Chapter Fourteen

It wasn’t just her hair. Yes, Regina’s stick-straight black locks had gone from flowing down to her hips when I left for Italy to now being spiked like a pixie drummer in a punk band. And yes, her eyes were ringed with more black shadow than a Kardashian on Halloween. And sure, she was wearing a black leather jacket with metal studs that seemed appropriate for initiation into a biker gang (I was sure Marcus approved). That was all external stuff. What bothered me most was the look in Regina’s walnut eyes.

I climbed down from the wall, Marcus clamoring behind me, his motorcycle boots skidding on the stone pavers as he landed. I continued searching Regina’s face, hoping for a hint that she was still in there.

I saw nothing but hate. I should have expected this, given her viral videos and the comments from Wyatt. She blamed me for Tyson’s death, which I understood. I blamed me. Only I expected to see the hatred of a teenage girl, of a former friend who still, somewhere deep down, knew the real me.

But the person standing before me now held the gaze a prisoner would show her executioner—pure revulsion, as if she couldn’t understand how someone as vile as me existed in the world. It was what I felt when I looked at Craig Bernard in Venice, while he was holding my sister captive, right before I beat him to a pulp.

“So glad you can still take time to enjoy the sights,” Regina growled through her teeth, her lips slathered in a dark orchid hue.

The girl was frightening, and not because of the makeup, but because of the depth to which she’d lost herself. I wanted to hug her, reach inside and dig around until I found the old Regina and scoop every original cell to the surface. But I was too stunned to speak, let alone act.

“I see you got my messages. Good to see you again, Jules.” Sophia blew Julian a kiss, and I realized that he and Charlotte were now standing beside us. I hadn’t heard them approach.

“Yes, lovely to see you, too,” said Julian. I guess manners really were beaten into the rich the way the commandments were beaten into Catholics.

“And you brought your girlfriend. So cute.” Sophia’s voice dripped condescension as she eyed Charlotte up and down, from the Converse sneakers with holes near her toes to the rain-damaged, frizzy curls escaping Charlotte’s wool hat. It was damp and utterly freezing, yet Sophia was wearing stiletto black boots that went over her knees and a sleek, black coat that looked ripped from a runway in Bryant Park. Her long strawberry blond hair was perfect, as if she lived in an anti-humidity bubble that borrowed wind from Beyonce’s fan.

“Interesting…look.” Sophia smirked at Charlotte, before turning to Marcus. “But I must say, you’re a bright spot on a gloomy day.” She pouted seductively, and I resisted the urge to smack her right across her glossy lips. Sophia loved it. “Glad you finally made it. We tried to wait around for you to find us, but it was taking forever. You know, Anastasia, you really suck at this.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be insulted at being a bad spy, but for some reason, I was.

“What do you want?” I cocked my head.

“So nice of you to ask!” She perked up. “Personally, I want you and your sister to shut the hell up, but it seems a little late for that.” She turned to Julian. “I’m rather disappointed in the programming on Stone Family Media channels. Haven’t you learned to check your sources yet?”

“Everything we said is true. Urban’s a terrorist,” I snapped.

“Don’t you mean Daddy.” Regina’s eyes looked almost gleeful.

“Yeah, thanks for sharing that with Wyatt Burns.”

“Oh, you spoke to Wy!” Her face was cheery, as if remembering something pleasant. About him. “He was fun. Big guy.”

Who is this girl? I shook my head. This was the same person who was in love with Tyson Westbrook, who walked him to work every day after school, who helped me write an English essay on a book I never read, and who still had stuffed animals on every surface of her bedroom.

“Regina, that guy’s an asshole.”

“Seriously? You’re throwing insults?” Regina’s combat boots stomped through a puddle. “After what you’ve done! You murdered Tyson!”

“I did not.”

“You could have warned us!”

Sophia reached out a tiny hand and grabbed Regina’s leather sleeve, tugging her leash. “Now, now, let’s work up to that, shall we?”

Regina quieted, moving back with obedience. If I thought I hated Sophia before, my rage was redlining as I watched her pull the ties binding my lone wolf of a best friend. Where was the girl who said anything on her mind? Who challenged her parents on every religious belief they held? Who drummed up tens of thousands of YouTube subscribers? Sophia was now her master?

“Why don’t we have a seat?” Sophia gestured to the empty café chairs. The restaurant, like much of Krakow on Easter, was closed, but the tables were still available.

Julian pulled out a wrought-iron chair, its legs squeaking on the pavers, then nodded at Charlotte to sit. Always the gentleman.

We followed his lead.

“Sophia, you have the floor,” he said.

We plopped onto icy metal chairs as the wind picked up, the little sun that remained dipping behind the wooly clouds. Sophia was wearing the least amount of clothes of all of us (Heaven forbid, she put a winter hat over her hair), yet she seemed completely unfazed. In fact, the frigid air made her porcelain cheeks flush in a way that was actually attractive. I hated that.

I glared at Regina, sitting obediently at Sophia’s side; Marcus, Julian, Charlotte, and I were clustered across the table from her, a closed white umbrella rattling in the breeze between us. We felt so divided.

“Regina, I saw your videos and I’m so sorry,” I cut in with a preemptive apology, hoping to get her to see me, the real me, the old me. I reached my gloved hand across the ornate tabletop, but Regina flinched. “Please, you can’t possibly think that—”

“Shut it,” Regina interrupted, her blackened eyes reduced to slits. “I am done hearing what any of you Phoenixes have to say. You’re plastered all over the internet, all over TV! I half expect Keira to do an interview with HGTV! Meanwhile, the news has completely forgotten about Tyson. You know, contrary to what you think, you are not the only people in the universe, your lives do not matter more than anyone else’s, and I will not be threatened into keeping your secrets anymore.”

Threatened? Marcus and I went to Boston to warn Regina. We never threatened her, but before I could defend myself, Regina went on.

“Your parents paid me a visit.”

A concrete lump lodged in my throat. She’s seen my parents? Alive? It made no sense. Marcus and I had been looking for them, obsessively, for months. We’d searched every database, contacted every hacker, and still we didn’t have a lead. And they’d confronted Regina? In Boston?

“I see I’ve got your attention.” Regina bit off the words.

Then Sophia patted my friend’s mitten-covered hand and Regina smiled at the reassurance, as if her approval meant something. Couldn’t she see what Sophia was doing? She had Regina so blind with rage that danger could walk up wearing a neon sign.

“If you watched my second video,” Regina went on, “you know we found out that your parents were in Rio de Janeiro. And we know you were there, too. We found Marcus’s hospital records.”

Regina’s words wrapped around my chest, ringing out all the oxygen. If she really knew about Allen Cross, if she put that in a video, my parents would kill her. That would be it. I watched them kill for less.

What is she doing?

She turned to Marcus. “Hey, remember me? From high school? I was your girlfriend’s only friend in the world until she ditched me for you and had my boyfriend killed. How was Tuscany? I hear it’s beautiful.”

“I did not have Tyson ki—” I said again, but Charlotte’s mitten shot out as if to grab my words from midair. We came here to listen to what they had to say, and this was it. Whether I liked it or not.

I closed my mouth, and Sophia gave a wry grin, like she enjoyed watching my actions influenced by others. It wasn’t the same. I wasn’t being controlled by my friends. I was taking their advice. I had a feeling Sophia’s relationship with Regina was very different.

“Anyway,” Regina turned back to me, “My new hacker friends and I were getting close to proving that your parents have been up to some pretty shady activity, especially in Rio, and hell, maybe you’re in on it with them.” She scoffed like she actually believed me capable of evil, like I wasn’t her best friend up until a few months ago. “But before I could get confirmation, I get stopped on the way to the T after school. In broad daylight, in Boston. Your mother was just standing there, right in front of me.”

Her mouth twisted in revulsion. “You look just like her, you know? You’ve got the same hair and pissy look on your face. So here was this woman, this killer, wanted by the entire world, and her only disguise was a pair of sunglasses, big black ones like a Hollywood asshole. And it worked! She was able to dig her fingernails into my arm and drag me away.” Regina glanced down at her forearm as if visualizing the exchange. “You know what she said? ‘We need to talk, little girl,’ in this creepy, Mommy Dearest voice.”

My mother confronted Regina? In a city swarming with FBI agents searching their corporate office. Why? My brain filled with questions, but I didn’t know how to catalog them.

“She literally kidnapped me and shoved me inside an SUV before I even knew what was happening. Your father was driving.” She sneered. “Though I guess he’s not your father, is he?”

That was when my anger rose from simmer to boil. I had a lot of sympathy for Regina; I knew what she’d been through. In fact, I traveled to Boston to try to stop the exact interaction she was describing. I didn’t want to see her get hurt. But it seemed she loved dishing pain onto me. I wasn’t a person to her anymore. I was a garbage bin to heap blame into.

My eyes teared, from wind or rage, I wasn’t sure.

“What’s the matter Anastasia?” Sophia noticed my reaction. “Hard to hear that your parents aren’t so innocent?”

“I never said they were innocent,” I restrained my voice. “I’m just tired of them being thrown in my face.”

“We haven’t even started throwing yet.” She smiled wide. “Please continue, Regina.” She patted her once more. Speak, good dog.

“Your parents drove me to an abandoned parking lot, under this loud overpass, like a cheesy mob movie, and told me it was to make sure ‘no one could hear me screaming.’ They actually said that. Word for word.” Her face looked as though she still couldn’t believe this all happened. Neither could I. She sniffled, wiping her runny nose, which was blotchy from the cold. “They said that they saw my video, and that if I kept digging around in Rio, or any of their business, they would make sure I wouldn’t be able to make another video—permanently.”

She exhaled, steadying herself to go on. “Your mother sat next to me, in the back of an SUV, completely calm, and told me that they were ‘not going to prison over some stupid girl and that I better shut the hell up before someone else I love gets killed.’ Then she recited my home address, the location of my parents’ church, my grandmother’s room number in the nursing home, and my little brother Jai’s third grade teacher’s name.” She paused, letting those words hover like missiles in the air between us. “Do you hear what I’m saying? Your parents threatened to kill my entire family. Even Jai! The kid who used to meet us at school on his three-wheeled Thomas The Train scooter. And your parents threatened to kill him.”

Regina pressed her mittens to the sides of her face, not to warm her chapped cheeks but like she wanted to hold the panic inside her skull, only it was breaking free, shaking her whole body. It wasn’t just hatred in her eyes, it was unbridled fear. I could see it now.

She believed my parents were murderers, which they were. She believed everyone she loved was in danger, which they were. Yet now I somehow needed to convince her to stay quiet, or else my parents might actually follow through. Why would she listen to me? I’d done nothing but lie to this girl for the past year. We all knew it, especially Sophia, who was currently hugging Regina while looking at me over her shoulder like she wanted to wink. She might as well be dangling a butcher knife behind Regina’s back with that cocky smile on her face, because the threat was so obvious. If my parents didn’t hurt Regina, Sophia and her grandfather (my biological father) would. Only Regina would never heed a warning from me.

That was when a different victim spoke up.