Page 90 of Arrow

“Drink,” he ordered.

Tender hands, possessive grip.

The fizz washed the copper from my tongue, as he leaned against the counter beside me.

God, he was as beautiful as he was terrifying, but in that instant, he looked almost bored by violence. Maybe hunger, like pain, was a currency that diminished each time you spent it.

“She’ll need cleaning up,” he said, voice flat, perfectly neutral.

Natalya lay sprawled below me—stranger in death. Stranger still that I was the one still standing. I felt all the weight of being alive when no one expected it. Decades of being told that in this city, loyalty was just slow-motion suicide.

“You killed her—your own cousin.”

“Family doesn’t point guns at what’s mine.” His voice was flat.

I laughed hysterically. “What’s yours?”

He didn’t answer, just looked at me with that unreadable expression that made me want to claw his eyes out. Trembling seized me, the adrenaline from the fight with Natalya still coursing through my system, now compounded by the shock of watching her die.

“You’re going into shock,” he observed, reaching for me.

“Don’t fucking touch me.” I jerked away.

“Harlowe.” Just my name, but it carried weight.

“No. No. No. You don’t get to do this! How can you kill someone and then act like it’s normal? Like it’s nothing?”

“It’s not nothing,” he said quietly. “But it is normal. At least in my world.”

My eyes returned to Natalya, tracking the blood pooling beneath her head.

It was already congealing, turning darker around the edges. My stomach lurched, and I barely made it to the sink before throwing up. The water ran pink as I rinsed my mouth.

Behind me, Arrow’s voice came low. “You should go back upstairs.”

I gripped the edge of the sink, my knuckles turning white. My brain kept replaying the sound of the gunshot, the spray of blood, the way Natalya’s face had stayed frozen in that horrible smile.

“I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t just—leave her there.”

He moved beside me, careful not to touch me. “I’ll handle it. This isn’t your mess.”

“Isn’t it?” I turned to face him, suddenly furious. “She was trying to kill me. You shot her because of me. How is this not my mess?”

Arrow studied me, his features betraying nothing in the dim kitchen light. “Because you’re not the one who pulled the trigger.”

“But I’m the reason you did.” I gestured wildly at Natalya’s body. “What happens now? You call someone to clean this up? Make her disappear like she never existed?”

“Yes.” His answer was so matter-of-fact that it made me want to scream.

“And that doesn’t bother you?” I demanded. “She’s your cousin—your blood. Your family.”

A brief, haunted look flashed across his face, and vanished so quickly I might have imagined it. “Family doesn’t mean what you think it means to us.”

I laughed, the sound cracked and hollow. “Clearly.”

He moved toward the body, and quick, silent curses punctuated his phone call as he summoned a team I would never see arrive or leave. Within minutes, two men with dead eyes and hazmat suits materialized, bagged Natalya’s body without a word, and zipped her into a black cocoon, dragging her through the kitchen as if she were a rug with a minor stain.

One paused to sop up the pool of blood with a powder-blue towel, swabbing around my bare feet with the care of a surgeon. The linoleum was sanitized before my shock even solidified. Not a trace of her remained but her blood and brain matter splattered across my face, my neck, my chest, and smeared across my nightgown.