Killing a man is easy enough, if one has the will. But killing a pope’s son? That is a different question altogether. And a question I must answer, because as surely as Juan Borgia would come for Carmelina because she dared to escape him, he would come for me because I had dared to humiliate him.

How fortunate, then, that I could think of nothing more pleasant than coming for him first.

If I could puzzle out how. Because as much as I wanted to conclude this deadly business with Anna’s long-sought killer, I had no desire to pay for it stretched on a rack or dangling from a rope.

“Will.” I sent a blade winging the length of the empty loggia. The sun was a fiery ball at my right, sinking into a mass of charcoal cloud. Yes, I had the will. Perhaps it was a great sin, but murder had never troubled my conscience as long as I could justify it, and the Gonfalonier’s worthless soul would not be missed by any but his blind and doting father. No, I’d not blink an eyelash at the thought of removing Juan Borgia from the world. Finding the opportunity would prove more difficult. For that I would need—

“A site.” I sent the dagger at my belt whipping at the target. The killing ground would have to be chosen in advance. Somewhere secluded enough for the asking of questions, for the telling of answers, because killing the man who’d killed Anna was not enough for me. I wanted him to look me in the face and admit he’d done it; I wanted him to explain how his brother’s dagger had turned up on one of the bodies; I wanted to know how the one girl had died when Juan had still been far away in Spain. And I would therefore require a site far away from the palazzo, to lead suspicion from the household here and anyone in it. That was why I hadn’t killed Juan on the spot in the wine cellar, though the thought had flashed briefly through my mind. If he died in the palazzo, everyone in the household would become suspect. And I fully intended to walk from this without a shadow of suspicion attached to me.

“A lure.” I winged the knife from my boot top after my waist dagger. Juan Borgia would not be easily drawn to remote killing grounds. He had enemies aplenty: the Orsini whose castles he had attacked last fall; the husbands and fathers of the women he had despoiled—even his own brothers. Cesare, who wanted his position, and little Joffre, who looked at him with helpless hate for bedding Sancha and soiling her reputation all over Rome. The young Gonfalonier went nowhere in Rome without his armor, his retinue, and his guards. A lure would be needed; something to get him alone and helpless.