Chapter 1 #2
That screams dirty cops, blackmail and intimidation. All three of my stepmother’s doing.
The only person who stood to gain from his death sits at the head of his dining table dabbing crocodile tears while the man beside her holds her hand.
The lawyer's mouth is still moving when I push back from the table. The legs scrape against the hardwood and every head turns. Good. Let them watch me leave.
My heels crack against the hardwood and I don't slow down until the dining room is behind me and the doorframe cuts off Francesca's line of sight.
The hallway is cooler than the dining room and I immediately draw in a deep breath.
I press my back to the wall and close my eyes.
The wallpaper is rough against my shoulder blades through the thin fabric of my dress.
My father's house wraps around me, and for one traitorous second, it smells the way it used to.
Old wood. Furniture polish. The ghost of bread baking in the kitchen because he never could resist a fresh loaf and never once measured a single ingredient.
"Look at Princess Cinder."
My eyes fly open. Bianca leans against the opposite wall, arms folded across a flat chest, her smile as sharp as a blade. Gianna flanks her, a matching set of polished malice in designer black. They look like twin hyenas circling a kill.
Fuck them both.
"Not so high and mighty with daddy dead, are you?
" Bianca's voice carries through the hallway, loud and careless. Now that my father isn’t here, she no longer has to pretend.
She pushes off the wall and takes a step closer, close enough that her perfume, a cheaper imitation of her mother's, hits my nostrils.
I straighten. Plant my feet. Hold my ground. My nails bite crescents into my palms but my face gives them nothing.
Gianna flips her hair, tilts her head, and drags her lower lip into a pout of mock sympathy. "Now with our mother in charge and everything belonging to us, you can go live among the commoners your dead daddy loved so much."
They turn on their heels and leave cackling. Their heels click a retreating rhythm, hips swaying with smug confidence. But all I see are two parasites in need of a good thrashing.
My legs carry me to my car on autopilot.
I slam the door hard enough to rattle the frame and grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white and the leather bites into my skin.
My fingers ache. My jaw aches. My whole body is a clenched fist but the second I give in to my rage, I give my hand away.
I could go back inside. All it would take is ten steps.
I’d punch Bianca in her perfect veneered teeth first. The joy I’d feel in grabbing Gianna by that overprocessed hair and dragging her across the grand foyer while their mother watches from my father's chair would make my day. No, my entire year.
I suck air through my nose. Hold it until my lungs burn. Release it slow through my mouth.
Again.
And again.
My reflection stares back at me from the rearview mirror.
My pale blonde hair is scraped into a low bun.
My light blue eyes are bloodshot from a morning spent refusing to cry.
From the neck down I have on a black dress, black heels, black everything.
I look like a ghost of the girl who used to slide down the walnut banister in that house, shrieking with laughter while my father pretended to chase me through the foyer.
That girl is dead. She died the same morning her father did four days ago.
What's left of me is running on grief and fury in equal measure, and the blend is intoxicating enough to be dangerous.
Someone murdered my father. I know it. I will prove Francesca orchestrated it. I will prove Edgar pulled the trigger or paid the man who did. I will drag them both into the light and watch them burn.
Or I will die trying.
The conviction settles into my blood, thick and steady. A purpose takes over me. No matter how long it takes, I will see them pay for their crimes.
I need a drink. Something strong enough to strip me of the urge to murder people in their sleep.
My phone buzzes in my clutch. I pull it free, and the screen lights up with a notification from a guy I never should have swiped right on a few days ago in a moment of grief and weakness.
His message is short.
Still wanna hook up for that drink?
I stare at it. My thumb hovers over the screen and my pulse ticks faster.
What's better than a drink?
The question rolls through my brain, dark-edged and slightly unhinged, and a laugh scrapes up from the bottom of my chest. I buried my father this morning.
I sat through a will reading that erased me from my own bloodline.
Now I’m considering a hookup with a stranger because the alternative is going back inside and starting a body count.
It would be so easy. Bianca first. She's slow and her balance is terrible in those ridiculous heels. One sharp push and she'd fold like wet cardboard. Gianna next. All bark and no core strength. I could drop them both before the lawyers finished packing their briefcases.
Inhale. Exhale.
I need to decompress before the fantasy becomes a plan, get my hands on something other than a weapon and my mind somewhere other than digging fresh graves.
My father built his empire with one foot in the light and one in the dark.
I used to think I only inherited the light. Tonight is proving me wrong.
Tomorrow I will begin the slow, patient work of dismantling every lie Francesca and Edgar have constructed.
Tonight, I want to forget. Just for a few hours. Just long enough to remind myself I am still breathing, still warm, still capable of wanting something other than blood.
I read somewhere once that murder and sex go hand in hand. They never mentioned which comes first.
My thumbs fly across the screen before the rational part of my brain tells me to go home and sleep it off.
Meet me at the Gilded Key Society.
I hit send and drop the phone onto the passenger seat. My heart hammers against my ribs, adrenaline and recklessness mixing in my veins.
I guess it is dealer's choice which comes first.