For the first time, something human flickers in Long Ge’s expression. Then rage flashes. “You don’t understand the situation,” he snaps. “You don’t understand her.”
“And you do?”
“I love her more than anyone else in the world,” Long Ge says vehemently. “I love her, I’ve loved her my whole life, I love her so much I would cut off my own arm if it made her happy. And if she just spent more time around me now, she’d realize that I’m the best person for her. I’m not that awkward, pathetic little boy who lost fights in the schoolyard. I taught myself to be charming, cultured. I have money now, ten properties, hundreds of men who’ll do my very bidding. My companies are worth far more than the nightclubs that scumbag ex-husband of hers has opened up—”
Ares is still staring down at the man, and watching him, hearing the desperation in his voice as he describes this warpedfantasy, he experiences a surge of something utterly unexpected: pity.
All this work. The Cave, the empire he’s built for himself, the suit and hair. Just to impress a woman he knew decades ago, a woman who wouldn’t even spend that much time with him unless a legally binding contract demanded she do so.
Long Ge must see the pity in his face too, because his features twist. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t you dare—” He struggles again under Ares, breathing hard. “She’ll see,” he says. “She’s starting to see already, now that the divorce news is out—”
“That wasyou?” Ares demands. “You leaked the news. You did that to her.” To Chanel too. He remembers, painfully, how she had arrived at school the morning the news broke, how hard she’d tried to act nonchalant, like it didn’t affect her, like nothing could.
But Long Ge doesn’t show any sign of shame. “The news was going to leak eventually. I just needed to move things along, to make her understand. When she has nobody else left, nobody else to love her, comfort her, hold her, protect her, she’ll realize she has only me, that it’s been me all along. I just need to clear away the obstacles.”
Again, the terror, juddering through Ares. Clear away the obstacles. What does he mean, what could he—
Long Ge reaches into his pocket and pulls out a lighter, an open flame dancing from the end, and Ares’s vision flashes white.No.He lunges for it, yanks the lighter out of Long Ge’s grip, holding it so tight in his own hand that his nails dig into the flesh of his palm, but Long Ge doesn’t even tryto resist. He’s started laughing again, bloodied spittle flying from his lips.
“This lighter’s just for my cigarette,” he says. “But don’t worry, you’ll see what a real fire looks like soon enough.”
A spark catches his eye. Ares glances wildly to his left, just in time to spot a masked figure slip out through the front yard of a villa. One of Long Ge’s men, stationed there in secret all along.
“I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” Long Ge says, baring his teeth in a horrible smile. “But again, we could have gone about this the peaceful way. You chose not to listen.”
And Ares watches it happen. Watches the fire catch.
The sky is burning.
Smoke wafts up over the roof, spreading fast through the glowing orange haze.
Someone screams from inside the house.
Chanel.
31
Chanel
“Help. Please—”
The heat presses against my back, sticks to my throat, my eyeballs, coating my skin in sweat and soot. It’s everywhere. The taste of ash in my mouth. I cough—on the smoke, on my own terror, the voice in my head yelling at me toget out, get out, get out. But how?
I’m trapped.
The fire has spread all around the living room, flames engulfing the couches and the coffee table, blocking the way to the windows, the last possible exit. I can’t step back without being burned, but I can’t get out with the front door still locked.
This shouldn’t be happening. It shouldn’t be like this, but then—the scene is so familiar. I’d seen my mother screaming for help, or thought that’s what I saw. Her face. Or my own, I realize with a jolt, remembering every single time someone confused the two of us.Blessed with her mother’s genes, god, the resemblance is striking, you look just like each other—
We look just like each other.
A hysterical laugh chokes out of me. The vision is the same, but it means something different now. I hadn’t recognized myself in the lake. I’d never even considered that it could be me trapped inside the fire, because I didn’t think I’d ever put myself in such a dangerous position in the first place. I didn’t think I would tell Ares where the house was, and now—
Where is he?
Did he start the fire after all, after everything I told him, after he promised me he wouldn’t? I had taken the risk—but had I bet wrong? Gambled everything I had for nothing?
Useless, fragmented thoughts race through my head, trying to make sense of it. Piece on a chessboard, or the player standing behind it. God rolling some dice. Fate. Destiny. Invisible hands of the universe. Immovable forces and timelines, splitting apart, reconciling, splitting once more. Moon and sun, chasing each other across the sky. A butterfly flutters its wings, and somewhere else a house erupts in flames. The beginning and middle and end, and the end is here.
