CHAPTER TWENTY #2
My voice leaves no room for argument, and she knows better than to push it.
The truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing at all.
Not really. All I know is I can’t stop doing it…
whatever this is with the woman in the house behind me.
Despite every instinct telling me not to, she’s become something important to me.
Something I never allowed myself to have until now, and I’m too far gone to walk away.
The fact that my sister has somehow managed to see straight through me is irritating enough. I can do without her commentary.
I clear my throat, shoving the thought back where it belongs.
“What do you want, Katia?”
Whatever remained of the glint in her eyes vanishes, whatever she had come to say suddenly outweighs whatever she thinks I’ve got going on here. She reaches behind her, slipping a hand into the pocket of her jeans before pulling free a thick crimson envelope.
The color alone unsettles me.
She turns it over once between her gloved fingers, tapping it against her hand as she stares at it for a brief moment, as though debating whether she should hand it to me at all.
Then, she closes the distance between us, grips hold of my hand until I’m forced to remove it from my pocket, then places the envelope into my palm.
My brows knit together as I stare down at my sister, wrapping my fingers around it and not letting go.
“What is it, Kate?”
Her eye twitches at the name, the tiny betrayal the only sign she hates hearing it from me.
“You’re gonna want to read it when you’re alone.”
There are no signs of the humorous woman I grew up with. There’s only the strange heaviness thick in the air between us, pressing against my ribs until breathing feels like more effort than it should.
“What is it?” I almost growl the words, but she just shakes her head. If my sister is standing here looking this rattled. Like she’d seen a fucking ghost, whatever is in this envelope is going to change my life, I just know it, and judging by the look on Katia’s face, she knows it too.
The wind whispers through the forest, stirring the snow gathered along the cemetery fence, carrying with it the familiar silence this place has always offered me.
Today, it feels different. Heavier. Katia’s eyes soften, and without another word, she steps forward, rising onto the tips of her boots before pressing a gentle kiss against my cheek. A habit she’d never quite grown out of.
“Love you,” she whispers, before turning around and heading down the path toward her truck.
I watch her climb inside, the driver’s door slamming shut with a hollow thud that echoes through the clearing.
The engine rumbles to life a second later, the headlights sweeping briefly across the graves before the truck slowly turns, disappearing between the towering pines until the forest swallows both the vehicle and the sound of it.
The envelope suddenly feels heavy in my hands, its sharp corners digging into my palm.
Whatever’s inside can wait. Today has been a good day, and good days are few and far between in my line of work.
I’m not ready to ruin it. The old floorboards groan softly beneath my boots as I step inside, the warmth of the house chasing away the bite of winter still clinging to my skin.
I close the door behind me without thinking, the latch clicking quietly into place.
Silence.
Then…music?
It drifts through the house delicately, I almost mistake it for the wind weaving itself through the trees outside. A melody carried on a language I don’t speak, soft enough to be mistaken for a prayer.
French.
I follow it without meaning to.
The living room comes into view, bathed in the glow spilling through the tall windows. Dust dances lazily through the afternoon light, each tiny particle suspended in the air like forgotten souls refusing to settle.
She sits before the old floor-length mirror.
The carved golden frame has stood in this house longer than I have, its gold leaves worn soft by time, delicate filigree climbing around the edges in twisting vines and angels whose faces have faded beneath years of dust. I’d passed it everyday without seeing it.
Until now. Now it holds the only reflection that matters.
My little ghost.
She hadn’t noticed me.
She sits with her back to me, her reflection staring quietly into the glass as though she’s searching for someone on the other side of it.
The brush in her hand glides through the length of her hair until it gleams like spun onyx and midnight.
The words leave her so quietly they’re almost carried away by her own breathing, each verse rolling effortlessly into the next as though she’d known them her entire life.
I don’t understand a single word.
Yet something about the cadence pulls at a memory.
Familiar.
Haunting.
My brows furrow as I listen, every syllable drifting through the old house like a prayer whispered to the dead. I’ve heard this before. I know I have. I just can’t remember where.
La beauté ouvre les portes.
Le pouvoir les garde ouvertes.
La vengeance est ce qui les franchit.
My heart misses a beat.
The brush still glides through her hair, her reflection calm, her lips shaping each syllable with an absent familiarity that tells me she isn’t performing it.
She’s remembering it. My fingers tighten around the crimson envelope until the thick paper threatens to crumble beneath my grip.
I stare down at it as if it were on fire in my hand.
Those words.
Those exact fucking words.
The room falls away beneath my feet. Because I’ve heard them before.
Cameron.
I’m back in the tunnel before him, my gun pressed firmly in my hand while the other grips tightly to his scrubs as I watch the blood drip from the side of his face.
Who is the woman sitting in my house? Who is the woman I’ve watched from the shadows for the last four years? The woman I’ve fallen for?
My eyes flick to her reflection again, then back to the thick red paper in my palm.
I turn without another word, taking the stairs two at a time.
Each footfall rattles the old house beneath me as I tear down the hallway toward my bedroom.
My hand barely finds the doorknob before I’m shoving the door open.
With a sharp breath, I tear through the seal, my fingers suddenly feeling far less steady than they’ve ever had any right to.
A single cream card falls free. Heavy. Embossed.
Black-bordered. My stomach drops as I slowly unfold it. The first thing I see is the heading.
Funeral Notice.
All the air leaves my lungs when my eyes roll over the name etched into the card. Printed in elegant black lettering. Winter Delacour. Beneath it, a date of birth and the date they were declared dead. Then a photograph.
The same blue eyes. The same long black hair. The same full lips.
My little ghost.
No.
My eyes dart back to the top of the notice before dropping over every line again, searching for the mistake my mind refuses to accept. There isn’t one. My pulse crashes violently through my ribs. Nobody knows she’s dead. Nobody knows she’s alive. Nobody.
Which means…
My stomach twists as trepidation crashes through me. Someone believed she was dead long before they printed this notice. Someone signed off on it. The organs I’d delivered were only collected a few days ago. It’s impossible for her father to learn that she had died.
Her father.
Enzo Delacour.
The head of the French fucking Mafia!
My breathing turns shallow, and it feels like a knife has landed between my ribs.
Someone on the inside ordered the hit. Someone on the inside is a fucking liar.
And Cameron…the man connected with the fucking Royal.
Did she know him too? Questions explode through my mind so quickly I can barely separate one from the next.
Was the doctor trying to protect her? Does she fucking work for him?
Well, that didn’t work out well did it? Because I put a hole right through his skull.
Everything he said to me that day comes rushing back with terrifying clarity.
Access.
Opportunity.
Infiltration.
The ability to become someone else. To walk through doors that would have otherwise remained locked.
“You’d be amazed what people are willing to sacrifice for a second chance. And even more amazed by what they’ll sacrifice for revenge.”
The words are no longer the ramblings of a dying man clinging to his final breaths. They were a fucking confession.
I knew it.