Suddenly, the night sky is upside down, stars a scattered blanket.
Green grass surrounds me.
Right before a sea of darkness drowns me.
57
LEV
They’re not here.
They’re not fucking here!
The tracking software reveals she’s not inside the hotel.
“Lev, wait!”
Ignoring my sister, I head straight for the valet, giving him Zeno’s name. He doesn’t hesitate before bringing Zeno’s SUV around, tossing me the keys once he returns.
“We’re here to help,” Anastasia explains. “Not to stop you.”
“The others?”
“Are pretending. Zeno’s still with the Capos. Vanessa and Nero are with him to make it not look obvious.”
Anastasia slides into the passenger seat, and Dimitri climbs into the back as I slam on the gas. I toss my phone to my sister, the tracking software open. “Direct me.”
The software leads us out of the city, and I break every speed limit trying to make up the time they gained by leaving earlier. Given the time of night, there’s not many cars on the road, but still more than I’d prefer.
“They’re moving faster,” she suddenly announces.
“Blyat.”
So, I do too, making it out of the city limits. The streetlights blur, my focus entirely on the road in front of us. My finger taps against the wheel so fast, there is no pattern, no number, just a fucked-up tune to heartache.
I’m coming, Fina.
Dimitri leans forward to watch Serafina’s dot move further away. “What’s the plan when we get there? You can’t outright kill him. It’ll negate everything today was for.”
“Watch me.”
Anastasia sighs, only to let out a small sound of surprise. “They’ve stopped.”
“Blyat,”I repeat, because there truly is no decent response. My head isn’t working to predict every plausible reason they have, so my foot presses the gas harder, zipping between cars, only slowing by the pickup truck parked on the side of the road.
And the pieces of metal strewn all over the road.
And the car flipped over in the ditch. A car in which the dot of Serafina’s tracker pings.
“My God,” my sister breathes, but her voice is lost beneath the haze in my mind. For once, my mind is blank—not for any diagnosable reason, but forher.
She better be alive. She’s notallowedto die.
Not bothering to turn the SUV off, I jerk us onto the rocky roadside and throw myself down the slight slope towards the black car. Its back end is crumpled, flipped upside down, windows shattered, a puff of a white dress seeping from the side window.
I drop, shards of glass biting into my hands and knees while reaching inside to Serafina, who’s strapped in the seat, her head pressed against the car’s roof. Blood drips from her hairline into her mouth.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
