And today… today everything had changed. The turning point had come when he had sat facing Quetzalcoatl the Feathered Serpent and listened while the arrogant Elder almost casually determined whether Machiavelli should live or die. Shockingly, the only reason he had been allowed to live was because Quetzalcoatl felt that he owed Machiavelli’s master a favor. No consideration was given to the centuries of loyal service Machiavelli had performed for the Elders. His skills, his knowledge, his experience, were all dismissed.

His life had been spared by nothing more than chance.

And sitting in that chair, arguing for his life, it had struck him that on far too many occasions he had acted just like Quetzalcoatl. He had passed judgment on the lives of countless men, women and children he had never met and would never know. He had made decisions that would shape their lives and the lives of their descendants for generations to come.

Marietta was right: he didn’t care for anyone.

But she was also wrong. He had always cared for her and adored his children, especially his son Guido, who had been born a few short years before Machiavelli’s “death.”

What had happened? What had changed him?

It all came back to the same answer: immortality.

Immortality had transformed him utterly, had warped his thinking, had made him the uncaring inhuman monster Marietta had accused him of being long before he actually was. He had stopped thinking of humans as individuals-he thought of them as masses of people, as either enemies or friends.

He had become blinded by his own ambition. In his arrogance he had thought that he was different from the humans, that he was, in some way, like the Elders. But today, he had realized that the Elders thought as much of him as he thought of the rest of the human population.

And now he was on another mission for the Elders, one that would affect the lives of millions of people all across the globe. He had tinkered with the destiny of nations; now he was about to reshape the future of the world.

“I’m not liking what I’m seeing,” Billy the Kid drawled, taking up a position alongside the Italian.

Machiavelli looked toward the fast-approaching island. “Is something wrong?”

“Not over there. Here,” Billy said. He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and pitched his voice just above the hum of the engine and the splashing of the waves so that only Machiavelli could hear it. “You’ve got a look on your face that I don’t like.”

Machiavelli composed himself. “A look?”

“Yep. The look of someone who is thinking deep thoughts. Dark thoughts. Stupid thoughts.”

“And you would be an expert on facial expressions?” Machiavelli said sarcastically.

“Sure am,” Billy said, blue eyes twinkling. “Kept me alive long enough.”