She’sthe one who cut that monster’s throat before Antonio and his men came in, guns blazing.
I take a deep breath as the airport’s PA system announces that the plane we’ve been waiting for is now de-boarding.
She’s almost here.
It’s almost time.
You see, mom did kill Lorenzo that night. But she also did something else.
…She got one of us out.
She only had time for one. By the time she found Dove chained up with a shaved head, her ex-husband’s men were already smashing in the front door, shooting everywhere, and accidentally setting the place on fire in the process.
So Mom made a gut-wrenching, split-second decision for the second time in her life.
“I see her!” Mom chokes, grabbing my arm in an iron grip. “I SEE HER!”
Mom had to choose that night: leave quickly with the princess, or keep looking for the housekeeper’s granddaughter?
One would be easy to snatch another time.
The other would never be let out of the house again.
So she made her choice: she grabbed Dove, escaped out the window, and told herself she’d come get me within the next day.
But by then, I’d been hit on the head, told I was Dove, andbelieved it.
AndIbecame the inaccessible princess that night: the mafia don’s daughter who was now under permanent guard, doubly so after what had happened at Lorenzo's hands.
When the coroner found remains in the room next to mine—remains of the girl I’d heard being brutally raped and ultimately killed—they were un-identifiable, due to the sheer heat of the chemical fire. But based on my testimony, those remains were declared to be those of Lark Peltier.
Except my sister wasn’tinthe room next to me. There was a room between the two of us, and in that room was a girl named Ellen Foster—the Barber’s final victim.
After Mom told me this, I looked into her. Ellen only has one family member left: a sister who's a single mom who lives in Albany.
Four days ago, I wired ten million dollars to that sister's bank account in Ellen’s honor, with the transfer being attributed to "Agatha Peltier".
The concourse doors open.
My mother grabs my hand. On my other side, Bane grabs the other one.
And suddenly, I’m seeing her again.
The best friend who was my sister.
The girl who died, who actually lived.
“Lark—”
“Dove—”
There’s a frozen second where we just stare at each other.
There’ll be time later to talk about what she’s been doing for the last seven years. All I know, from talking to Mom, is that it involved the Obsidian Syndicate.
Or to figure out the whole name thing, because I’m genuinely not sure how to process the concept of thinking of myself as “Lark”, when I’vebeen“Dove” for the last seven years of my life.
But those and the ten million other questions I have can wait.
