I will find every single person who helped her.
I will hunt them down, one by one.
I will tear this city apart.
Let it all burn.
forty
A blazing inferno burns deep inside of me.
Not a well of tears or a wall of sadness. My tears are dried and now all that is left is a deep, jagged pit of hostility and rage. My eyes burn as I watch them lower the casket into the ground. Just a few plots away from where Vas planted a headstone for Libby.
Her casket is empty. Void of any physical presence. Her ashes still rest in the urn Vas commissioned for her waiting to be spread out to sea. Except that the seas of Seattle are stormy and honoring her wishes is near impossible.
Rain pours down from an overcast sky in a torrential downpour. A sea of black umbrellas is spread across the cemetery. The deluge does not keep the men and women under Matthias’s command from paying their respects to the formerPakhanof Seattle. News of his death spread like wildfire and not just to his allies.
Rival gangs who’ve been pushed out to the furthest reaches of the city are chomping at the bit to reclaim their former territories.
And they are not alone.
One week.
That is how long the planning takes to safely put Matthias’s funeral together, and in that time, Vas managed to keep surveillance on Christian who is spotted numerous times meeting with the leaders of some of the most notorious gangs in the region.
Money exchanged hands and it won’t be long before they make a push into the city.
A bloody one.
Drawing in a deep breath, I hold it for a moment before releasing it. I watch the warm air cascade from my lips into the cold air creating a tendril of smoky condensation, basking in the brief peace.
Grief is a fickle thing.
After my mother was murdered, the psychiatrist Elias forced me to sit down with informed me that there are five simple stages to the grieving process. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and last of all, acceptance.
I snort. Simple my ass.
What she neglected to advertise about those stages could fill a library. In hindsight, however, she was on Elias’s payroll, and she talked more about accepting my new circumstances rather than teaching me the proper coping mechanisms for the slew of nightmares that threatened to drown me at the time.
No wonder I turned to drinking the moment I was free.
In the week since my husband’s death, I cycled through every stage and back again, repeating a few of my favorites like anger and depression. I screamed, cried, and came to terms with his demise time and time again since his death.
And it means nothing.
Locked away in my room at Liam’s, I settle myself to cycling between anger and depression. Anger at how Matthias shieldedme from being shot. Anger at Kenzi for firing the bullet. At Vas for not being with Matthias in the ambulance.
At myself for loving him so damn much, even in the end when all he did was break my heart.
When the harsh, dangerous emotion finally subsided, it was replaced with the sickening crack of depression and with it, a wall of guilt.
Those two emotions are fucking chummy.
Guilt burrowed deep inside of me as the anger lessened its hold on my heart. I feel guilty for the fury I feel at Matthias’s sacrifice. A sacrifice that showed me he cared for me in some capacity. Then there is the guilt for blaming Vas for not dying alongside the man I love. He doesn’t deserve that anger or resentment. There is nothing he could have done, and if he tried there would have been two lives lost that day instead of one.
That would have been unacceptable.
There is something darker lurking beneath the surface of those simple stages of grief. It runs deeper than the anger and the guilt and the crippling depression. It is something more sinister. A feeling they decide to gloss over in the ‘guide to overcoming your trauma’ pamphlet the doctor so subtly handed me when I was eleven.
