“I will make you a bargain, Juan Borgia.” I rocked back on my heels, looking almost fondly at my precious, long-sought murderer. “I’ve no interest in the later girls; I didn’t know a one of them. But the first was someone rather special to me, and I believe you will remember her too, because she was your first. No, don’t argue. Not the first girl you ever bedded, I’ll wager, but your first kill. That’s why you botched it when you slashed her throat. Do you still think of her? Because she did take your virginity in another way, didn’t she? She made you realize just how much you like the occasional spill of blood to go with that piss-poor stuff you spill between women’s legs.” I met his eyes. “Tell me her name, Juan Borgia. Tell me her name, and I’ll let you go.”

Juan licked his lips.

“Seven girls?” Bartolomeo whispered. “Seven?”

“Staked down,” I said without shifting my eyes from Juan. “When I walked in to see him putting a knife through Carmelina’s palm, I knew.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.” But Juan Borgia’s eyes flicked, and then he screamed again because a knife flashed out and tore a great slash through his cheek. Not my knife—this one was clutched in Bartolomeo’s fist, and it mirrored the triple slash of faint scabbed lines still visible on Juan’s cheek where Carmelina had raked him a little over a week ago.

“Tell me!” Bartolomeo roared, and tore off his mask.

“Yes, do tell.” I pulled up my chair and sat down as Juan shrieked again, from the pain of his cheek and his thigh and the agony of his hamstrung legs, which had already bled a pool around his feet. “Tell me why you feel the need to stake women through the hands before you kill them. Tell me how many you killed in Spain. Or just tell me the first one’s name, and I’ll let you go.”

It was a messy, bloody business. I asked questions and Juan answered them, and whenever he balked I calmly opened a slash in his arm or put a blade through his hand in imitation of the stakings he’d dealt out so many times. Bartolomeo threw up twice in the corner, but he stayed, stayed with horror in his eyes. I could see an even greater horror growing in Juan Borgia’s gaze, every time I cut him. The horror of knowing that his father could not save him, his position and birth could not save him, his money could not save him. That nothing could save his brash and privileged life from the implacable vengeance that was me.