Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
I would be lying if I said I haven’t thought about meeting Valdemar Montresor these past ten years, but it’s always been a vision of bloodshed, of me stabbing him over and over, thrusting a knife into his chest until the blade comes out of his back. After my brother’s death, my dad encouraged me to see a therapist. I attended for a few years, and in the later stages of my sessions, Dr Tarr suggested meeting Valdemar as part of my recovery to come to terms with my loss. However, it was an avenue I was never willing to venture down, my grief too volatile, too unpredictable.
I’ve only ever seen photos of Valdemar in newspapers, and even then, it was ten years ago. Incarceration has meant he’s ceased to be in the limelight.
But none of my wonderings have prepared me for the man sitting behind the metal table, his wrists clad in cuffs secured to the floor, his white T-shirt tight against his well-sculpted upper body, tattoos clawing their way from underneath each sleeve and around his collar. And if the canvas of his body isn’t enough to grab my attention, then the startling blue of his eyes against his sleek dark hair is enough to command my gaze.
All my well-rehearsed composure has taken flight along with the flock of ravens tattooed down his left arm and hand.
A tremor runs through my body, and I hear a whooshing sound in my ears as I recall the day Valdemar Montresor shattered my life.
Had it been hours, minutes, or seconds before the news reached the media? I can’t remember, but I can still taste the bile that burned the back of my throat, the dread that threaded its way up my spine and wrapped its tendrils around my trachea. And then there was the pain—the blinding hot pain between my eyes that I blamed on a migraine as I stumbled around the newsroom of the Amontillado Gazette .
“This just in. The notorious Valdemar Montresor, head of the organisation the Raven Hands, has been arrested this evening on a suspected murder charge,” the well-groomed reporter announced on the flat-screen TV as behind her, the flashing lights of police cars and paparazzi cameras went off like a disco.
I was the gofer, covering the garbage they called news, like local man Johan Hermann trying to marry his dog or when The Gold Bug Coffee Shop started offering oat milk, and I was still trying to earn my wings as a serious reporter.
“Hold the fucking headline!” Captain hollered as he flew out of his office, a plume of cigar smoke following him despite the smoking restrictions in the building.
As he was our highly-strung editor-in-chief, who never appeared to leave the building, no one ever dared to challenge him on any accounts, such as the way he barked orders at us or the fact that he expected us to understand everything he said the first time he said it.
“What are we standing around for, people? Dupin, get your arse down there!” Captain glared at Dupin, his best reporter, who’d been halfway out the door, about to head home for the evening.
Dupin stared at the screen. “Where? Where the hell is this going down?”
We all glared at the lovely news reporter, urging her to tell us where she was reporting from.
My voice was faint at first, the stabbing pain between my eyes almost blinding me.
“It’s at the casino,” I said, my throat dry, my eyes burning.
“What did you say?” Dupin asked.
“Fortunato Casino. That’s where she is, where it’s happening.”
“How do you know?” Captain asked, his cigar wobbling between his lips.
If I said, “Because I felt the bullet, heard the shot, and sensed the terror,” they would look at me as if I were a madwoman, so instead, I replied, “Because my brother works there.”
Like all twins, we had a connection, an unwavering bond. And I’d known the exact minute he’d stopped breathing because I had stopped breathing as well.
Tearing my thoughts from the past, I challenge myself to look directly at the man who murdered my brother.
It’s so much worse than I imagined.
Searing, jarring pain rips through my heart, leaving me unable to move.
And if he, Valdemar Montresor, isn’t enough to stop the flow of oxygen around my body, I notice that he isn’t alone.