“Not a good idea, babe. You don’t want any possible way her harem will figure out what happened here today.”
Still weird hearing Antony call someone babe.
Why is that the only thing I can think about right now?
My sister pouts, but she replaces the phone in her pocket. “Pity, but I guess I’ll remember this day without a selfie. Anyway, where were we?”
“The night we buried Julian August alive,” Antony says, his voice dripping with pride.
She claps her hands gleefully. “That’s right! So, there we were, Antony trying to be sensible, me wanting to burn everything down. But I won, because I always win. We lie low in Tartarus Oaks for a few weeks – enough time so that the disappearance of the Malloys and Julian August’s death won’t seem connected. We needed more men, so Antony went to Constantine. He didn’t reveal the whole plan, but there’d been an undertow of dissatisfaction about Julian’s reforms, and Antony played on that. He said that if Constantine helped him get rid of Julian – made it look like an international hit from a disgruntled client – and supported Antony’s claim for Imperator, August and Dio would have an alliance and push Nero out. Constantine agreed. He drew up a contract and gave us the men we needed, and we were ready for revenge.”
Oh, Daddy, I’m so so sorry.
I hadn’t believed that contract Nero showed me was real, but it was. Only, it wasn’t between Constantine and Brutus, but Constantine and Antony. I don’t even blame Constantine for agreeing to help – I would’ve done the same thing in a heartbeat to wrestle power from Nero.
“Julian taught me how to disable the security at your house,” Antony says. “We knew your parents usually left early from Triumvirate parties—”
“—Mr. and Mrs. Parent of the Year wanted to be home to kiss their baby girl goodnight—” Mackenzie sniffs.
“—so we waited outside until they got back, then we let ourselves in.”
“I slashed your mother,” Mackenzie grins. “I enjoyed cutting her perfect skin. Iespeciallyenjoyed watching your face when you saw her.”
The figure in the window.
It wasn’t my reflection. It was Mackenzie’s face, splattered with my mother’s blood, watching as Antony dragged me away.
I think of other times when I’d seen my reflection in strange places, or a face in a crowd who looked uncannily like me. There was this time Antony took me to Colosseum for my birthday… I thought it was a trick of the light, a combination of too much alcohol and seeing Brutus again, but it washer. It had always beenher.
How did I not know she was watching me? Characters in books always feel a prickling on their neck, eyes boring into their back. But I felt nothing. All Daddy’s security guards and extra precautions never picked up that my sister was stalking me. And he paid the ultimate price.
Antony puffs out his chest as he explains the next part of the story. “We took you and Julian to Beaumont Hills cemetery, where Constantine had arranged with Hart for two fresh graves to be left open for us, two fresh coffins waiting for their corpses. I threw in the first shovels of dirt myself. Mackenzie and I laid a picnic blanket under the oleander bushes and fucked to a soundtrack of muffled screams. Julian was the first to fall silent. We were waiting for you to die when Constantine called to check up on things. I’m shooting the breeze with Constantine and out of the blue, he tells me he’s fuckingsorry, but the plan has changed. Brutus went to Malloy Manor after that party to have it out with his brother. He saw us enter Julian’s house, saw Constantine and his team cleaning up. He knows what we did, and he wants in. And Brutus has support within the familyanda blood claim. Constantine decides it’s better if Brutus claims the killing as his and he becomes Imperator with the full support of Dio. But this isn’t what we fucking agreed.” Antony smashes his fist against the side of the coffin, which rocks on its stand. “I’msupposed to be Imperator.”
He sounds exactly the way he used to sound when we were kids, bitching after he lost a fight in the ring and thought it was because his opponent cheated. He never could stand to be second.
I should have known. I should have seen that he couldn’t handle being second to me.
“So now, we’re in trouble, because Brutus knows, which means if I don’t toe the line he’ll tell the world what we did. Without Constantine’s support, it would be the brazen bull for both of us.” Antony hugs Mackenzie to him. “Not to mention the fact that a few days earlier, Constantine casually mentioned that one of his soldiers, Brentwood, was at Malloy Manor looking for something for a client – it can only be the treasure, which means the client could only be Senator Marlowe. Only instead of finding the cache, he found the mangled, decaying bodies of Howard and Ainsley. Brentwood knows that without his resources, only someone with intimate knowledge of the house would be able to find that underground room – the only person not lying dead within it. My girl.” Antony’s voice grows fierce. “Brentwood knew Mackenzie killed her parents. And he told Marlowe, the tough-on-crime senator. That meant Mackenzie couldn’t show her face in Emerald Beach – especially not on the arm of an August soldier – without Marlowe slapping her with the full force of the law. Our entire plan was shot to shit.”
“But Antony came up with a new plan.” Mackenzie nuzzles her head in her shoulder. “With a little help from me.”
“I had to move quickly,” Antony says. “You’d stopped making noise. You’d be dead in minutes. I told Mackenzie to hide, and I pulled you out and took you to Malloy Manor. I told you whatever I needed to tell you to make you cooperate, because you were our scapegoat, our life insurance. The real Mackenzie Malloy needed to disappear, and the fake Mackenzie would squat in her house like a termite, burrowing in deep until Brentwood returned to finish her off. Except that he never did. And all the while Brutus grew more powerful, and although I looked every chance I got, I never found the treasure.”
“So instead of ruling my beloved city by Antony’s side, I had to leave without my inheritance,” my sister pouts, as if this is somehow so much worse than what she and Antony did to me. “Can you imagine how horrible it’s been? Laying low, having to work menial jobs, living in dingy squats and gross hostels, missing Antony like crazy, eating food not fit for human consumption, watching news stories about the interloper living inmyhouse. No wonder my eyesight started to deteriorate.”
Holy shit. The contact lenses Noah found in Antony’s bag – they weren’t his. They werehers.
It wasMackenziewho tried to shoot me and Noah. This explains why she missed, why she got me confused with Odette in the darkness…
How close has she been to me this entire time?
How did I not sense she was there?
Mackenzie leans in and taps my cheek, her nails not registering against my numb skin. “And then you had thenerveto enroll at Stonehurst Prep.”
Antony sighs. “I tried to stop her, babe.”
“I know you did, but she is my sister. She has to do things her way and screw the consequences for anyone else.” Mackenzie smiles indulgently down at me, like I’m a child who’s colored on the furniture. “But it worked out okay in the end. I came back to Emerald Beach as soon as I heard. I didn’t tell Antony I was in the city at first. I knew he’d try to send me away again—”
