Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
“Sit, Ivy.” His voice is deep. Deeper than I remember, or maybe that's because I haven't seen him since I was fourteen and he pulled me and Nonna out of Parker's organization. Nonna says he remains off-grid, that he never leaves his house. Over the years, he's become an entity more than human.
Lowering to the throne, I place my hands on my lap.
This is it. Everything I've bled for, every bruise and broken piece of myself—it all leads here. The wanting sits heavy in my bones, undeniable as gravity.
Fingers curl around my hair, sweeping it away from my back. Deep breaths fill my lungs while I force myself not to seek comfort in who surrounds me.
Footsteps.
Hard.
Intentional.
Nothing. Not a word. Not a single word from him. I owe him my own life.
Tension ripples through the air around me, and my attention snaps to Leon, sitting cross-legged directly in front. Flames flicker through the night, warming my skin, but it's the words from the butcher himself that make the hairs on my arms rise.
“Ivanya, it has been many years, my child.” I don't move. Afraid that if I do, I'll break by thanking him for saving me. Thank him for taking me away from the vile things that were happening to me. And then I'd look weak.
I absorb his words and practice my breathing.
“The children will speak of you as they do me. Le Boucher Sans Loi—”
I gasp, but it’s not loud. He’s Le Boucher Sans Loi? I’d heard about him recently, and never thought to put two and two together.
He rounds the chair until shiny loafers appear directly below. Fear follows him everywhere, for good reason. Tales of Le Boucher Sans Loi haunt children on the streets of every European town. They say he lived lawless, killing people who were in power for the sake of chaos, so the children were never scared he’d come for them. They were afraid he’d come for their parents. Their loved ones.
Some even wrote letters, asking him to murder for them. Le Boucher Loi was the most feared monster that lived on the streets. Leon said he’d heard that he was building an army of assassins that were just like him. Soulless. That he was coming for everyone.
I guess in a way, now that I know this, it's true, and we're his apprentices.
Chapter 26
Ivy
No one is born capable of murder. Or maybe they are. Nature versus nurture—the eternal debate—but I've never thought of myself as a monster.
Emotionless? No. When I love, it consumes me, burns through my veins like poison. Those few I let in, I'd bleed for. The fact that my circle stays small has nothing to do with lacking emotion. Trust is the real problem. Trust is what gets you killed.
“Please! I beg!”
At least that's what I tell people who insist I don't have a heart. If I didn't have one, why has my body count tripled since that winter?
“Have you ever been married, Jonathan?” With every twist of the chamber, each click quivers over my thumb. My eyes burn from not blinking as I zero in on the glass cabinet in front of me. Picture frames. He has a family. Children. A wife. Maybe she loves him as much as I—my throat swells. “Never mind. I see you are.”
He shuffles behind me, as if trying to gain distance between us.
“Marriage is a funny thing. I don’t much believe in it myself.” The glass throws back my reflection. Dark hair scraped into a tight ponytail, skin slick with product—a thousand bottles' worth of denial that I'm falling apart. My cheekbones cut sharper angles now, carved hollow by endless training and the absence of anything that might taste like carbs and comfort. But it's my eyes that stop me cold. Once alive, nature green, now dull like dried moss.
Jonathan’s cries die out behind me as the magnetic force of sadness threatens to swallow me whole.
I don’t recognize that girl.
“Please. I don’t know who sent you, but please.”
That girl pisses me off, because that girl is a reminder of why we don’t broaden the scope.
I turn, aim my gun, and pull the trigger. With a silent blow, his head knocks back in an explosion of vermillion and brain matter.
Silence. A clock ticking in the back.
I don’t recognize that girl.
I answer my phone as I make my way out of the office, taking the emergency stairs. Flight after flight, it’s not until ten minutes later that I push through the exit doors and to my all black Maserati before driving into traffic.
Emeric kept me well fed this year, giving me job after job. Either he knew I needed the distraction, or he didn't care that I was self-destructing.
Swinging the car into an underground parking, I flip the mirror down to check my face, cleaning blood from my cheek and reapplying my lipstick.