Chapter 7
KARMA
Poppy
My footfalls are as silent as graves as I slink through the shadows of the luxurious beachfront villa.
Even under night’s heavy blanket, it’s a Picasso of splendor.
I’m shocked there aren’t marble busts lining the walls and frescoes of cherubs flying up the ceilings.
This Mediterranean dream belongs to the twin brothers that have been on my suspect list since they showed up at my café wearing fake smiles and lying through their fucking teeth.
Either—or both—could be my target.
Emi fished the dark web for anything on the Bourbon brothers.
Although there wasn’t much to be found, Dante’s dating life was a surprise.
Last I knew, he was engaged to Margot Lovecraft, advisor of a local sorority.
Apparently, the man has been going through bodies like a chainsmoker through cigarettes ever since Margot ghosted him last year.
Bronte was spotted online twice: as the shopowner of Bourbon Binds, and as a coroner for a local medical examiner’s office.
A coroner who’s likely carted many of my victims to his morgue.
Emi hit a wall when mining for what Dante does for a living, but it must be impressive if he can afford the custom-painted McLaren parked beside Bronte’s vintage cobalt Corvette in the enclosed garage downstairs. He could be affiliated with the underworld. Or worse, the government.
I pass through an open-concept kitchen with a seaside view of the starlit Atlantic.
Cross a hall into a homey den. Peer into an obnoxiously lavish study.
Stalk up the main staircase. I crack the first door I see, to the right of the top landing.
Honeysuckle and pine perfume the air as I poke my head in.
The room is brimming with anime paraphernalia. Quiet metalcore that Bax and Jett would enjoy is playing from the speakers. Top-tier gaming equipment encompasses the far wall. Swathed in sweats, Dante is cuddling with an axolotl plushie and sleeping as soundly as the dead.
Who would have thought? Dante Bourbon, playboy and nerd. I wonder just how many people he’s fucked in that bed with his army of plushies watching.
I stifle a snort then close the door.
Across the hall is another room. I soundlessly peer in, breathing the spice of bourbon and cherry smoke.
Built-in bookshelves wrap the room, stuffed with rebound books.
An en suite bathroom stretches to the east, dominated by a priceless clawfoot tub.
A bar cart is parked aside a leather wingback chair angled toward a small brick hearth.
I don’t even need to see him to know whose room it is.
In a massive, circular bed piled with pelts and pillows, Bronte is asleep.
A fur duvet is tangled around his long, muscled legs.
He’s in his boxers and nothing else, his warrior frame and throat-to-toe holy tattoos on full display in the slivers of moonlight trickling in from the far windows.
He stirs, restless. Something tells me it’s not a result of my presence.
Is he plagued by nightmares, too?
Focus, Poppy.
Before I do anything reckless like tuck him back in, I search the room and find nothing. Quietly shutting the door behind me, I creep back down to the garage. My assessment is as solid as the concrete beneath my feet.
The Bourbons are not my enemy.
My disappointment rises far above my relief. I’m nowhere closer to finding my target now than when I started.
My family is struggling to keep this systematic downfall a secret. Our ops are still being sabotaged from afar, our people leaving for greener grass. Slowly but surely, we are crumbling at the roots. We’re in no better shape than the Volkovs were during their war with Grandpapa Lucian.
If this keeps going, our bones will be picked clean in a matter of months.
As I sneak toward the cracked window I slipped in through, I catch a glimpse of my own reflection in a glass door tucked beneath the stairs. Thick shadows bathe the room beyond, concealing its contents. Piled outside are boxes to be mailed, all labeled as Bourbon Binds.
Bronte’s Etsy shop.
I inch forward, my imagination running rampant. Bodies strung up by the ankles like livestock, heads lining the walls like trophies, blood staining every surface like the aftermath of a horror movie.
Unrealistic. Yet entirely plausible.
Bronte may not be hellbent on crushing my family’s empire.
But he could still be a threat. He’s seen the bodies I’ve been leaving in my wake.
It’s no coincidence he crawled out of his own hole to visit, of all places, my café.
He looked just as uncomfortable as he did intrigued when we met.
As if that wasn’t suspicious enough, he’d been reading a serial killer rom-com while drinking a cup of black and made that odd remark about investigating unsolved murders.
The universe was practically screaming at me to read the signs.
Quietly, I push through the unlocked door.
A biting cold hits me first, shocking against the hot-as-Lucifer’s-ballsack August heat still clinging to my skin. My exhale puffs white in the arctic chill. My inhale brings burning ammonia into my lungs, followed by the saccharine stench of death.
I flip on the dim lights and twist in a slow circle, taking it all in.
Cricuts crowd the shelves, pyramids of vinyl stacked beside them.
There are mountains of border stencils and decorative paper.
Rolls of ribbon and book cloth. Endless threads and needles.
Every color of spray paint in existence, organized by type of finish on a shelf above glass jars brimming with syrupy dye.
A slop sink is tucked into a corner, the deep basin artfully stained.
This is a bibliopegist’s heaven.
Rather, it would be. If it wasn’t defiled by death’s odor.
My legs carry me toward the main workstation. Beside the medical gloves are several books in various stages of undress, including my untouched copy of Inferno. Nothing unorthodox.
Blowing out a defeated breath, I turn to leave.
But then I spy a hallway branching off from the main room, leading toward the unmistakable hum of exhaust fans.
“What are you hiding back there, monsieur?” I whisper, prowling into the dark.
The stench strengthens to a pungent punch before I round a sharp corner and push through a knobless door.
Machines line the walls of another chamber.
Above, the monstrous industrial fans whir, feeding the tainted air directly into the night.
A heap of dry hide is stockpiled beside a suspiciously large chest freezer.
Bronte owns his own tannery.
Interesting.
I drift over to the leather. Some strips are dyed, others are natural pigments ranging from deep brown to pinkish white. I skim a palm over a slab.
Pause.
Ivory powder stains my fingertips. I rub them together, spreading the talc. Beneath it, the phantom texture of skin remains.
I’ve killed countless people. I know what human flesh feels like. Even treated beyond its original identity, it’s unmistakable.
Swallowing dread, I crack open the freezer.
And gag at the sight of half a dozen frozen bodies.
Bronte Bourbon isn’t innocent. He’s a killer.
Fury floods my veins. I draw my knife, spearing for the exit.
I’m moving so fast, I almost miss it—the logbook lying on a workbench by the doorway.
It’s open to a list of projects and names.
Names of criminals, along with their transgressions.
Many are familiar, as they are my victims. It spans the entirety of the last decade, since my early days of vigilantism.
My tongue clicks. “Stalker much?”
I flip forward, finding Sebastian Bonaparte fated for a rebind of Jane Eyre. Chuckling, I skip to the most recent log.
“Poppy Morgenstern.” I grin so wide, my cheeks ache. Tracing a fingernail over the loops of ink forming my name beside Inferno, I muse, “Guess karma really is a cold-hearted bitch after all, Doc.”
If I possess any sense of self-preservation, I’ll go back upstairs and kill the man planning to kill me. It’d save me the headache later. Though I’d be forced to murder his brother, too. If there are no secrets between the twins, Dante is aware of Bronte’s agenda.
There’s just one problem: I don’t slaughter the innocent. Although Bronte’s moral compass is as skewed as my own, we’re on the same side.
And if we’re on the same side…
I’m suddenly moving as fast as my thrashing heart. Grabbing the logbook pen, I scribble a note onto a blank page then tear it out. With bated breath, I plant it atop the book that had once been my escape from myself when I was a child learning how to be a monster.