Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 100493 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100493 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
I wish he’d fight me. Push me further. Atleast then, I’d have something to sharpen my rage on. Instead he takes every word I throw at him.
Khloe guides the car up a long private road, and I freeze.
Désamour.
Stone walls rise around the courtyard, their cracks threaded with wilted ivy. The fountain sits at the center, sealed beneath a thick skin of ice, every carved figure caught mid-pour.
No warmth resides inside. Because Nonna is dead and never coming back, and without her this home is just a house.
The engine cuts.
Khloe shoves her door open first, and winter pours in, stinging my eyes. The others spill out after her, Punk, Atlas, Luce, and Leon, their boots crunching toward the house while I stare through the windshield.
Asher doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
“You coming in?” He asks, fully prepared and not caring about whatever I throw at him.
“No.”
A breath leaves him. “Ivy—”
“I’m coming in.” I shoulder the door open. “Just not with you.”
I slam the door before he can answer.
My body belongs to someone else as I move up the steps, feet raw inside the boots someone shoved on me before we left Dovecrest.
I pause halfway up.
Daniel stands on the patio with his hands buried in his coat pockets, snow settling across his shoulders. His brows are drawn tight, carved deep by everything he kept from me.
Emeric knew.
Nonna knew.
Leon, Luce, Punk—they all knew.
But Daniel?
Daniel was my driver, my bodyguard, the face I searched for in every room and on every job. One look at him, and my entire nervous system would relax. I had someone there—a confidant, a fucking friend.
I trusted him.
He opens his mouth.
I walk past him like he’s a stranger.
“Ivy—”
I slam the front door closed, so caught up in Daniel’s betrayal that I forget I’m walking back into Nonna’s crime scene. My stomach caves in on itself and I squeeze my eyes shut, grabbing the stair rail before my legs give out.
Voices filter in from somewhere deep in the house.
I fucking trusted all of them.
“There was a house that needed to be built.”
I scoff, eyes snapping open onto the familiar wallpaper.
Fuck that house. The foundation was cracked before I ever moved in, and the walls came with blueprints someone else drew. Security? Oh no. You don’t get that either. Every lock in the place answered to someone else’s key. Right, Punk?
They all knew.
Footsteps on the stairs behind me.
I don’t turn.
“Ive, come, Luce is making hot chocolate,” Leon murmurs, unease thick in his tone.
I keep my eyes locked on the wall. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not, and it’s okay.”
“I’m fine,” I repeat. “Go back to whatever you were doing. Pretending. Scheming. Whatever.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
“You want to be angry at me,” he says. “That’s fair.”
“I don’t want to be angry.” I pause. “I want to not have spent my entire life being a puppet for men.”
Leon doesn’t answer.
“Was any of it real?” I ask the question to the floor, letting our childhood memories run through me. “Not the training. I’m talking about the nights we stayed up because I couldn’t sleep and you made me tea and told me stories about the places you’d been. Was any of that real, or was it just—conditioning? Part of the script?”
“It was real," he mutters. “Ivy, it was real. I swear to you—”
“Don’t.” I back up, legs steadier than I expect.
I rush up the stairs before he can answer, slamming my door closed when I’m inside.
When you don’t know who you are, ask yourself how you feel.
Nonna’s words float up from the wreckage, and I close my eyes.
How do I feel?
Like a marionette with half its strings cut, still dragging itself across a stage it never asked to stand on.
Now what? Now I’m supposed to be in this house and remember that the only woman who could help me out of this mess is dead.
Sniffing, I push off the door and head for the shower. No amount of scrubbing is going to remove how dirty I feel, but it’s a start. The water beats down on my shoulders while I stare at the spot Asher shoved me against the last time I was here.
Is he still here?
Probably. I can’t imagine him leaving me to wallow on my own.
I stand under the spray until the water runs cold, scrubbing blood from under my nails, from the creases of my palms, from the place behind my ears where Aléia’s blood splattered when I opened her throat.
The reaction of her death as soon as that memory landed is exactly why I’m classified a weapon. “Give her more sedation. But not enough that she can’t feel what’s happening. Emeric?” Aléia called over her shoulder, the light above burning through my retinas. “Scalpel.”
Bitch. Fucking bitch.
She was a fucking Monét. A Monét. A shit one at that. Does Camille know who true family line? No doubt she does.