He looks like me…
My heart twists.
“And the other?" she spits, voice dripping with hatred.
"Luca?” I smile.My sweet, headstrong Luca.“Looks like my dad. All dark hair. Italian." Truth is, he’s Clay through and through but this lie might work. My heart hammers against my ribs. "They're half me, half Jake. Please, Eleanor. You don’t want to lose your boys again. You made a mistake.”
She is quiet.
Too quiet.
“You tried to love an unlovable girl. I get it,” I carry on,losing my resolve, getting desperate, because I haven’t heard any sign of my babies. “You tried, and I destroyed your life. Stole your boys. I broke you. I did this. They'll understand. Like you said,I'mthe common denominator.I'mthe problem. Not you. It's not your?—"
BANG!
A gunshot blasts in my ears like thunder splitting the sky in two. I hear glass explode.
"Eleanor?" I shout.
"Going in," Max booms, pushing me behind him. He shoulders the door until the wood at the handle splinters and cracks. The door bursts open.
I see Eleanor stagger, then tumble towards him, blood blooming through the centre of her chest. A perfect shot to her heart. He seizes her by the shoulders and hurls her aside like garbage, her limbs flopping lifelessly.
He makes way for me. I charge into the room. My pulse feels like it’s everywhere, in my ears, in my temples, in my neck. The hospital staff swarm in behind me.
I stop. My boys—my babies—lie motionless in the plastic hospital cots.Asleep? Drugged?Something tells me they are drugged. Eleanor always had Valium, Oxy, and others I know about, but can’t name. So, I lunge for my babies, but the nurses surround them in quick succession. They get to work.
I let them.
My legs tremble as I watch it all play out, helpless to do anything. Helpless and alone. Alone in this moment, in this grief. I stagger backwards until glass crunches beneath my shoes, jagged shards biting through the soles.
That’s when it happens.
The hairs on my neck rise.
Someone is watching me.
My head snaps towards the shattered window. Throughthe sharp, perfectly centred hole, across the void between buildings, stands a man—a six-foot-five predator in a perfectly styled suit. Even in shadows, I know those shoulders, that undeniable presence, that stance. Only the most lethal shot in theCosa Nostra.The Devil’s prototype. My everything.
Clay Butcher.
He didn’t abandon me.
He never left.
CHAPTER THIRTY
fawn
“Other people don’t believein magic, like we do, Mum. Why?” My voice is small.
The air is so chilly it burns my nostrils, and winter grass pokes through my pyjamas to my skin. I’m curled into my mother’s side, both of us tangled in an old tartan blanket.
The moon tonight is swollen and close. It glows the colour of bone above our little beachside town.
Mum laughs softly. “It’s hard for people to believe in something they can’t see and touch.”
“But we see it,” I say, “don’t we?” I want to see it. I want so badly to see anything she sees.
