Suddenly, I realize I have noideawhat I’ve signed up for.
But there’s no going back now.
6
EVELINA
After a few dayspassing in a hazy blur, I realize I will physically have to remove the invitation from my immediate vicinity or else I’ll keep reading it over and over, freaking myself out and possibly losing my nerve to go. So I tuck it out of sight into a book on dance theory that I sometimes bring with me to Knightsblood for my class there.
Wondering if I’m legitimately insane.
A piece of me knows that I must be, at least in part. It's the only explanation for why I am still be considering showing up at Blackbriar Hall, which Google tells me is an old Carnegie family mansion up on a peak in the Adirondacks north of New York. I casually asked Val about it the other day after seeing a few pictures, and he just rolled his eyes and said it was his brother’s “evil Bond villain lair”.
It didn’t doa thingto calm my nerves. I mean, the place already looks like a haunted mansion.
But receiving the invitation is really just a natural extension of all the insanity that camebeforeit.
Like sneaking into Club Venom, which led to my first chilling encounter with Vaughn.
That’s not something I do, at all. “Evelina Nikitin” and “sex clubs” go together about as well as brushing your teeth after drinking orange juice. But even if it had been a pet store or a wellness center, I don’tsneakinto places.
I don’t wear disguises, or use fake names, or try to seduce drunk men to get into somewhere I shouldn’t go.
That’s just not who I am.
…Right?
Or maybe I’ve gone twenty-three years onlythinkingI knew who I was. That's becoming a theory with stronger legs than I'd like it to have the more I think about it.
The night in the woods up on Griswold Hill is another jarring example. Forget the things that happened that were out of my control. It’s the fact that I was there at all that worries me.
I know I’m naive about the world, and probably a little too innocent. My friends like to lovingly tease me about it, but… They’re not wrong.
That said, naive doesn’t mean “stupid”. I don't make a habit of getting into cars with men I don’t know very well, and letting them drive me into secluded woods. God only knows what might have happened to me if Vaughn hadn’t…
A shiver ripples through my body.
It’s not the first time I’ve witnessed a murder.
Thatwas when I was twelve.
It was just Dad and me then: Roman was already off at Knightsblood. I woke up in the middle of the night and heard shouting downstairs. I ended up following the sound down to the basement, where I saw my father standing by while one of his men pointed a gun at a man, bound and gagged on his knees.
I looked away, but couldn’t block out the sound of the shot or the splatter of wetness against concrete.
Then, when I was sixteen, my father took me with him to a business thing in Chicago. We were leaving a restaurant via the back door when the hitman one of Dad's enemies had hired jumped out and attacked us. My father singlehandedly managed to rip the gun out of the guy’s hand, knock him to the ground, and put a bullet between his eyes.
It’s things like that make me conflicted about his current predicament.
Yes, Iknowhe tried to kill Roman and Val. But then I think of that time at the restaurant when he literally saved my life.
And that is exactly how I find myself the bearer of an invitation to join one of the most secretive, powerful, and dangerous underworld organizations on Earth.
Family is still family.
“Oh myGod,they’reso fucking CUTE!”
Milena squeals as Selene wraps her tiny arms around the stuffed monkey that I just gave her. I know she’s only five months old and can’t sleep with it until she’s at least a year. Still, I wantedher to have it, and I wanted her to get it so early because, selfishly, I want that stuffy to be her first one, and I want Auntie Evie to be the one to give it to her.
