Smoke stung my nose. The foyer was massive—dark wood, shattered glass, blood smeared on the marble. Furniture overturned. The chandelier above me swung on its chain, creaking with every shift.
Gunfire rang out again, closer now. I ducked, heart thundering, eyes scanning for movement.
I didn’t have a weapon. Didn’t have a plan. All I had was the sound of Silas’s voice in my memory—the way he’d said he loved me like he meant it with his whole goddamn soul—and the knowledge that if he was bleeding out on some floor in thiscursed mansion while I sat quietly in a car, I would never forgive myself.
I moved down the hall, stepping over a fallen vase, glass crunching underfoot. Doors stood open to the left and right—sitting rooms, maybe, or studies—but I kept going. The gunshots had come from the back of the house.
Then I heard it.
His voice.
Low. Rough. Agonized.
“Get her out of here. Now.”
A door slammed.
I ran toward the sound, skidding around a corner. My breath hitched. A body slumped against the wall, blood painting the wallpaper. Not Silas. Not anyone I recognized.
Footsteps above me. Shouts. The crack of something breaking.
Then—
A scream.
Not his.
Mine.
Because around the next corner, in the center of a wide room that had once been a ballroom, I saw him.
Silas.
On his knees.
Hands bloody.
Face wild.
His shirt was torn at the shoulder, blood blooming across the fabric. Beside him lay a man with a bullet wound to the chest. Another man aimed a weapon at Silas from across the room.
And there, standing in the shadows behind the gunman, was Caroline.
Her eyes locked with mine the second I stepped into the doorway.
“Portia,” she said. “No?—”
But it was too late.
The gunman turned.
And aimed straight at me.
Silas roared.
Everything after that happened in a blur.
He lunged. Caroline moved. A shot rang out.
