Chapter 28
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
IVY
I run.
Snow bites into my bare feet. Dead leaves whip my ankles, catching against the thin cuts already striping my skin. I shove through the trees, dragging air into my burning lungs.
Le Boucher is Asher.
“How the fuck did I miss it?” I gasp, stumbling over a buried root.
Asher watches me enter a room as if everyone around us has forfeited the right to breathe.
Pathetic, Ivy.
My foot slides on frozen mud, sending me shoulder-first into a pine. Bark tears my palm when I catch myself. I stay there, bent over, breath sawing through my chest while the woods tilt around me.
Footsteps crunch behind me, locking my knees. Fuck! No way did he catch me.
A hooded figure ducks into view, shoving the fabric back. A woman. A branch snaps to my side, and my head whips toward the sound, eyes blurred.
“Ivanya,” the woman whispers. “Let me hel—”
I shove her out of the way and keep running.
The wind slips beneath my clothes, drying the sweat along my ribs.
A hard weight cracks across the side of my head. My knees collapse before I find a weapon, a face, even a breath, and everything goes black.
Pain pulses hot and uneven as my body sways with the water. Am I in water?
The yacht. Memories.
Darkness takes me again.
I’m screaming before my eyes open. Fire sears both wrists. Metal cuts into skin and bone, the cold links pulling tight with every twitch. I’m hanging with my toes grazing concrete, shoulders wrenched beside my ears, my own weight tightening the restraints for whoever put me here.
I blink through crusted blood. The room swims. Gray walls, no windows, a single buzzing fluorescent bar overhead.
Emeric sits three feet away in a metal folding chair, one ankle crossed over his knee, the Codex open on his lap. He thumbs a page as if he’s browsing a wine list.
“There she is.” His mouth curves into the specific smile I used to mistake for warmth. “Look at my little contamination.”
My stomach drops through the floor.
“We must fix that.” He taps the open page with one finger, tilting it so I can see the header: Book Four: Emergency Protocols for Emotional Contamination. The words blur, sharpen, then blur again as my head throbs where I was struck.
Blood pools against my teeth. I spit it at his shoes.
“Fuck you.”
Emeric laughs, genuine and delighted, as he did when I nailed a field test back when I thought he hung the goddamn moon. He snaps the Codex shut and sets it on the floor beside his chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“That fire. That’s exactly the contamination talking, Ivanya. You used to be so clean.” He studies my face, most likely deciding where to cut. “Disciplined and mine.”
“I was never yours.”
“Page forty-seven disagrees.” He stands, brushing dust from his thighs, and crosses to a panel on the wall.
His fingers hover over a dial. “Thankfully, I prepared for this day. Kind of anticipated it, really. I mean, you were my greatest weapon, but even the great can be weak when it comes to love.”
He turns the dial.
“So just a few small adjustments, and you’ll be fixed.”
The sound screams through my ears, a high-frequency that drills into the center of my skull.
I clamp my jaw shut, but it doesn’t help. The sound climbs, threading through bone, sinuses, and the soft tissue behind my eyes.
Chains rattle as my body jerks. I can’t cover my ears or do a single fucking thing except hang here while the sound peels me open layer by layer.
Emeric returns to his chair, crossing his ankle over his knee, watching me with way too much patience that I know he's capable of.
Everything goes dark.
I come back braced for the burn in my wrists and the strain in my shoulders. My feet meet concrete, dragging a sob of relief from my throat before leather digs into my ankles.
Straps bind my thighs and waist. One band crushes my chest against the wall, my legs spread and pinned. My arms stay trapped at my sides, both wrists buckled.
I test one restraint. It doesn’t give. The room tips with my head, and the walls become every safehouse, training room, and cell I’ve ever been inside.
Nonna’s hands pull me into a dough-floured hug.
Jord cracks jokes over the comms. Punk wears that stupid grin.
Their faces lose their names, thinning into smoke until numbness comes easy.
A violent jerk of my head clears them. Stay here, Ivy.
Emeric sits in his chair with the Codex open, calmly turning another page. The fluorescent bar hums. My own breath comes too loud in my ears.
“Pain,” he says, lifting his eyes from the page and settling on my face. “You’ve forgotten that feeling since your prince is so hell-bent on protecting you.”
I keep my mouth shut.
“You know? I did warn him.” He shifts the book to his other knee, unhurried. “Warned him that I would kill you if he didn’t. But Asher...” He tsks. My shoulders pull tight at the familiar sound.
They know each other.
Emeric knows him well enough to say his name with affection, well enough to have warned him. Everything I understood about my employer splits open beneath my feet.
“He’s always so quick to be a smart-ass, huh?” Emeric smiles at a private memory of Asher being Asher.
My tongue feels thick. “How long?”
“How long what, Ivanya?”
“How long have you known him?”
He stands, setting the Codex on the chair, and crosses the floor slowly.
He brings nothing with him but his cologne and the strike of his shoes on concrete, a walk I’ve heard a thousand times across training rooms and beside debrief tables.
That sound used to relax me. You idiot. You were in the abattoir the whole time.
His hand closes around my throat.
His fingers press into the sides of my neck, choking the air out of me. My hips jerk against the straps. My throat works uselessly, and the room dims at the edges.
“I know Asher.” His voice brushes my ear with tenderness. “Ivy. And you do too...”
My vision closes fast.
Warm water rocks beneath me, carrying salt on the air.
The little boy’s hands try to undo the ties. He huffs in frustration, dropping his hands to his sides.
“I can’t get them!” he yells, so angry I almost believe him.
“What are you doing here?” I ask through the throb in my throat. “Are you...”
His eyes widen. Blue, so pale they’re practically white. Wow. They’re kind of creepy.
“I’m sorry,” he says, shoulders sagging.
“Are you his son?” I ask.
The little boy’s head jerks toward the cabin door. His wet hair drips into those strange blue eyes.
“I’m getting you out,” he insists, reaching for the rope again.
“His son,” Emeric answers.
His voice hauls me out of the memory. The yacht drops away. Concrete chills my feet, leather cuts into my thighs, and Emeric stands close enough for his breath to touch my cheek.
I stare at him through the wet blur coating my eyes.
“What?”
Emeric cups my jaw, holding my face toward his. “The boy was Parker’s son. He wasn’t freeing you, Ivanya. He was checking the knots.”
“No.” My lips form the word while my head sways. “He got angry because he couldn’t untie them.”
“He got angry because he failed Parker.” Emeric runs his thumb over the blood drying beneath my mouth. “Asher always hated disappointing his father.”
My stomach caves at the name.
Asher was eleven years old, soaked from the sea and fumbling with ropes. He stood in the conservatory with my blood on his hands. He watched me run through the snow.
I grab one memory and hold it.
Emeric’s burned mouth bends. “He’s always helped with recruiting, Ivanya. Children trust other children. Parker understood that. Asher became quite good at bringing frightened little girls into reach.”
“You’re lying.” My voice cracks, giving him the satisfaction of hearing it. “Parker never called him his son. I never met Asher before then.”
“Parker didn’t call you his wife either.” Emeric releases me, pulling the Codex from the chair. “Titles change. Purpose survives.”
He opens the book, pressing a finger against a page covered in names, ranks, and arrows. The letters crawl when I look at them.
“La Maison du Mal has three houses,” Emeric explains. “Delacroix presents the clean face. Companies, charities, family empires. They invite powerful people through the front door and decide which ones leave indebted.”
His finger moves to a name printed above the rest.
ASHER.
Beneath it is a title.
LE PARRAIN.
Emeric taps the ink. “Your lover boy that is nothing like the men you despise?”
I shake my head, making the page smear. “He...” I want to say kills them. That can’t be right. He was a child. He can’t be Le Boucher. He has to be what Emeric says.
“Shall I continue?” Emeric’s smile widens around ruined skin.
His finger slides across the paper.
“Monét owns the dark corners. Intelligence, technology, Ciphers, Watchers, Fant?mes. They bury records, build identities, and send people through locked rooms without leaving a footprint.”
His finger moves to another family.
“And Dubois handles the mind.” Emeric lifts his gaze to mine. “False memory implantation. Personality fracturing. Trauma harvesting. They take a life apart, rewrite the useful pieces, and hand it back.”
My wrists twist against the straps.
“That boy helped me.” The rest of his lecture passes unheard while I hold tight to that one thread.
“That boy recruited you,” Emeric says, closing the book. “He then gave you hope so Parker could teach you what it feels like to have it ripped away.”
A sob catches behind my tongue.
Emeric leans closer, his burned cheek filling my vision. “He is La Maison du Mal, Ivanya.”
Water clouds my eyes again. His face blurs, the scarred skin smoothing at the edges until a beard and a familiar nose take shape.
I blink, and the burns return.
High heels clap against the concrete, pulling a sneer across my mouth.
“Why are you messing around?” Camille says. “Just say the trigger word and let the crazy play.”
Emeric’s eyes shift toward her. He straightens. “No, not yet. She’s not ready.”
“Fine. Let me try.” She pulls up a chair.
Her mouth moves while my head keeps circling the same pieces: Asher as the little boy, the recruiter, Le Parrain, and the liar.
“Ivanya, you and I aren’t friends. In fact, I’d prefer to just kill you and get this over with, but Emeric is so hell-bent on living the Dubois way, so let me give you a hint of how this is going to go.”
My eyes fix on her.
She grins. “Asher is in love with me.”
My jaw loosens.
“We’re always going to be number one.”
I sag against the leather.
Emeric steps into view, studying me. His burned skin smooths around his eyes. A familiar nose follows, then a smile.
The corner of his mouth lifts into a wide grin. “What is it, my Mariée?”
My head moves once from side to side. The final thread in my brain pulls apart.
“Ivanya, you’re such a special girl. You’re going to be so much help one day. You want to help Daddy, right?” He smiles up at me. I loved when Daddy smiled, especially his eyes and that funny dent on his nose.
Leather bites my wrists. Blood dries beneath my nose. Camille sits a few feet away, one heel tucked behind the leg of her chair as she watches.
My ribs loosen. The raw place inside my chest goes quiet. The boy on the yacht slips out of reach, taking his blue eyes and wet hair with him. Asher follows. Nonna’s kitchen goes next, then Jord and Punk. The faces blend into darkness, and I let them.
I lift my head, looking straight at him. “Dad?”
Emeric’s smile spreads. His burned cheek pulls tight beside his teeth, and pride brightens the eyes I’ve spent years obeying. “I knew it.”
He leans close, giving me the words he buried where no one else could reach them. “Sic ’em.”
My pulse stalls before the next beat slams through me, clearing the black from my vision.
Names, promises, rules, and fragile human attachments strip away. Pain reduces to information: pressure at both wrists, low blood flow in my left hand, buckle pins facing out, three inches of slack near my waist.
Camille starts breathing faster. I remember Asher’s hands, his mouth, and the diamond on my finger. I remember shooting him and crying over his body.
Ivanya loved him.
I don’t know her.
My fingers curl, testing the leather again. The buckle at my right wrist shifts against the wall, revealing cheap hardware. Emeric expects the trigger to keep me obedient. Stronger restraints would have been a waste.
He’s right.
Camille shoots out of her chair, the legs shrieking across concrete. She retreats until her back meets the wall, one hand clamped over her mouth. Her eyes drag across my face, searching for the woman she came in to taunt.
That woman is gone.
“Mariée de la Mort.” Camille’s voice breaks around the name.
I watch her swallow. The pulse beneath her jaw beats fast. Nine feet separate us, with one chair in the path. She has a slight limp to her right. I could put her down before she reaches the door.
Emeric steps between us, blocking my view of her. He places two fingers beneath my chin and tips my face toward the fluorescent light, inspecting his work.
“There you are, my Mariée.” Satisfaction softens his mouth. “Tell me who you belong to.”
“You,” I say.
He releases my chin. “And Asher?”
A blue stare flashes across the dark, followed by his wicked mouth and the warmth of his hand around mine.
“Target,” I answer.
He reaches for the strap across my chest, sliding his thumb under the buckle.
“What are you going to do, Mariée?”
I look into my father’s eyes. “I’m going to kill them all.”