“You put your hands onme,” she counters, her voice trembling but unbroken. “You collected me like one of your broken objects. So I collected your ghosts.” She gestures to the box on the floor. “They belong to me now.”
The sheer, breathtaking audacity of her words steals the air from my lungs. She has taken the most sacred, painful parts of my history and claimed them as her own. She has declared herself the new keeper of my family’s flame.
“You have no idea what you have done,” I say, and I begin to walk toward her. I am not rushing. Each step is a promise. Each footfall on the concrete is a nail being driven into a coffin. I willtake the box. I will take her, and I will burn this place to the ground with the memory of her defiance still hanging in the air.
She watches me come, her eyes wide. She is a statue carved from terror and steel. Ten feet away. Eight. Six.
When I am just out of arm’s reach she bends down, her eyes never leaving mine, and picks up the recorder. She holds it up between us, a tiny black shield against the storm.
“Stop,” she says.
I laugh. A low, guttural sound of disbelief. “You think that can stop me?”
“There are no safe rooms, Cassian,” she says, her voice gaining strength. “Not for you. Not anymore.”
She presses play.
Leo’s voice fills the room. Cocky. Alive. A ghost made of sound.”…give ‘em a show?”
I freeze. Every muscle in my body locks. The sound is a physical blow, a phantom limb suddenly aching with a pain I have not allowed myself to feel in two years.
Then comes the other sound. A girl’s laugh.Hersister’s laugh. Bright and innocent.
I see her finger move to the volume button, turning it up. The sound of their final, living moments fills the studio, echoing off the cold, hard walls. It is an act of exquisite cruelty. She is not just playing a recording. She is conducting a séance.
My fists are clenched so tight my knuckles scream. I could cross the space in a heartbeat. I could rip the device from her hand and crush it to dust, but my feet are bolted to the floor. She has found the one weapon on earth that could stop me; she has weaponized my grief.
She turns the volume down, the ghosts receding into silence. Her eyes are blazing.
“This is the new rule of our game,” she says, her voice ringing with a terrible, newfound power. “You come near me, you try totouch me, you so much as follow me down the street… and the whole world will hear the last words of your brother. I will put this on every blog, every news station, every social media feed until the name ‘Kostas’ is synonymous with the sound of his final, arrogant breath.”
She takes a step closer, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “I will not just burn you. I will burn your memory of him. I will make it so the only way you can remember your brother is through the filter of my sister’s laughter, knowing he was the one who silenced it. Your private pain will become public entertainment, and your ghost will become mine to command.”
I stare at her. The ghost girl is gone. In her place is a queen of ashes, a fury forged in the heart of my own personal hell. She has not just found a weapon; she has become one.
She has check-mated me.
For a long, silent moment, the only sound is our breathing. She thinks she has won, she thinks this is the end.
She doesn't understand. You cannot threaten a man who is already haunted. You can only become the most beautiful part of his nightmare.
Without another word, I turn my back on her. I walk out of the ruined doorway, into the darkness of the alley. I am ceding the field, I am letting her believe she has won.
The hunt is not over. It has just begun and now, I am not hunting a victim.
I am hunting my equal.
Forty Three
Aria
Heisgone.
The empty doorway is a gaping wound in the side of my sanctuary. The silence he leaves behind is not peaceful. It is predatory. It is the held breath of a hunter waiting for the prey to make a mistake.
My legs finally give out. I sink to my knees, the recorder still clutched in my hand, its plastic casing slick with sweat. My body trembles, a violent, full-body tremor that is part adrenalinecrash, part abject terror. I did it. I faced the devil, and I made him turn his back.
But he didn't look broken. He didn't look defeated. He looked… awake. As if I had slapped him out of a long, rage-filled dream. In the final moment, when his eyes met mine, I did not see the fury of a captor. I saw the sharp, terrifying recognition of a predator that has finally met a worthy opponent.
