Inside The Wicked: Behind Darkness Duet 2 (War of Hearts)

1. Anastasia

Ninety-three days have passed without Rhett. I wear the scars of each one on my heart, wondering if the days will ever pass without cutting.

I sit across from Alistair Lanshall in his musty old office. The man who took everything from me. He looks at me from his tall seat by the fireplace as if I’m his weapon in the making, not knowing my sharpening edge will take his blood when it’s time. I have the patience to get it right. If I were to cut off the head of the network by killing Alistair, it would only grow another.

He never took my red serpent earrings from me. More than three months with Alistair Lanshall and he never once questioned them. It’s my secret triumph, the only color I wear now. And the King of the Vipers remains oblivious to the serpent in his den. At the end of the war, it doesn’t matter that those around me have fangs primed with venom, only who has the cunning to strike first.

“You’ve been excelling, Anastasia,” Alistair praises, lighting a cigar.

He sits in the wingback armchair opposite me as we both lose ourselves to the fire blazing in the hearth of his elaborate office. It’s nearly summer, but it’s as if this mansion refuses to hold heat, and I often think it’s the lingering death clinging to the dark corners of every room that causes its chill. I know this space all too well as Alistair has taken my training on personally—apparently something he hasn’t done since Rhett Kaiser.

I thought over time the loss of him might be easier to face. Yet time is cruel, taunting. The present can be distracted, but the future will always be without Rhett, and every time I remember that fact my heart breaks with a new crack. Grief never silences; it’s ever-present. A slow kind of death until we get to join the lost. My heart became cold to everyone and my mind is focused on my task: to learn everything I can about Alistair Lanshall and ruin him in the wreckage I plan to make of his empire.

My hand runs down Shadow’s fur as I say, “I’ll be graduating soon, then I’ll have more time.”

He allowed me to continue my PHD and live my own life for show. My station and access are invaluable to him now my father is President, residing in the White House.

I got my own apartment despite my father’s protests. After everything that happened with the Forbes, his security detail around me became insufferable, but it didn’t take long for Alistair to kill off the agents assigned to me and have his own resume their identities. Their deaths will forever linger on my conscience.

I tried to find out if Alistair could be tricking me. If Rhett could still be alive and somehow being kept from me. Every day where I turn up nothing darkens my despair. Every week dissolves more of my denial. Every month sinks me deeper and deeper into my depression.

He isn’t coming back.

“Excellent. It’s time to see you work for everything you’ve been training toward. I need you to start earning back what I’ve spent on you.”

He doesn’t just mean money. Alistair values his time and effort, and in exchange I will perform for him. My only condition was that I wouldn’t sell my body to these monsters, and to my relief, he wholeheartedly agreed. He’s a possessive man even if he doesn’t have eyes for me that way. He doesn’t like people touching what’s his.

I’ve learned how to use a gun properly, precisely. I still have a lot of training to go, but I can lift, aim, and shoot without a single tremble of fear now. He’s taught me how to be a master manipulator and seductress—something he’s told me many times I’m born for, what with how quickly I’ve adopted the patterns of the women in the clubs he’s taken me to for the sole purpose of witnessing them at work.

Every day I’m not in university or with my parents for events, I’m here, with him. My best friend Riley is often concerned for me, but I told her I got a job working at some higher law firm that will go toward extra credits, and that I need the distraction.

Both my parents and Riley notice the change in me. They walk on glass around me as if they’re waiting for me to get over my grief. I won’t. And I’m playing a very dangerous game with Alistair Lanshall that I’m not certain I’ll walk away from.

I’m doing it all for Rhett.

“Good. It’s been getting rather dull around here,” I say.

Alistair smiles sinfully, tipping his head back to observe me silently. He’ll occasionally get affectionate and touch me, but to my relief, it’s always the touch of someone admiring their prized work rather than the product of lust. I never would have stayed if that was his goal with me.

“Darkness has most certainly become you, and it has been utterly breathtaking to watch the potential I saw in you come out to play.”

Alistair thinks he made me, but that’s only his delusional arrogance.

“I want to take you with me on a job tomorrow,” he says. It’s not a request.

“I have dinner with my parents.”

“I’m sure you can reschedule.”

I have done so many times that I’m beginning to feel guilty. They hardly see me now. But if my plans involved something public, Alistair would let me attend. He wants my reputation in the press to be stellar, and I often wonder if it’s for his own twisted satisfaction. He’ll spend far too long marveling over the papers with me, my image poised and proper. I’ve been painted as America’s broken-hearted sweetheart, and only he knows my darkness—the darkness he thinks he planted and harvested. He thinks I’m a puppet under his hand that the world is oblivious to.

“I have class in an hour.” I sigh, pushing myself up. “I’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Time is precious. Graduation can’t come soon enough with this nonsense draining so much of it.”

I don’t respond, leaving his dark and ominous study. Though I’ve never been attached to my postgrad English literature degree, it has opened doors of future potential, but I can’t deny I somewhat agree with Alistair now.

Alistair’s manor is huge and impressive in its architecture. Tucked away in deep woodland on the edge of Washington, D.C., it’s not his main residence, but he’s taken a more permanent residency here while I finish my postgrad year.

My black boots clack across the marble and Shadow follows at my heel. Together, we’re a stroke of darkness. I don’t spare a glance at any of the men stationed around this manor I often spend more time in during the week than I do in my own apartment. They avoid my eye anyway, and I relish in the power of being Alistair’s protégée, his most prized possession, as it keeps every one of them at my command.

Alistair has made me use that authority several times before. He’ll stand by with wicked glee as I order them around like dogs. I ask them to fetch and they scramble at my request. I ask them to kneel and they hit the ground with heads bowed. It’s twisted of me to find satisfaction in it, but these people are all sick criminals, and I would gladly set fire to this manor and watch them burn within it.

Some might think I’m throwing my life away for nothing. That I’ve blackened my soul over one lost love. It wasn’t just losing Rhett that left me with nothing to lose—it was all that loss represented. How he was taken from me. The realization that this corruption will continue to spread like poison, and I have the chance now to push a blade between the eyes of the snake, once and for all.

I put on black sunglasses and step out into the sunny morning. The door to the black SUV is opened for me, and I slip into the back seat, letting the world drift by as my bodyguard, Tony, drives me. To his credit, he tries to be friendly. I can’t reciprocate. It doesn’t matter who is placed by my side—they only ever remind me every single moment that they aren’t Rhett.

He will never be here.

I’ve become numb to the routine of my university days, trying to engage with people as little as possible. Riley remains persistent, and there’s a small part of my heart left for her, grateful she didn’t give up on me when sometimes I can’t help distancing myself from everyone.

As I push my salad around at the quaint cafe we’ve come to for lunch break, my mind wanders every now and then while Riley talks on.

“I’m not going to be around much longer,” she says.

The quiet sorrow in her voice catches my attention, and I frown. Riley’s look is pitiful, like I’m the sad puppy she has to leave behind for vacation.

Then I realize . . .

“You got the placement at Keithlington?” I ask with the most enthusiasm I’ve felt in a while.

She smiles like she doesn’t want to gloat in my sad company, and that sinks me. I’ve been an awful friend. “I did,” she says, straightening in excitement. Then her shoulders fall a fraction as she takes a sip of her tea. “Though I wasn’t the only one.”

“Nolan Flynn? I thought they were only taking one student.”

“That’s what the placement said. I guess they changed their minds, and now I have a whole year of internship stuck with that insufferable idiot.”

My smile feels forgotten and foreign, but I endure the sensation for her. “I’m so proud of you, Ry. You’re going to kill it, and they’ll have no choice but to offer you a full-time job there once it’s over.”

Her eyes fall to her tea as uncertainty clouds her face. “Since there was only supposed to be one intern, they’ve said they’ll only offer one full-time placement at the end. It’s like I’ll never be free of the torment and competition of Nolan fucking Flynn.” She huffs, sinking back in her chair.

A laugh lingers on my lips, but like anything bright, it loses the fight to become whole.

“That’s it!” she says with a sudden rise in volume. Her hands hit the table lightly, rattling our cups. “We’re going out tonight.”

My mouth opens to protest, but her rising hand stops me.

“I won’t take no for an answer. I know where you live, and I’m picking you up at eight.”

“I’ll only bring the night down,” I grumble.

“I’m making it my mission that you have fun. You’re allowed to have fun, Ana.”

I appreciate my friend for trying—I know I would do the same for her. So I smile, though it holds no real enthusiasm. Riley seems to know it with her pitying look.

“And I demand you add some color to your style. You only ever wear black now, and I’m surprised your red hair hasn’t followed the trend.”

I’m in mourning.

I don’t tell her this. She won’t understand, and I don’t expect her to.

“I should get to class,” I say, slinging my bag over my shoulder.

Riley isn’t in this module of classical studies. I’ve fallen behind in class since everything happened, so this catch-up module is a result of that.

Tony lingers a table away, and he stands as I do.

“Eight o’clock!” Riley sings at my back.

In the theater hall I take a space near the back with no one around me. My peace doesn’t last long before Adam Sullevan occupies the seat next to me. I wish he wouldn’t. Despite making amends with him, and despite him being the only person who knows what I truly get up to with my time, I don’t want any company.

“I wanted to check how you’re doing,” he says quietly, cautiously. Like he knows about the serpent I am.

“Fine.”

“Ana—”

“Do you need something, Adam?”

“I need to know you’re not being forced to do shit you don’t want to,” he hisses low.

The lights dim for the lecturer’s presentation.

“I’m still there by my own will,” I drawl. “You can quit your concern.”

“It’s been months. How long do you plan to keep this up?”

“As long as it takes.”

“To do what?”

I turn my head toward him, and he winces at my cold eyes. “I made sure he spared your life once. I won’t be able to do it again if you keep prodding. Leave me alone, Adam. Forget my existence if you must. You don’t want to keep sniffing around business that could get you killed.”

“And who looks out for you, huh?”

“I do.”

“You don’t have to do it alone.”

He truly believes he can help. I pity his lack of self-preservation. Hypocritical, maybe.

“Yes, I do.”

Adam gives up with a shake of his head as he turns back to the projector screen.

“I heard you’re going out to the Night Palace tonight,” he says.

It’s the first time I’ve known whereRiley plans to take me.

“Is there something happening there tonight?” I inquire.

“Some rich kid’s birthday, I think. Not the most elaborate venue, but a lot of students will be there.”

I can hardly suppress my groan. Then again, it could work to my advantage that Riley will have others to keep her company while I inevitably pretend to drink too much and have to leave. I can’t get even close to drunk tonight. I don’t want to know what punishment Alistair will have in store for me if I show up hungover tomorrow.

“I want to help you,” Adam says softly. I hate the gentleness.

“You can’t,” I snap. “I don’t need saving. Stop looking at me like some sort of damsel in distress.”

“You’re letting him change you.”

“You’re wrong. This has always been me. It’s just a shock because no one wants to believe it.”

“Kaiser wouldn’t want to see you this way.”

I’m close to erupting, and this is not the place to break. My voice turns venomous. “None of you knew him. You don’t get to throw his wants at me. He’s not fucking here.”

Alistair was right—classes are a waste of my damn time, and so I gather my things and leave the hall. To my irritation, Adam follows me.

“Listen, I’m trying. We’re all fucking trying, yet you won’t let anyone in.”

“Then take the fucking hint.”

Adam’s hand lands on my shoulder, intending to push me against the wall, but I move on instinct. Months of intense, often brutal, training have me grabbing his wrist and twisting his arm back, which he hisses at. Then I force his front against the wall instead.

“Shit,” he says through a breath. “What the hell has he been training you to do?”

“Do I need to put you on your ass to make it more obvious?”

No one knows that some days I spend eight hours straight in Alistair’s underground training room at the secluded mansion fighting men twice my size until I can outwit them in combat, though they always outmatch me in strength. Sometimes I’ve been so exerted beyond my limits that Alistair has carried me to a room and I’ve stayed the night at his manor, only to wake at dawn and do it all again.

“Nope. Point taken.”

I release him with a shove, heading to the parking lot.

“Are you going to his place now?”

“No. I have a party to get ready for, remember?”

“Ahh, right. I’ll see you there, A.”

I don’t answer as Tony opens the door for me to slip inside. Maybe I’ve become a coldhearted bitch to those around me, but if they’d seen inside the wicked and lost what I have, they’d be broken too. And it’s either let the pieces cut inside or aim them at the enemy.