Chapter 2
Elowen
“Is my belly looking too big?” Avi asks, studying her reflection with her hands resting on her round belly.
Her flared, puffed-sleeve yellow dress hugs her breasts and flows down over her seven-months-pregnant belly.
“It’s perfect,” I say.
She giggles. “I’m loving this pregnant look too much.”
I smile.
She looks at me in the mirror, then turns around and takes my hand. “Are you sure you don’t want to come downstairs to the party?”
I shrug, forcing a smile. “You know I don’t like these parties.”
I don’t like anywhere. I don’t even like my life. If breathing weren’t a compulsion—for the sake of these people who love me so much—I would have stopped a long time ago.
“If you want, I can stay here with you.” She knows I prefer being alone, the uncertainty is clear in her voice.
My family stopped forcing me to stay in their company when they realized it only made things worse. They let me stay alone with Bruno, Rosie, and their pups now. Yes, they’re now parents of two beautiful pups—Pester and Rozer. Bruno knocked up his adopted sister, just like Zo.
We’ve been living in Naples for the past four months. The dogs are still there; I came here for the party. Even though I had no intention of attending, my parents used the party as an excuse to see me. I know they’re worried. And I wish I could do something to ease it.
I shake my head. “I’m fine here.”
Her face falls into worry and sadness. I look down. Guilt coils in my chest whenever I see that look on their faces.
She wraps her arms around me. “Okay. Stay here. Just call me if you change your mind.”
“Okay. Enjoy the party.”
She pulls away with a smile. “I’ll bring you all the gossip.”
I smile and nod.
She grabs her purse and leaves, pulling the door shut behind her.
I walk out onto the balcony. I shudder as a sharp gust of cold air hits me. I’m wearing silk pajamas—useless against the cold. But I like the feel of cold air on my skin, how it strips away the warmth and replaces it with something my soul calls home. A coldness nothing can erase or thaw.
The sounds of music, chatter, and laughter drift up from the floor below. The veranda and garden of the party hall open just beneath my room’s balcony. I look down. The garden is adorned with ivory roses, marble urns, and crystal lanterns, but no one is outside.
Another wave of cold air washes over me, leaving me shivering. My fingers tighten around the cold metal railing.
I settle my gaze on Potomac. The water shimmers under the city lights.
Everything around the river has changed in the last two years, but the river itself remains the same.
Calm, flowing at its own pace. Is it also waiting for someone to come and change its course, or has it given up hope and now flows soullessly?
I move away from the railing and sink onto the lounge chair. A keyboard sits on the table. I haven’t played piano since that night, yet my mother placed this keyboard here. I know she’s hoping to get her daughter back. I wish that were possible.
I lift the lid and touch the keys. I know what will happen if I play.
The music will reach inside me and force me to confront the parts of myself I don’t want to meet.
I’m fine as long as I feel numb, I shouldn’t chase that away.
Still, I pick up the keyboard and set it in my lap.
I know no one will hear me. No one will know I’m broken.
No one will see my shattered pieces. Not even me, I’m too lost to see anything.
They’re all busy enjoying the beautiful things in their lives. Everyone has them—some more, some less. I have them too, too many of them, but nothing can fill the hollow in my chest. He took the only thing that ever fit there with him.
I close my eyes and press the keys. The helpless notes surround me. The music isn’t loud enough to reach down, the people there have their own music, not the melodies of sorrow and darkness, but the melodies of light and hope.
The composition begins by telling of the place I’m in, where the sun doesn’t shine, the moon never visits, where only cold, empty darkness exists.
The music carries me away to the painful memories I’ve been trying to forget for longer than I can remember.
The memories that bring nothing but pain.
The memories of his love, his promises—of him.
The man I loved with all I had, gave him everything I could.
The man who took my heart and vanished, leaving me with the punishment of still being alive.
The man who still bleeds in every drop of my blood, still whispers in my dreams, still owns me completely. The only man my soul begs for.
The music speaks my soul’s begging to the cold air, begs the calm river, begs the moon—to end this suffering.
It keeps flowing, aggressive and fast. My fingers go numb from the cold, but they don’t stop.
The pain won’t let them stop. It has finally found its way to scream.
It’s tearing through my chest, stealing my breath. I can’t stop even when I can’t breathe.
His memories are everywhere, bright and beautiful. I can’t open my eyes, can’t convince them to see a world where even the hope of salvation doesn’t exist.
The music shifts now, screaming for the end. For my soul to break free from this anguish. To leave my body and find the other half of itself, wherever he is.
Warm hands pull mine away from the keyboard. Cold breath finds my chest.
I open my eyes slowly. Hot tears stream down my cheeks.
Hunter
I hook a finger under my tight collar, failing to ease the suffocation. I don’t thrive in places where people expect me to talk.
Logan chuckles, eyeing me. “You look like a bull wearing a tie for the first time. Relax, bro. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.”
“How much longer are we staying?” Frustration threads through my voice.
The work we came for is already done. I’ve planted two ant-sized cameras in the corner just outside this party hall. They’ll stay here for a week before dying. We’ll get enough data through them to move further.
“We still haven’t met Matleon.” He offers me a glass of red wine.
I gulp the contents in one go.
“Show some class, man. Look around.” I don’t. He does, then hisses, “No one else is behaving like you.”
A waiter approaches, extending a tray. I leave the empty glass of red wine and pick up a glass of vodka.
“Don’t drink too much,” Logan warns, disapproval in his tone. “You need to stay of sound mind.”
“I’ll end up killing someone if I stay sound,” I mutter, low and irritated, gulping the burning liquid.
According to Logan, I behave like a lost Romeo when I’m drunk. I don’t know how bad that state is, but it can’t be worse than this. Every time someone approaches me or offers a handshake, my control slips a little more. I fucking hate people touching me.
Logan sighs, but his face breaks into a polite smile as he looks past me. I hand my empty glass to a passing waiter and turn.
Matleon reaches us. He shakes Logan’s hand.
“Nice party.”
“Thanks, Logan.”
He then turns to me. His smile falters as his eyes meet mine, then steadies. He extends his hand. I take it reluctantly, meeting his grip in a firm handshake.
“You must be Hunter Blackwood.”
I nod. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Matleon.”
His smile falters again. He gives me a quick once-over.
“Let me introduce you both to Zloban.”
Logan offers his best smile. I can’t fake one, so my face stays the same.
As Matleon leaves, Logan turns his friendly smile on me. “What the hell is wrong with you? Can’t you act normal?” he grits out through the smile.
I clench my jaw. I don’t know why, but after meeting Matleon, the suffocation has multiplied tenfold. I yank at my tie and pop the top button, the worst thing a man can wear is a tie.
“I can’t stay here.”
Logan glances around, then points toward the glass doors leading into the garden. “Step outside for a bit. I’ll meet Zloban and tell him you have social anxiety.”
Another term he uses to justify my behaviour. I don’t wait for another second and leave the room. The outside is cold—better. No one’s here.
I walk into the garden, pull out my cigarette case, take one, and slip it back into my pocket.
I bring out my lighter, set the cigarette between my lips, and ignite it.
As it catches, I snap the lighter shut and pocket it.
I take a long drag, it calms me a little.
I take another immediately. I only start to feel like myself once the cigarette burns down to half ash.
I walk around, letting the calm sink deeper into me, until I finally stop near a thick tree.
I lean against it and stub out my almost-gone cigarette on the trunk. Logan would disapprove of this action. Fuck him.
I take out another cigarette and light it. The noise from inside reaches here, but it’s muted compared to what’s inside. The faint sound of the river mingles with the stillness of the night.
I pull the cigarette from my lips, exhaling smoke into the cold air. My hand stills before I can bring it back to my mouth at the sound of a piano. The melody is so faint, it feels as though someone is playing it from somewhere in the distance.
My ears strain toward the music, desperate to hear it more clearly.
The calm of nicotine vanishes like the smoke I just exhaled.
There’s an unsettling current beneath my skin, too deep for any drug’s effects to reach.
My legs move on their own. I wander, chasing the music.
It’s all I hear now, though it’s little more than a whisper.
The sound is loudest where I was standing. I move back to the tree and scan the area. Is it coming from outside the mansion? But there’s nothing beyond the wall on this side, just empty rock and then the river. This is the side we’ll enter from when the day comes—the day we kill this family.
My eyes don’t stop scanning until they land on something that freezes them. Freezes me.