Chapter 39
LUCY
It’s done. Brylie Luciano is dead. It’s done. Brylie’s dead. It’s done. She’s dead.
She’s dead.
She’s dead.
She’s dead.
The words run through me on a loop, relentless as the waves crawling up the sand.
I sit at the water’s edge with my arms wrapped tightly around myself, knees drawn up, cold wind burning my cheeks while the tide inches closer with every pass.
My eyes are raw. My nose won’t stop running.
But I haven’t cried yet, not really, and the absence of it feels like holding my breath underwater—the longer I wait, the worse the break will be.
It’s why I started coming here when I feel like falling apart. Every time I’ve felt the urge to give into my grief, I’ve taken what I’ve started calling my “polar plunge.” Sobbing in the Atlantic Ocean in March makes you wonder if you’re crying at all.
Are your eyes red from tears or saltwater? Which one do you taste on your lips? Are you choking on emotion or the wave that hit you just wrong? Eventually, the grief in your bones turns to numbness, and then survival instinct kicks in and the need to escape hypothermia outweighs everything.
By now in my breakdown cycle, I’d usually already be out of the water and shivering my way home. But I can’t bring myself to end the grief yet. I can’t shake the feeling that I don’t deserve to. Not this time. Not when Brylie can’t feel anything at all.
When Luna was kidnapped, it was Brylie who held my hand as I screamed through nightmares that my trauma had dredged up.
I was worried sick, imagining our friend going through what I did, and I couldn’t tell anyone, not after all this time.
I couldn’t make it about me by sharing my past while Luna was suffering God knew what in the present.
But I couldn’t stop spiraling either. And when I was too broken and worried sick to get out of bed, Brylie reassured me that I made it out, that I survived our enemies. Luna would too.
Of the five of us—Benoit, Nox, Luna, her, and me—Brylie was always the strongest in a storm.
Sweet Benoit would never leave your side in a hurricane, getting swept up with you if he had to.
Nox was too carefree to even notice the incoming clouds.
At times, Luna was the storm, wild and uncontainable.
But Brylie was the bedrock. The foundation.
She was so steady, when she held you, you didn’t even sway.
And then Benoit happened. Not even Brylie could weather that.
We’ve always handled things so differently, but that broke us both.
Where I went soft and small and terrified, Brylie went hard.
She ran her body instead of her mind—sparring with Troisgarde bodyguards, drinking into oblivion, pacing the floors of our French Quarter shotgun house until the already ancient boards groaned under her feet.
We weren’t allowed to leave, and for someone like Brylie, being confined to four walls is a prison no matter where you are.
What was worse was that some people caught wind of the Troisgarde-Fury-Wilde saga.
They crawled into our DMs trying to get under our skin, taunting that they’d give us up to our enemies.
One faceless account even threatened Dinah, which was the thing that finally set me on the path that has me sitting here now.
But Brylie refused to break down with me. I think she was trying to protect me from her own fear, and on some level, I understand. I was already drowning, imagining what Luna was going through with the terrible clarity of someone who’d barely survived something like it.
Brylie, though, her PTSD was triggered because she’d already been the helpless friend left behind once, the night I was kidnapped.
She knew exactly what it felt like to lose someone and not know if they were coming back, and now she was living through it again.
She hurt, and I saw it, and I didn’t know how to fix it because I was the reason she knew what that felt like in the first place.
After Luna was “saved” by the very people that put her in danger, I secretly packed a bag and left enough food for Dinah to last until someone realized I was missing and promised my cat I’d come back, even though deep in my bones, I knew I was lying.
Last time, my cat was used and abused to lure me into danger, and I refused to risk Dinah.
Meanwhile, Brylie’s parents stepped in for her, and she reluctantly did what everyone said was best. She booked a one-way flight to Italy, back home.
The last time I saw Brylie, we both pretended we’d meet again in a month. She hugged me so tight my shoulders ached. I almost begged her to stay, the words right there on my tongue. But we both knew what it took to survive, so I watched her get into the cab, and I did what I knew to survive too.
And only one of us made it.
But is this really “making it?” Town after town, motel after motel, sleeping with a gun under my pillow after being afraid of a wind chime?
I told myself I was being strong, but I left a clue in fifty-two different towns, each one a silent plea dressed up as reassurance.
I’m alive. I’m okay. Off to the next town.
I’m scared. Come save me. Don’t make me go.
No one ever came. Not my parents, not the Troisgarde, not anyone I prayed would. The cards didn’t send me a savior. They sent Hatton Fury. The Joker. My hunter.
Or is he?
Did my pleas backfire? Or did Fate step in? I don’t know which answer I want, because both of them end the same way.
If the cards led my enemy to me, then I’m in his orbit now and he won’t let go. My family is still in danger, and nothing has changed except six months passed, I was betrayed by my father, and Brylie is dead.
But if Hatton was meant to find me, then leaving was pointless. Everything I sacrificed—my parents, my friends, my cat, my name, my entire life—it was all for nothing.
Brylie held my hand through my nightmares until I fell asleep. But I was running the entire time Brylie was in a coma. And now… now she’s gone. I don’t know if I could have prevented some of this heartbreak or if I caused it, but I would have at least been able to hold her hand.
I tried to keep people safe, but I’ve never felt guiltier. I’ve never felt more alone.
And the cruelest part is that until this morning, I wasn’t.
For the first time in six months, I had someone beside me who made the quiet feel like company instead of a cage.
Hatton said I was his peace, and didn’t I feel it too?
My parents always talk about choosing the person you love every single day. Didn’t I tell him I chose him?
Pushing him away feels like ripping the peace he gave me out by the roots.
A single tear escapes, and I turn my face into the wind to let its chill sting the trail on my cheek in its wake.
The breeze is that particular southern coast March cruelty, where the day is warm but if you get wet, the wind is frigid. The second it stops, you burn. The second it starts, you shiver. There’s no winning, just bracing for the next gust.
My nightgown whips over my bare knees. I didn’t think to put on anything else when I stormed out, and now my toes and the backs of my thighs are numb in the sand.
The only warmth left is the grief curling inside my chest, a kind of pain I didn’t think I could feel again after the warehouse, after everything. I was wrong.
The ocean stretches out in front of me, churning dark swells capped in white, but the sky above it is the most offensive shade of orange and red sunrise I’ve ever seen. Bright, pink clouds, positively hopeful.
I’ve always hated when authors match the weather to a character’s mood in books, hammering the metaphor so hard it dents the wall around the nail. It’s heavy-handed, sure, but most of all, it’s unrealistic. Because the cruelest metaphor isn’t a storm on a dark day.
It’s sunshine.
A bright, warm, gorgeous morning on the worst day of a person’s life, reminding them that on top of everything they’ve lost, the world doesn’t care. It keeps turning as if the problem doesn’t exist. As if they don’t exist.
Maybe… maybe it would be better if I didn’t.
I blink.
Huh.
What a curious line of thought.
Curious… but is it… wrong?
I’ve always thought that everyone is safer when I’m not around.
Would everyone be better off if I was truly… gone?
Incredibly, my mind clears at the thought, and I slowly stand, unfolding from the sand without bothering to brush it off my hands.
That’s how all this started, isn’t it? Three families, three daughters, and the men who decided our lives were chips to bet with. Pawns to be sacrificed.
My fists curl around the two cards I took from Hatton’s pocket. The Queen of Hearts and the Joker.
If the pawn removes herself from the board, the queen can’t be captured, and the people she loves can’t be leveraged through her. Right?
I take a step toward the blue-black water.
It’s not just you. They’re targeting everyone.
I shake my head slightly.
But the daughters are being treated like bullets. If there was one less weapon to aim…
I walk closer to the water.
…wouldn’t that be better for everyone?
My feet sink into the wetter sand, cold as ice, bringing me to a stop.
And maybe… maybe if I keep walking, I won’t have to feel this way anymore. I won’t have to miss anyone ever again. I won’t have to hurt from what happened to me. I won’t have to feel guilty for all the pain I’ve caused.
I won’t be a runner anymore. Maybe… maybe I’ll finally be free.
I look down at the cards, the skeleton Queen of Hearts and her sadistic Joker.
I turn my back on the ocean and crouch as I press both cards into the wet sand. They sink halfway, the runner and her hunter, and I let go.
This was my last stop.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the confession swallowed by the breeze.
Then I turn around.
The ocean calls for me, reaching as gentle waves roll in and beckoning as it retreats out.
The marsh I’ve come to love flanks the small peninsula on either side with its cordgrass and oyster beds.
The world is empty except for the whispering surf and the pulse in my ears.
I curl my toes deeper into the cold, wet sand until grit lodges beneath my nails, numbness already working up from the soles of my feet.
I stand long enough for my calves to burn from fighting the shifting quicksand and for the waves to streak foam and tiny bits of shell up my shin. The tide is shifting from high to low. She’s not going to come for me, I must go to her.
My hands tremble, but not from cold. It’s bone weary exhaustion and grief that’s eaten through every reserve. This is it. I have nothing left to give. I’ve finally run far enough. There’s nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Just… walk.
Just go, Lucy. One last bit of running. Let the water take you.
It would be so much easier than facing another day without Brylie, without Luna, without anyone who knows who I am and what I’ve survived. No one could barter me off again. No more pacts or poker games or mysterious chess moves from a new player I brought onto the board.
If I went into the ocean now, it would be on my terms. No one could take that from me.
I take the first big step.
Water closes over my ankles, and my breath stutters, the chill zapping up my bones like cold electricity, but I don’t stop. I don’t look back.
The tide begins to climb my knees, then my thighs, the pressure tugging at my nightgown, stealing my warmth, leeching away whatever was left of the hope I thought I could hold onto.
Brylie is dead. Luna is with the enemy. Benoit is gone. Nox is God knows where. My parents trusted the very person I tried to escape. They’ll be upset.
Then again, they won’t ever find me to know.
The world behind me is nothing but ghosts and deals I never agreed to, secrets, lies, and masks that only reveal what people want to see.
The water reaches my hips, and my nightgown begins to float behind me in the current like it’s trying to drag me back to shore. I stumble once, splashing water up into my face, and stinging my chapped lips. It tastes like tears, guilt, and nightmares I’m desperate to forget.
Almost there.
I force myself forward, wading deeper even as my muscles begin to seize, arms at my sides, fists clenched but fighting against nothing.
I think about Nox asking two girls on a date and getting slapped by a third.
I think about Benoit taking the fall when Luna almost got arrested for secretly feeding a police horse tequila lime salt.
Brylie pirouetting right into the arms of a gold-masked prince the last time we all laughed together.
All the places we might’ve gone once we graduated college.
All the lives we might’ve lived if we hadn’t been born to the most powerful crime families in the country.
I think about Hatton.
About what it could’ve been like to wake up to that smile I only ever saw him give me. Vulnerable and carefree and hopeful and a little scared.
Is that what love is?
I guess I’ll never know.
The current tugs at my legs, insistent now, at times pushing me away and other times pulling me under.
A wave breaks against my chest, forcing me to suck in a shocked breath and trip.
Water fills my mouth, but my feet find purchase on the shifting sand and everything comes out in a choked gasp that almost sounds like a sob.
But still, no tears. Will they come for me like they did for everyone else? Or am I already spent?
I keep walking, one step at a time, until my knees buckle and the current lifts me off my feet.
The world tilts. My hands break the surface, fingers spreading wide, the salt stinging along tiny cuts I didn’t know I had.
I tip my head back and let the next wave break over me, soaking my hair, and close my eyes against the unbearably bright cheerful sky that almost makes me feel crazy for caring this much at all.
But there’s sanity in madness, isn’t there?
There’s sanity in madness and madness in sanity. Sinking into madness can be a comforting escape in this cruel world, a mercy that can never be matched when you hold on instead.
And anyone who chooses to hold on to their sanity is mad, aren’t they? Because in this world, what sane person insists on staying that way?
The cold seeps into my bones, stealing away my anger, my sorrow, everything except the dull ache in my chest. I drift, letting the waves push me, feeling the weight of my body pull downward. My toes brush the sandy bottom, then… they brush nothing at all, and I…
… sink.
I’m fully submerged now, and for a moment, everything is quiet. My heart is a slow, muffled drum. My lungs ache, but I don’t move. A shiver runs through me that’s deeper than cold, and my body protests—muscles locking, lungs seizing for air—but my mind tells me to be calm.
Am I crying yet?
I sink deeper, letting the numbness fill my bloodstream.
This is peace. I think.
Isn’t it?
Sink.
Sink.
Sink.
My chest aches as Hatton’s face flashes in my mind’s eye, but then…
I finally let go.