Call It What You Want (Legacy of Lies #8)

Prologue

Ava — Missouri, Three Years Ago

All I see is blood.

It’s everywhere. On the walls. On my clothes. Pooling on the tiled floor, bright red rivulets seep into the white grout like veins through marble.

The air feels too thick to breathe. It’s heavy, metallic, and it makes me gag. I drag in several breaths. The world narrows to the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears.

I’m frozen, standing in the kitchen, the edge of the marble counter biting into the small of my back.

I can’t think. I can’t move. All I can do is stare at the boy in front of me—the one I thought I loved—the overhead light cutting sharp shadows across his beautiful, terrible face.

His fist is clenched around the knife, trembling, skin slick with someone else’s blood. His chest rises and falls in a violent rhythm, each breath jagged.

When his eyes lift to mine, something inside me unravels.

Because I finally see it.

The truth.

He’s not shaking because he’s afraid for me. He’s shaking because he reveled in the violence. And in that instant, it all crystallizes. The monster isn’t the lifeless body sprawled across the floor between us. The monster is standing right in front of me.

The man I thought I loved.