The thought calms me, a return to the familiar terrain of manipulation and control. This is not a mistake; it is merely a phase of the operation that requires adjustment.
Then the sound comes.
It is not a murmur. It is not a cry.
It is the sharp, unmistakable crack of wood splintering. A small sound, a chair or a stool giving way but in the suffocating silence, it is as loud as a gunshot.
My body goes rigid. Every instinct, every paranoid nerve I possess, screams at once. This is wrong. This is not the sound of a tender reunion.
My hand is on the door handle before the echo has faded. I shove it open, and the scene imprints itself onto my mind with the brutal clarity of a brand.
Elaine is lying on the floor, her body splayed in an unnatural angle. Her eyes are wide open, fixed on the damp ceiling, seeing nothing. A white, frothy substance tinged pink with blood bubbles from her parted lips and drips down her chin onto her chest.
And Grace.
Grace is on her knees, her body folded over her mother’s, her face buried in the dead woman’s stomach. Her shoulders are racked with silent, violent sobs.
Poison.
The shock lasts only a second. Then it ignites, transforming into pure, incandescent fury. It erupts from me in a guttural, wordless roar of betrayal. My plan, my leverage, my carefully orchestrated moment of control; all of it lies dead, poisoned by the very hands I sought to gentle.
I lunge into the room, my vision tunnelling on the sobbing, hysterical girl on the floor. My little pet. My docile, broken little dog. I am going to drag her up by her hair, I am going to make her tell me how she did this, I am going to…
She moves.
It is not the movement of a victim, it is not a cower or a flinch.
It is the uncoiling of a snake. The pounce of a cat.
Her head snaps up. The grief on her face is obliterated, replaced by a feral rage so absolute it stops me dead for a fraction of a heartbeat. Her eyes are not human. They are the eyes of a cornered animal, blazing with a primal need to kill.
She screams a raw, shredded sound that seems to tear itself from the very core of her. Her hand flashes out, closing around a splintered, sharp-ended piece of the broken stool leg.
I see it happening. I see the arc of her arm, I see the wild, desperate strength in her body. But my fury has made me slow, arrogant. I cannot comprehend that she would fight back. That shecould.
The pain is not immediate. There is a pressure first, a deep, shocking intrusion just below my ribs. I look down, my rage momentarily stunned into confusion. I see her small, white-knuckled hand gripping the makeshift stake. I see the rough, splintered wood buried deep in my abdomen.
Then she yanks it back before burying it inside me again.
The world dissolves into white, searing agony. It blossoms from the point of impact, a supernova of pain that explodes through me, burning along every nerve, stealing my breath, buckling my knees. I stumble backward, my hands flying to the wound, feeling the warm, shocking wetness of my own blood already soaking through my shirt.
She stabbed me. She actually fucking stabbed me.
My back hits the doorframe, and I slide down it to the cold stone floor. I am grasping the jagged piece of wood now protruding from me. I can feel its rough edges against my fingers, the terrifying, deep pulse of my body around it.
And I start to laugh.
It’s a choked, wet, horrible sound, bubbling up from a place beyond the pain. The absurdity of it is too perfect, too poetic. My perfect, docile little pet. The woman I broke and remoulded. She turned on me. She bit the hand that feeds, and she bit deep.
A wave of nausea washes over me but the laugh continues, a harsh rasp. I almost marvel at her. At the ferocious, beautiful violence she kept hidden behind those frightened eyes. I broke her, and in breaking her, I unleashed this. I created this magnificent, murderous thing. The pain is excruciating, a fire in my gut but the pride, the insane, twisted pride is a drug.
“Grace…” I stammer just as the door bursts open, and carnage takes off.
Boots stampede into the small room. Shouts, curses, the sound of fists meeting flesh. My guards, responding to the noise, but there are others. Men I don’t recognize, fighting mine.
How did they get in? Through the walls? Through the goddamn walls?
I blink and my eyes lose focus for a second. I see Grace, a flash of pale face, being pulled away from her mother’s body by a large, unfamiliar man. She’s fighting him too, like a wildcat, all teeth and nails.
