Chapter 33
Bria
I sat on the edge of a velvet sofa that probably cost more than my entire life before Kael. It should have felt safe. It didn't.
Miyori was in the corner, phone pressed to her ear, talking to Priest in low, clipped tones. Zia was pacing by the window, arms crossed, jaw tight. Indigo sat cross-legged on the floor, sharpening a knife.
Maya was next to me.
I hadn't stopped shaking since we got here.
"Daddy Raffaele's plane just took off on the way back to Italy with the kids," Miyori said quietly, hanging up. "They'll be safe."
I nodded, but I couldn't focus. My mind was stuck on Kael—on the thought of losing him when I'd only just found him.
"How do you all do it?" I asked, my voice cracking. "All of you. How do you stay married to men like them without losing your minds?"
The room went quiet.
Miyori looked up from her phone. Zia stopped pacing. Indigo paused, her knife hovering mid-stroke.
I kept going. "Raziel. Priest. Caine. Malachai. They're killers. They're dangerous. Every day you wake up wondering if today's the day they don't come home. How do you not fall apart?"
Zia was the first to speak. "I don't know." Her voice was flat, tired. "I swore I would never put myself in this situation again. I had a plan. A good one. Then Caine happened." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I'm still figuring it out."
Miyori shrugged. "I don't believe Priest can die."
I stared at her. "That's not—"
"I know it's not logical," she cut me off. "But I have to believe it. If I let myself think about what could happen, I'd lose my mind. So I don't. I just... trust that he'll come back. Because he always does."
Indigo didn3't look up from her knife. "I tried to leave Malachai. Couldn't. Tried to kill him. Couldn't. So I stopped fighting it. He's a part of me now. The bad parts, too."
I turned to Maya. "How do you not get high? All of this—the fear, the waiting, the not knowing—how do you not just... check out?"
Maya was quiet for a moment.
"I replaced it," she said finally. "I got high to deal with it, to numb it. But when I stopped, I had to find something else. Junk food. Shopping. Sex. Anything that made me feel something other than the fear." She looked at me. "You replaced it with violence."
I flinched. "I didn't—"
"Yes, you did." Maya's voice was gentle but firm. "Every time you pick up a weapon, every time you let Kael take you on a deal, every time you hit someone—it's the same thing. It's a high. A way to feel in control when everything else is chaos."
I opened my mouth to deny it, then closed it—because she was right.
I didn't know how to sit with the fear. How to wait. How to just... be. So I took the gun. I swung the bat. I let the blood ground me in a way nothing else could.
"Maybe that's how we survive," I whispered. "We find something to hold onto."
"Exactly," Maya said. "That's all any of us is doing."
Suddenly, we heard the sound of rapid gunfire.
Before we could react, the front door was kicked in.
Wood splintered. The sound cracked through the silence like a gunshot.
Miyori screamed. Maya gasped. Zia grabbed her phone and exited quickly—I don’t think anyone noticed. Indigo was on her feet in a second, knife in hand.
I moved before I could think. My pink gun was up, aimed at the shadow in the doorway. It was flanked by at least ten other shadows.
"Who the fuck are you?" I snarled.
The smoke cleared.
A woman stood in the shattered doorway—tall with dark hair, sharp cheekbones, and cold eyes. She was dressed in black, covered in soot and blood, looking like she'd walked through hell to get here.
Maya's voice came out thin and shocked. "Priest's supposed-to-be-dead wife."
The woman smiled. It wasn't warm; it looked manic.
"Lilith Genovese. That's who I was. That's who I still am," she said.
Then she laughed, and I felt as if the Grim Reaper had entered the room.