Chapter Thirty One, Good Girl #2
The need to do something was why, a few hours later, blood pooled beneath my boots, thick and congealing in dark smears across the wooden floor.
The metallic stench hung in the air, mixing with the acrid tang of cleaning chemicals.
Every breath tasted of iron, every movement dragged through the weight of exhaustion.
I bent down, gripping the limp legs of another body. Danika worked beside me, her motions eerily calm, like she was handling routine paperwork instead of corpses. We’d worked together so many times before that, even though it had been years, we did it efficiently and silently.
We’d been at this for hours. Dragging. Cleaning. Scrubbing. Erasing every trace of the massacre.
Outside, the horizon bled into deep oranges and purples as the sun began its descent. The glow of twilight through the shattered window illuminated the chaos: overturned chairs, splintered tables, and the dark stains that refused to fade despite our efforts.
“Quiet, isn’t it? Is that why you picked this house?” I muttered, my voice rough and low as I straightened, wiping the back of my hand across my forehead. The streak of blood I left behind didn’t escape my notice.
Danika didn’t pause in her work, crouched near the wall with a sponge in hand. “Quiet’s better. Means I can think.”
I understood that more than I would have liked.
The last body, a man whose face was unrecognizable from a gunshot wound, lay slumped near the porch steps. Together, we dragged him outside, chucking him into the back of an SUV.
Danika leaned against the car when we finished, her breathing harsh.
She broke the quiet first, her voice softer than I’d expected as she spoke in Russian.
“I was going to let you go, you know. I went into the basement to get something, and then I was going to come upstairs and let you go home.” She wiped a hand over her face.
“I only kidnapped you to be a bitch. I was never going to hurt you for real, Atlas. Or either of your precious toys.”
I turned to look at her, her face half-lit by the fading light. She didn’t meet my gaze, her eyes fixed somewhere distant, maybe on the horizon, maybe on something only she could see.
“You were?” I asked, keeping my tone neutral, though my heartbeat picked up at the admission. “When did you change your mind?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I needed The Company to think I was doing what they paid me for. Giorgio forked over a fortune to get his son killed without repercussions, and it was a good payday.” She hesitated, then added in a quieter tone, “But when I was sent the file on Giovanni, I… I saw you. A glimpse of you in a picture. So I followed the clues, and then I found Heather. After that, I found you for real. I found out you weren’t dead.
That was when I changed my mind; the second I knew Giovanni was yours and that you weren’t really gone. ”
I rubbed a hand over my face again. “So you did all this to pretend? And to annoy me?”
“I was so mad when I found out you were alive. Mostly because I thought you’d planned it and just dumped me.” She drawled. “But even if I were mad, I still wouldn’t kill you. I never could.”
Her words struck something deep, a knot of conflicting emotions tangling in my chest. “I didn’t mean to leave you,” I said, the words barely above a whisper. “Dani, I swear it wasn’t on purpose.”
“I know,” she said simply. There was no accusation in her voice, just an eerie calm that unnerved me more than her anger ever could.
“I understand. If it had been my brother in that bed, I would never have killed him either. Older sisters have a strange sense of loyalty, even when their siblings don’t always deserve it. ”
We stood there; the tension stretching between us until she finally glanced my way. Her lips twitched into a faint, almost tired smirk.
“Guess I better be off.” She yawned. “What with my now probably wanted status? The Company will send chasers any minute now, and I’m tired of murdering people today. It’s wreaked havoc on my manicure.”
Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the matches and lighter fluid Gio had managed to smuggle earlier on. “You died in a fire tonight, so you won’t be going anywhere.”
Her eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t interrupt, waiting for me to explain.
“After killing Giovanni, Giorgio came here,” I continued, keeping my voice even. “He shorted you on payment. Things got heated. His men died. Yours too. The house went up in flames, and so did you. What’s left of your body won’t be recognizable.”
Danika tilted her head, her smirk widening slightly. “Hmm. Poetic. I do love a good arson.”
I wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “It’s the only way. After this, you disappear, Dani. You can’t be you ever again.”
Her gaze turned thoughtful, distant again, as she processed my plan. For the first time in years, I thought I saw a flicker of peace in her cold eyes.
“I’ll disappear,” she breathed. “If I feel like it. You just leave all that to me. Maybe I’ll stick around and haunt your pretty boy toy for a few weeks. Or maybe have sleepovers with your girl.”
I didn’t argue. There wasn’t much point when she was just trying to wind me up. Instead, I went to the last part of our plan.
Fire.
The first flicker of flames licked at the baseboards as I looked at her one last time. Her face, illuminated by the growing firelight, was both haunting and strangely serene.
“You’re not bad at this,” she said, her tone tinged with dry amusement. “Might’ve made a decent arsonist if you weren’t so soft.”
I snorted, though the humor didn’t quite reach me. “If I’m soft, what are you?”
“I’m dead.” She laughed, the sound sharp and genuine, cutting through the crackle of fire. For a fleeting moment, it felt like we were kids again, before the world had twisted us into what we’d become.
Then she stepped forward, sliding her hand into her back pocket. Something crumpled was in her fist when she pulled it out, holding it my way. I reached out, letting her place whatever it was in my hand, before she closed my fingers over it, holding me still.
“This was your prize from earlier. I wanted to show you to be a petty bitch. But now I want to show you because… because if I’m dead, then I guess she’s dead too.
” She whispered. “Close your eyes and count to one hundred. When you’re done, go home.
Go home and be happy. That’s it. I promise not to play a game with you again, even if I am going to hate you for a very long time. ”
I did what she wanted me to do. For one last time. My eyes shut tight, the numbers slowly started ticking away in my brain as I felt her step back, letting my hand drop.
“Sometimes, late at night and when things are dark, I make a wish on a star.” She whispered to me, but I didn’t interrupt. “Sometimes I wish to be free. Other times I wish to die. But most of all, I wished for you to be alive. I wish you hadn’t left me.”
Guilt twisted further in my gut, but I remained still. Remained silent. She didn’t want a reply. I didn’t have anything else I could offer her.
“Do you want to know what I will wish for now, Atlas?” She carried on talking, leaving no room for my response. “Now I’m going to wish that one day you could love me as much as you love Silver. That one day I could forgive you for leaving me.”
Ignoring her request, I opened my eyes long before I got to one hundred. But it made no difference.
She was gone. Blended into the shadows as though she were made of them.
With a frown, I opened my hand, looking at what she’d handed me.
It was a small photo, folded over a handful of times, crumpled and clearly old.
But it was so obviously well-loved. Like someone had stared at it more times than they could count.
And all of that was fine enough. Nothing of note, even if knowing Danika had such softness in her, was strange.
It was more what was in the photo that bothered me.
I was in it. Three at best, but I knew it was me even if I didn’t remember the day the photo was taken.
My father held me. His dark eyes were empty, just like I remembered them being. His black hair was shaved short, a scowl etched onto his face. There was nothing of note about him either, even if I didn’t enjoy looking at his face. No, it was who was on his other side that bothered me.
A little girl. Slightly older than me. Ebon hair, tied into braids on either side of her pale face.
Black eyes, just like the man who held her.
A scowl just like his.
The fire consumed the house behind me, its light swallowing the dark as I stood in the middle of it all. Waiting. Entirely unsure of what I was supposed to do now.
What I was supposed to think.
Danika was dead, as far as the world would ever know.
She was gone, and I had no clue if I would ever see her again.
Yet all I wanted to do was chase her down.
To grab her and ask her to explain why she was in a picture with my father.
Years before I remembered meeting her in the nightmare of our childhoods.
Why she looked just like the man who hurt me first.
But she was dead, and she still hated me.
I wasn’t foolish enough to poke the bear when she had only just promised she was done with her game.
And I needed to go home, like she’d ordered me.
So I did just that. I pocketed the picture, grabbed the nearest car, and headed home with one undeniable thought in my mind.
Whatever this was, whatever had gone down today, wasn’t the victory it sounded like.
It wasn’t even remotely the end of anything.
Giorgio may have paid for his crimes against his eldest son, and Heaven, but he was only the tip of a sadistic iceberg.
Only the top of the rot that infested the De Luca family at its core.
No, this wasn’t a win for us. Things were going to get worse.
Much, much worse.