The Pawn (War of Hearts #2)

Chapter 1

ALLEGRA

The smell of red wine makes me sick. I have a visceral reaction to the scent and it’s something I’ve had to work to get under control.

I’ve been able to do it for the most part.

The sound of a piano playing, though? That will always trigger a memory in me.

Always leave me with a feeling of dread, no matter how pretty the music.

Too much bitter for any sweet.

This feeling is worse. Because the worst is yet to come.

That dread is like a disease, a cancer spreading black in your insides, pushing everything else out. Leaving no room for anything but it.

Someone’s playing now. An old tune, one I know well, with a constant, repeating melody.

A dark tune.

It’s starts up again. Back at the beginning.

My heart hurts to hear it.

Fingers on a keyboard taking me back to where it began.

To where it all ended so horrifically.

My chest constricts. It’s hard to breathe. Consciousness creeps back in salt tears burning my face. How long have I been crying?

There’s a part of me straining to hear because before I open my eyes, before I return fully to consciousness, that part of me thinks she might still be here. Thinks I can have her back as ridiculous as the idea is. As impossible.

My lip trembles. My throat constricts when I swallow.

Hope for the hopeless. It’s absurd.

I can’t listen. It’s too much. I need to block out the sound. To plug my ears until it stops.

And it does stop. Suddenly and completely.

It stops and, in the wake of its silence, I hold my breath, and I count my heartbeats.

It’ll start again. I know it will. It’s been going on for a while.

Is it a recording? No. It might be easier if it were, but whoever is playing has missed notes. Made mistakes she’d never have made.

When I inhale, I register something else. Dust. No, not dust. Ash. Ash from a fire. And the coppery taste of blood in my mouth.

The music starts again.

I lick my lips. The pianist makes another mistake. Mutters a curse. Corrects. Dread spreads like tar from my center outward, my belly full of it, my heartbeats turning to heavy, slow thuds.

I should open my eyes, but not yet. Not yet. I roll onto my side away from the sound. It’s useless. Like a child pulling the blankets up over her head to save herself from monsters.

Just because you can’t see the monsters, doesn’t mean they’re not there.

Who said that? My father? Or my mother? Cassian? I can’t remember.

The tips of my fingers scrape along a cold, dirty floor. Outside, rain is falling. I hear it. Smell it.

“Ah.” Someone says. A man.

I can’t put it off any longer. Time to face the music.

I open my eyes. It takes a minute before they adjust. It’s dark, but not so dark I can’t see. Not so dark I don’t know where I am. My brain won’t allow me to register the fact though. Not yet. Because that dread, it’s not just the piano. It’s this place. It’s this house of horrors.

The music stops abruptly. The piano bench scrapes what was once gleaming gold-veined marble. So pretty, like a palace. I remember thinking that. A palace for a princess.

Footsteps echo. I stare at the wall burnt black. The steps are coming toward me. I need to get up. To face him.

Just because you can’t see the monsters doesn’t mean they’re not there.

I can’t defend myself by pretending he’s not here. Rolling onto my back, I try to sit up, to move. My head aches. I recall how he slapped me twice before smashing my head against the SUV’s window.

My brother’s face the moment before the bullet struck flashes before my eyes.

My brother’s grinning, then stunned expression.

Or maybe I’m making that part up. He didn’t see it coming.

I don’t think he registered what was happening to be stunned before warm blood splattered across my face and he fell over.

But closing my eyes makes it worse and when I open them, there’s a shadow over me. A face peering down at me. Looming above me.

Malek.

Malek, my father’s one time consigliere. The puppet master who played my brother like the fool he was.

Malek the traitor. The killer.

He wasn’t supposed to be the violent one.

He studies me, tilting his head. He clears his throat and his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows.

I say my brother’s name, my voice a croak, a broken whisper. “Michael.” He killed him. He shot Michael before my eyes.

Malek smiles. “Gone. No need to thank me.”

I force myself to move, to get up. My head is a leaden weight, my neck not strong enough to carry it and it hurts when I finally manage to sit. I’m dizzy and lean my back against the chaise. What’s left of it, what the fire didn’t devour. I look up at him.

“Murderer.”

He shrugs a shoulder. “He had it coming. If it wasn’t me, and some might suggest the swiftness of my bullet a mercy, Trevino would have done it, and I can tell you he’d not have been so merciful.”

A soldier brings him a glass of water. He sips, makes a satisfied ah sound. I lick my cracked lips. I’m so thirsty my throat burns.

“Drink?” Malek asks, holding out the glass.

I turn my face away. I won’t drink from his glass.

I look around the large room of the ruined house, take in the destroyed furniture covered in five years’ worth of filth.

Splatters of blood somehow stand out in a deep, terrible brown against the walls.

Who cleaned up the bodies of the dead men?

I didn’t see that part. Soldiers, I suppose.

Men who are used to seeing death. Cleaning up murder. Men used to delivering it.

No. I can’t think about that. Can’t think about the last time I was here. I can’t. He hasn’t killed me yet. If I want to survive this, I need to focus. No time to relive the horror of those days and nights.

The place where my pinkie used to be throbs. Ten days. Ten nights. Rescued on the eleventh. Rescued too late.

Stop it. Focus.

I’m alive. He would have killed me if he didn’t need me, I’m sure of it. As long as he needs me, I’ll be all right. I will. I need to get my racing heart under control.

I won’t be all right, though. How can I be?

The way he murdered Michael? Michael who didn’t even see it coming.

Michael who trusted him. Amal was right.

Cassian was right. Michael wasn’t in charge.

Malek had been taking the reins slowly, but surely, biding his time, ever since my father’s death. I knew it too, didn’t I?

I blink, look up at him, realizing something.

“Did you kill my father too?” I ask, my mind working on a different question. A more important one. Why did he bring me here, to this place of all places?

Because who killed my father is not a question that keeps me up at night. My father died a better death than he deserved. If you reap what you sow, he got off easy.

“Do you truly expect me to believe you mourned his death? It was for show, Allegra. A good one, I must say. My compliments. But you knew him as well as I did. You knew what he did.”

I don’t comment on that. I can’t.

“Sir,” a familiar voice comes from behind him. Malek turns. It’s Rami. Rami who worked for my father. Who worked for Michael. Rami who doesn’t even look at me. I’ve always known he was a mercenary only loyal to the highest bidder.

“What?” Malek barks.

Rami just shakes his head.

Malek draws a breath in through narrowed nostrils and glares down at me before turning back to Rami. “Then find another. It’s not that fucking hard.”

There’s an infinitesimal twitch of Rami’s eye. “It’s not so easy. There’s…” he glances at me, clears his throat. “They’re afraid to go against him. Sir.”

Does Malek hear the contempt in Rami’s sir?

Malek turns to me. His jaw is clenched tight. “I said find another. He can fucking disappear after he’s done what I need him to do with the money I’ll be paying.”

“It’s impos—”

“Fucking find someone!”

A beat passes. “Yes,” Rami says through clenched teeth before turning and walking back out the door.

Malek puts the glass of water down and pulls a chair over, turns it so the back is to me and straddles it.

“You trust him?” I ask, rubbing the bump on the back of my head.

“Of course not, but he is efficient. And merciless.”

I glance at the closed door Rami just left from. Panic begins to rise again. I know what’s beyond that door. The winding staircases that lead to the other one. To the dark hallway. The stairs that go down to the cellars. To that room.

But up here, this was where it happened.

Up here, this is where she lived her horror. Down there was where I lived mine and it was nothing. Nothing in comparison. I never witnessed her butchering. Only the aftermath. Only holding my trembling mother in my arms after they did what they did.

I suck in a breath, force the tears away, tell myself to breathe, to stay calm.

I’m alive. He needs me. That’s what I need to focus on.

“You remember this place,” Malek observes.

“I see it in my nightmares. But you must know that or you wouldn’t have brought me here,” I say, facing him again, taking in his dark, empty eyes. Dead eyes. I think of Cassian. Of his beautiful eyes the color of the Mediterranean Sea. I think of how Cassian looks at me.

How he looked at me the last time I saw him. What he almost did to me.

I grit my jaw. Men are monsters. All men. To believe otherwise is foolish.

“Why did you bring me here?” I ask Malek, infusing steel into my voice because if I think about the monsters, I won’t break down. I won’t melt into a puddle of fear like a good little victim. “What do you want from me?”

“Do you know why he chose this place?” Malek asks, standing, turning to take in the room before facing me again. Behind him the piano looms larger than life in the center of the space. It escaped the worst of the fire.

I don’t answer him. I remain silent because to answer his question would mean I know who he’s referring to. Would mean I know who her true killer was. That reality would be a step too far. It’s always been a step too far.