there…”

Leonardo sighs and massages his temples. “He probably wouldn’t have.” But he doesn’t argue with me further.

I fist my hand and lay it against a slick wooden door, feeling like a failure.

Even though I’ve wanted to find Niccolo, even though unraveling the mystery of his disappearance is all I want, the prospect of having answers—or even coming face-to-face with him—terrifies me. Leonardo created a chance for me to learn, and I couldn’t take it. My old fears spilled out, coins from an unfastened purse. All I could do was collect them and run.

I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself to say the words I can barely think. “What if Niccolo got in trouble?” I can’t stop hearing the thud of the prior’s body as it hit the floor, his blood soaking my clothes. “What if the Medici hurt him?”

I already thought he was dead once.

What if I find him only to lose him again?

You’re going to lose him no matter what. You’re going to lose everyone.

Leonardo drapes his hand over mine, grounding me. I don’t realize until then that I’m panting, short hard bursts like I’m running for my life.