Tell Me Your Lies

Prologue

Alani

What have I done?

The handle of a sticky knife presses warm against my palm.

It’s familiar in a way that terrifies me.

Something warm runs down my hand and drips from my elbow to join a crimson pool around me.

Horrified, I let it slip from my grip, and it spins away, glinting in the sunlight across the once pristine floor.

A cool breeze lifts my hair and a salty tang fills the air.

Merciless light threatens to split my throbbing head in two and I gag.

Where am I? Everything tilts and rolls beneath me, rocking me back and forth, making wet squishy sounds as my blood-soaked shirt sticks to the floor—no, not a floor, a deck.

Waves crash somewhere below me, and a seagull cries overhead.

I squint into an endless blue sky. I remember now—the party on the yacht—but what happened?

Terror grips me, with the same fear I’ve spent years trying to outrun.

Did I kill someone? My heart thunders as I force myself upright too afraid to move my head and meet the vacant eyes of a corpse.

I swallow hard and turn my head slowly. There is no body, only a red slick leading to the rail as if someone slid over the side and into the expanse of rolling waves surrounding the yacht.

A door creaks open, and footsteps follow, slow, deliberate, and coming closer.

I’ve been discovered—there is no escape now.

Panic has me by the throat. How did this happen?

I push my mind back, way back, to before everything went terribly wrong…