“Oh god—” I cry.
Fordham and Dexter—my protectors, my brothers, the only constants in my life—are dead.
And my father. A monster reduced to nothing. A devil bound for worse than hell. Four people lost their lives in the span of only a few hours.
Looking around the room, all I can see arethem.
The Bonesmen. They’re always here, always surrounding me. My family is a founding family, and my father held a high position.
As though incapable of grief, they watch unshaken, their expressions unreadable in perfectly tailored suits. To see them standing there without reaction, so calm, tells me everything I need to know. My father was guilty of something, and to be killed regardless of his level of power, it must have been very, very bad.
My father was powerful, but he wasn’t untouchable.
No one is.
But what were my brothers guilty of? I refuse to believe they were worthy of a death like this.
The punishment for my father killing my mother didn’t fit the crime for our Society. A wife murdered was a regular Tuesday for the Brotherhood. They don’t care about women. They use them as pawns, warm holes to do their bidding. I’m not naive to it.
And here I stand in the middle of a massacre. Forced to witness the death of my best friends. My older brothers.
Hayden tightens his grip, pulling me away and guiding me through the chaos.
I try to choke back my sobs and compose myself, but as I’m pulled away from my brothers and through the front entrance, I can barely catch my breath. I don’t know where he’s taking me. I don’t know what happens next.
But I do know one thing—nothing will ever be the same again.
The night presses in thick, with the sinister images from just moments before flashing in my mind. My skin is dampwith sweat and the sticky remnants of spilled champagne and blood. Too much blood. The scent of lilies—once cloying, now nauseating—clings to the air.
The bodies were soaked in blood.
My father. My brothers.
Their blood is pooling on the marble floors and plush cream carpeting beneath the crystal chandeliers, soaking into the silk of their tailored suits. The maids will be busy all evening with the mess.
The room behind me hums with hushed voices, gasps, and quiet sobs, but no one dares move too quickly. No one dares to run now that things have calmed. The guests are all associated with the Society; the men understand what is happening with far more certainty than their wives do.
The wives, so innocent and ever-endearing, usually standing like marble statues at their husbands' sides, are currently cowering in fear. I see a woman vomit up her champagne on the marble floor, unable to contain herself around the gore of death, but she tries her best to contain herself after her outburst. So perfectly put together, a true woman of high Society.
Because in this house, the only thing more dangerous than grief is fear.
I barely register the movement of my own body—just the grip of his hand tight around my wrist, pulling me back, dragging me away from the carnage and whipping me about like a doll out of the estate and onto the front lawns.
“Let go of me,” I hiss, twisting against his grasp.
He doesn’t release the firm hold he has on my waist, pressing my back into his side as he drags me, my stilettos slipping and sliding against the gravelly ground as I fail to find my footing once outside the estate's large entryway doors.
We reach the side of the estate where a black town car sits idling. The headlights slice through the fog rolling over the gravel, the driver waiting for us like this was planned all along.
Coldness seeps through my bones as I start to shiver. The cold is taking over my senses, making me start to gag. While trying to shove him away from me, I collapse to my knees and begin to dry heave. The gravel hurts my knees as I choke and blubber—trying to force myself to get sick.
I gulp down sharp breaths of icy air, my lungs stretching to the brink of bursting. When no sound escapes, I struggle to rise—only to be grabbed by Hayden once more.
I dig my heels into the ground, a sharp ache twisting through my ankles. “I said let go—”
Hayden moves fast.
Too fast.
