I constantly scan our surroundings as we move swiftly through the trees, the thick carpet of pine needles littering the forest floor and helping to dampen the noise of our footfalls. The air smells of rotting detritus and pine sap, not the most pleasant combination, but the overpowering musk will help hide our presence. You’d be surprised by how far the fragrance of soap or cologne travels, which is why I use unscented everything, even laundry detergent, when I’m doing a job.
“I can’t see shit. How do you know where you’re going?” Aleksei whispers.
I check my wristwatch. Five-thirty. About an hour or so before sunrise. “I just do. No more talking. The guards justchanged shift, giving us five minutes to haul ass to the house. There’s a blind spot near the back gardens. We’ll wait there.”
We quietly weave through the darkness, avoiding camera angles and landscape lighting. It only takes three minutes until I have eyes on the Knight mansion. No noises other than the crickets and croaks of frogs. No exterior movement. A few lights are on inside the house. The calm before the storm.
In a few short hours, Eva will be dead, and my revenge will begin.
“Aoife.”
Her name is a scorched stone embedded in my heart, and I hate Tristan for saying it. For finding my one weakness.
“T, shut the fuck up!” Hendrix bellows.
“What did you just say?”
“Syn…is Aoife. Aleksander! Do something!” Tristan shouts just as the echo of a gun discharging has my blood flash-freezing in my veins.
I strike his face, again and again, not wanting to believe him. Aoife is dead. She’s dead. Her body was burned to ash in the fire, along with her parents.
Fire.
Syn’s arm.
The fucking burns.
How is it possible?
“You’re fucking lying! I would have known!”
I turn my head just as the whizzing noise of a bullet flies past my ears. As if watching in slow motion, Maxim flies sideways as if tethered to the bullet on a string.Pop. Pop. Pop.In a fraction of a second, the other three men topple in perfectunison, their bodies collapsing like dominoes as blood seeps out of the perfect circles in their foreheads.
“Oh, god, firefly,” Hendrix rasps.
Like a macabre nightmare, Syn materializes from the gardens, painted red with blood from her face to her bare toes. She advances forward with measured steps, her arm outstretched, her finger pressing the trigger, even though nothing happens. The magazine is empty. No more bullets.
The pale blue of her eyes shines behind her waterfall of scarlet hair. Cornflower blue. Her goddamn eyes.
I was drawn to Syn from the start, like a familiar dream. I became obsessed with her because she reminded me so much of Aoife.
But SynisAoife.
How could I not know? How was I so blind not to see what was right in front of me this entire time?
My sweet angel survived. She survived and came back like a beautiful death.
“Aoife?” I say in disbelief.
In the next blink and with no warning at all, the ground beneath us trembles violently. A deafening boom shakes the earth, followed by a concussive shockwave that slams into us like a giant invisible fist when the back of the Knight mansion explodes.
I suddenly come to, the phantom boom of the explosion jolting me awake.
Aoife.Get up. Move. Save Aoife.
But my body refuses, my muscles sluggish and heavy like lead.
Get up! Save Aoife!
