All Chapters of The Glass Rose : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Lucien’s POVThe shivering finally stopped sometime during the middle of the night and I woke up drenched in a cold sweat that made my skin feel like it was coated in ice, but the heavy fog in my brain had cleared and I felt a sharp and freezing clarity that I hadn't felt since we left Berlin. I sat up on the edge of the cot and felt the bandages on my shoulder and it still throbbed with a dull ache but the burning heat was gone, and I looked over to see Alessia sleeping soundly on a pile of blankets while the morning sun started to bleed through the cracks in the boathouse walls. I didn't want to wake her yet so I stood up slowly and grabbed the high-powered telescope we had taken from the van and I moved toward the window that faced the lake, and I spent the next hour watching the black sedans and the sleek motorboats arriving at the grand palace across the water.I adjusted the lens and focused on the main dock where a group of men in dark suits were standing around a woman in a

Lucien’s POVThe storm had started to taper off into a miserable drizzle that clung to the windows of the boathouse, and I was busy checking the tension on the springs of my magazines when a low, mechanical hum started to vibrate through the wooden walls. I looked up and saw a sleek black drone hovering just outside the dock, and it didn't have any weapons visible but it was carrying a small silver tube that was held in place by a magnetic clip. I stepped out onto the wet planks and the drone lowered itself until it was at chest height, and it dropped the tube onto the wood before it zipped away back across the dark water toward the palace. I brought the tube inside and opened it while Alessia and Rafael watched me with wary eyes, and I pulled out a heavy card made of black vellum that was addressed to "The Donna of the New Age" in a calligraphy that I knew belonged to Elena Romano’s personal assistant."She’s inviting us to the front door because she knows we are here and she wants

Lucien’s POVI was halfway down the corridor toward the west wing when the heavy double doors of a private cigar lounge swung open and my cousin Dante stepped out with a glass of amber liquid in his hand and a look on his face that suggested he had been waiting for me to walk into his trap all night. He didn't look surprised to see me and he didn't reach for a weapon, but he just gestured for me to follow him into the room where three other members of the Valenti Council were sitting in oversized leather chairs while the air was thick with the scent of expensive tobacco and old wood. I knew that I couldn't just fight my way through them in the middle of a palace full of guards, so I walked inside and tried to look as calm and unbothered as possible while the door clicked shut behind me and the muffled sounds of the string quartet in the ballroom faded away."I have to say that I’m impressed that you made it all the way from Berlin to Lake Como without being picked up by the police o

Alessia’s POVThe warning shot from Rafael’s rifle had sent a ripple of low-level panic through the terrace, but the palace security teams were so professional that they had smoothed the crowd back into the ballroom within minutes, and the string quartet transitioned into a slow and haunting waltz that seemed to signal the official start of the evening’s main event. I stood near a pillar and tried to ignore the way my heart was hammering against my ribs, and then the massive gold-leafed doors at the top of the grand staircase swung open and Elena Romano stepped out into the light. She looked radiant in a gown that seemed to be made of liquid diamonds, and she didn't look like a woman who was about to release a neurotoxin into a room full of people, but rather like a queen who was finally ready to claim her throne. She scanned the crowd until her eyes locked onto mine, and she began to descend the stairs with a slow and predatory grace while the heads of the Five Families fell silen

Alessia’s POVThe basement was a cold and sterile labyrinth of white light and humming machinery that felt like a different world compared to the burning chaos of the ballroom upstairs, and Lucien dragged Elena across the floor while her heels made a sharp and clicking sound against the metal grating. We reached the heavy steel door of the mainframe and I grabbed Elena’s limp hand and pressed her thumb against the scanner while I forced her head toward the iris reader, and for a second the machine hesitated before a chime echoed through the hallway and the locks finally disengaged with a heavy thud. We pushed inside and the room was filled with rows of black server towers that were blinking with thousands of tiny blue lights, and I saw Elena slump against the wall as she clutched her side and stared at us with a look that was a mixture of hatred and a strange kind of amusement."You think you’ve won because you made it to the heart of the system, but you have no idea what Enzo actua