The silence between us, like ice before it breaks.
“I’m guessing Kai doesn’t know,” I say.
Paris looks away sharply, jaw tightening.
“He wouldn’t understand,” she whispers.
“None of them would. Try me.”
Paris’s eyes are glassy when they flick back to mine. “I did itforhim,” she says finally. “For them. For our families. My family was losing everything,” she says, and there’s no stutter now, no softness. Just rawness. “After what happened with Irina, after what John Ross did to her, our partnership was falling apart.Kaiwas falling apart.”
“And that justified murder?”
“I didn’t plan murder,” she bites out, then pulls herself back. Her hands tremble at her sides, and she curls them into fists. “I just wanted him out of the way. He was a problem. And I thought, if I did this one thing—”
She breaks off, seems to catch herself, and presses her lips together.
Anderson exhales a long, theatrical sigh. “Well,” he drawls, “this is getting awfully emotional.”
Paris rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t say anything to him. Not yet.
His hand moves again, as he pulls the gun fully from his coat this time, a sleek, compact thing that gleams under the outdoor lights.
And I can’t move. My body’s locked in place, the cold slicing through my dress, my skin, my bones. But my voice comes anyway. “You know he won’t forgive you, right?” I whisper, eyes locked on Paris, not the barrel of the gun. “You’re the reason his sister died.”
Paris flinches like I slapped her. And once again, I see the girl beneath the mask: the dancer, the student, the daughter, the sister.
Then her face twists, and she shouts, “Shut up!”
It echoes across the dark garden. Bounces off the hedges. Rattles something loose in me.
Anderson chuckles behind the weapon. “Oh, there she is,” he murmurs, pleased. “Our little prima ballerina with a bite.”
Paris doesn’t look at him.
She’s still looking at me.
“Just get it over with,” she finally says, stepping back.
And I stare at her, at the empty look in her eyes, at the way her arms hang loosely by her sides, and I realize with a sick drop in my stomach that she means it.
She’s letting this happen.
She’s letting him kill me.
Across from me, Anderson lights up like a man handed his favourite book and told he can finally rip out the last page. His smile widens, eyes gleaming with something far too close to joy.
He steps in slowly, deliberately, and lifts one hand to brush a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Your new hair suits you,” he murmurs, almost affectionately. “Soft. Braver. But still… my Adeline.”
I flinch, every muscle in my body coiling. And that’s when I feel the cold press of the gun’s muzzle against the side of my head. Right at my temple.
My breath stops.
So this is it.
This is how it ends.
