Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
Paris stops just a few feet away from Anderson. Her hands are tucked into the pockets of her coat, and even in the low light I can see the way her jaw clenches.
“There was a h-hold up,” she says, eyes flicking to Anderson and then to me.
The stutter is faint but noticeable, but she doesn’t look ashamed of it this time. If anything, she sounds… tired.
I take a step back from both of them, but the garden wall is behind me now. There’s nowhere to go.
“Wait,” I say, and my voice cracks. “What is this? You—you planned this?”
Neither of them says anything right away. But they don’t have to. It’s written in the way they stand, side by side, like a team. Like a threat.
“I don’t understand,” I say, quieter now.
Anderson turns slightly toward Paris, his expression smug. “Do you want to do the honours?” he asks lightly.
Paris nods, then turns back to me.
She meets my eyes, and there’s no hatred in hers. No real satisfaction either. Just something sad. Something hollow.
“I messed with h-his brakes,” she says, flatly. “Your f-father’s. The car.”
I just stare at her, blinking, waiting for something else. Something that makes sense.
But that’s it. That’s the sentence.
My knees nearly give out. “Why?”
Paris exhales slowly, looking past me now, toward the stone wall behind my shoulder. Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“He w-was ruining everything,” she says. “My family. The Steeles. Irina. Our partnership. She wouldn’t s-stop crying. She couldn’t s-sleep.” Her voice breaks, just a fraction. “He was everywhere. In the house. In our heads.”
“So you killed him,” I say, numb. “You killed my dad.”
Paris doesn’t flinch.
“I d-did it for them,” she says. “For all of them. They said they couldn’t, so I did.”
My breath is shaking now. “They? Who’s they?”
She doesn’t answer directly. Just tilts her head a little and says, “Everyone. My family.”
I want to scream. I want to understand. But nothing she’s saying is making sense.
“And y-you were getting too close to the truth,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.
My breath catches. “What?”
“The messages,” Paris says, her tone turning casual. “Those were me. At first.”
I blink, slow. The world tilts. The cold air feels thinner now, like it’s being pulled from the edges of my lungs.
“You were giving her too many pieces,” she tells Anderson then, her voice tinged with something like reprimand.
Anderson laughs, a low, amused sound. “She was clever. I was curious.”
Paris narrows her eyes. “And careless.”
He just shrugs.
Paris finally looks at me again, and there’s something in her expression I can’t name, but feel in my heart like an old friend.
“So that means…” My voice breaks, and I have to force the words out. “That means you’re the reason Wren died.”
Paris flinches.
It’s not much, barely a breath of movement, but it’s the first real crack in her expression. The first time she looks like someone young again, not this version of her I don’t recognize. She drops her gaze for half a second, lashes flickering low, and I see it. The shame.
“She wasn’t supposed to be there,” she says quietly.
“So that makes it better?”
The silence between us, like ice before it breaks.
“I’m guessing Kai doesn’t know,” I say.
Paris looks away sharply, jaw tightening.
“He wouldn’t understand,” she whispers.
“None of them would. Try me.”
Paris’s eyes are glassy when they flick back to mine.
“I did it for him,” she says finally. “For them. For our families. My family was losing everything,” she says, and there’s no stutter now, no softness.
Just rawness. “After what happened with Irina, after what John Ross did to her, our partnership was falling apart. Kai was falling apart.”
“And that justified murder?”
“I didn’t plan murder,” she bites out, then pulls herself back. Her hands tremble at her sides, and she curls them into fists. “I just wanted him out of the way. He was a problem. And I thought, if I did this one thing—”
She breaks off, seems to catch herself, and presses her lips together.
Anderson exhales a long, theatrical sigh. “Well,” he drawls, “this is getting awfully emotional.”
Paris rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t say anything to him. Not yet.
His hand moves again, as he pulls the gun fully from his coat this time, a sleek, compact thing that gleams under the outdoor lights.
And I can’t move. My body’s locked in place, the cold slicing through my dress, my skin, my bones. But my voice comes anyway. “You know he won’t forgive you, right?” I whisper, eyes locked on Paris, not the barrel of the gun. “You’re the reason his sister died.”
Paris flinches like I slapped her. And once again, I see the girl beneath the mask: the dancer, the student, the daughter, the sister.
Then her face twists, and she shouts, “Shut up!”
It echoes across the dark garden. Bounces off the hedges. Rattles something loose in me.
Anderson chuckles behind the weapon. “Oh, there she is,” he murmurs, pleased. “Our little prima ballerina with a bite.”
Paris doesn’t look at him.
She’s still looking at me.
“Just get it over with,” she finally says, stepping back.
And I stare at her, at the empty look in her eyes, at the way her arms hang loosely by her sides, and I realize with a sick drop in my stomach that she means it.
She’s letting this happen.
She’s letting him kill me.
Across from me, Anderson lights up like a man handed his favourite book and told he can finally rip out the last page. His smile widens, eyes gleaming with something far too close to joy.
He steps in slowly, deliberately, and lifts one hand to brush a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Your new hair suits you,” he murmurs, almost affectionately. “Soft. Braver. But still… my Adeline.”
I flinch, every muscle in my body coiling. And that’s when I feel the cold press of the gun’s muzzle against the side of my head. Right at my temple.
My breath stops.
So this is it.
This is how it ends.
The barrel is colder than anything I’ve ever felt. Colder than the wind biting at my arms. Colder than the marble that was beneath my feet only moments ago. It just settles there, and I know with absolute certainty: he means to pull the trigger.
I shut my eyes, preparing.
Preparing as much as a person can, I suppose. And I wait for it, wait for the feeling of death.
But instead, a weight slams into me.
Hard.
I’m thrown to the side, the world spinning in a blur of frost and fear, and we hit the ground with a crack. Someone lands on top of me, shielding me completely.
And for a breathless, fractured second, I can’t move.
“Addie.”
My eyes fly open.
Kym.
It’s Kym.
She’s crouched over me, her arms braced, her face barely inches from mine. And her expression… god, her expression.
She looks terrified. Gutted. Fierce. All at once.
And I can hardly believe it. Rational, logical Kym. Constantly calculating Kym. I only speak when I have something to say Kym. That same Kym has just thrown herself in front of a gun for me.
“Kym—” I gasp, but she’s already looking up.
At Anderson.
At Paris.
And her voice is steady when she says, “You’re out of your damn mind.”
Anderson’s smile doesn’t falter, but the gun shifts—clicks.
Aimed now.
At her.
I move at the same time she does. Fast. Desperate. There’s no time to think, only instinct. My hands shove at her shoulder just as she pushes me back, both of us trying to shield the other.
But the shot never lands.
Because another, single shot rings out first, from somewhere behind us. And Anderson jerks violently to the side, his body twisting mid-step as a bullet tears into his shoulder. He drops to one knee, a choked sound tearing from his throat.
And from the shadows behind the hedge, Will steps out, gun still raised.
“Step away from her,” Will says, his voice low, steady. Deadly.
Anderson, panting now, raises his gun again.
Will doesn’t hesitate.
He moves.
And he’s fast, faster than I’ve ever seen him, as he throws himself in front of her.
In front of his sister.
The first bullet hits him in the back with a sound that turns my stomach inside out. His body arches mid-run, and he falters, but doesn’t stop.
The second rips through him a heartbeat later. Higher this time. I see the way it knocks the breath from his lungs, the sudden stutter in his steps.
And then the third.
The third is the one that brings him down.
He crashes forward, knees hitting the ground hard just in front of Kym, a strangled sound leaving his mouth.
She catches him before he falls and makes a sound I’ve never heard from her before, something raw. Animal. Terrified. The kind of sound that lives somewhere deep in the chest, in the ribs.
There’s blood everywhere, soaking through Will’s shirt, smearing across Kym’s arms, her dress, her chest. And I watch as her hands scramble for something—pressure, grip, anything to stop it.
“No, no, no,” she whispers, catching him before he falls all the way, her hands under his arms, her knees scraping against the stones as she pulls him into her lap. “Will, no! Why would you do that?!”
He blinks at her, blood pooling at the corner of his mouth. “You’re my sister.”
Kym’s breath catches. Her fingers press harder, trembling. “I haven’t been your sister for a long time.”
But he just smiles. Soft, lopsided. A little dazed.
“Doesn’t matter what you call it. You’re in my head, Kym.
Always were. Always will be. Hey,” he murmurs after a pause, eyes fluttering open.
“You’re not… crying, are you?” Kym shakes her head, furiously, even as tears streak down her cheeks. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” she chokes. “I didn’t want this. I didn’t want you to—”
“I did,” he cuts in, and his voice is quieter now, thinner. “Don’t you get it? I’d do it again.”
His head lolls slightly, eyes fluttering.
“Will—no—no, stay with me—stay with me—” Kym shakes her head, pressing harder, her hands slipping in blood. “Please don’t leave me again…”