Curse of the Fallen by Eve Archer

Chapter Twenty-Six

Dominick

“You’re sure about this?” Rami asked as we stood on the tarmac, the wind blowing salt-tinged air into our faces.

Ella and Sara were already onboard our private jet, the exhaustion from the rescue and Dan’s assassination attempt making them both curl up in the plush leather seats and fall asleep moments after we’d strapped them in.

I braced my legs wide as I gazed into the dark, spotting the blinking lights from the approaching plane high in the night sky. There was only the low hum of our plane’s idling engine and my own impatiently tapping foot on the pavement. “I think I’m being quite merciful.”

“You’re letting the Solanos live,” he admitted. “That’s more than most dons would do.”

“After they abducted my girlfriend and flaunted her at my own club?” I clenched my hands behind my back, fresh anger molten in my core. “Don Solano should be thanking me for not having them drawn and quartered.”

“Not a common punishment these days.”

“A pity,” I said, tracking the quickly approaching jet. “I miss some of the old punishments. They were effective deterrents.”

Rami choked back a laugh. “Not much chance of an enemy rising against you again if they’re cut into four pieces.”

“See?” I flicked my eyes at him as he stood next to me in his dark suit. “I was exceedingly forgiving.”

“You branded our wings on the backs of their necks.” Rami dropped his voice low as if anyone at Marbella’s private airport in the middle of the night could hear us.

I glanced down at the dark wings emblazoned across the back of one hand, a constant reminder of my deity and my fall. “As a warning. If they dare cross me again, I’ll have their heads on a platter.”

“Now that brings back memories,” Rami said. “But not good ones.”

We both had plenty of experience with brutal punishment throughout the millennia, but witnessing a head being brought to King Herod on a platter had been one of the most vivid—and disturbing.

“Don Solano has been made aware of his son’s misdeeds, correct?” I asked my second-in-command.

Rami inclined his head without speaking.

“Then he understands that me choosing not to retaliate with anything more severe is a gift. If he has an issue with me marking them as a reminder, perhaps he should have instilled more respect or intelligence in them.”

“I’m not going to be the one to tell him that,” Rami muttered.

Before either of us could say anything else, the arriving plane touched down on the runway at the far end, gradually slowing to a stop and rolling to a position beside our jet. The stairs were lowered, and two burly men appeared, walking swiftly down and across to us. Neither were Don Solano, but I hadn’t expected him to appear. The Solano plane was only flying to meet us from the larger Marbella airport from where Anthony had apparently arrived. His father was still in Italy awaiting the delivery of his disgraced—and now permanently branded—sons.

The two Solano guards stopped a few feet away from us without saying a word. One nodded deferentially, while the other shifted from one foot to the other as his eyes raked the ground. Rami turned and snapped his fingers at two of our deputies, and the doors of a stretch limousine behind us were opened.

Our guards pulled Anthony and Mateo Solano from the inside of the vehicle, and both men staggered forward. Their hands were bound, even though Mateo was the only one who’d continued to struggle throughout the branding. Anthony had gone quiet as soon as his punishment had been explained to him, emitting not even a sound as the mark was seared into his skin and the air filled with the scent of charred flesh. To no one’s surprise, Mateo had screamed like a stuck pig.

As they were pushed forward toward their waiting plane, Mateo swiveled his head to glance at me. For a moment, I thought he was going to spew more vitriol at me. I almost hoped he would, my fingers tingling at the thought of him giving me an excuse to cut him down where he stood. But at the last second, he glowered at me as he shuffled by, the image of unfurled wings a dark shadow at the nape of his neck.

The pair of Solano guards fell in step behind the disgraced brothers as they all ascended the stairs into the private plane, one of the guards casting a final terrified glance behind him before disappearing into the belly of the gleaming white jet. When the stairs lifted and clamped shut, and the plane rolled down the tarmac away from us, I let out a breath.

“It’s over,” I told Rami.

“This part of it,” my friend said, “but the Solanos were never the ones to fear.”

As much I hated it, Rami was right. The humans weren’t the biggest threat. They never had been. “Then it’s time to determine the depth of our brother’s deception and unravel the demon plot once and for all.”

I took the stairs to our plane two at a time, my pulse quickening as I thought of the dank dungeons beneath our fortress and the creatures who were soon to be my prisoners.

It was time to go home.