The ballroom is decorated elegantly, the floor shining like a mirror and the chandeliers sparkling with brilliant golden light. I enter on Santos’s arm. His mother, Caius, and Ana follow us in. I can feel Ana’s gaze boring into the back of my head, but I don’t focus on it. She can’t hurt me. She can’t touch me unless I allow her to.
Unless I give her power.
She may know my past, all my ugly secrets. She may share them with Caius. Hell, she already has. But she can’t hurt me unless I allow her to.
Tonight’s event is probably the most important of the three. Local lawmakers are present as well as those from the tri-state area. Since De Léon Enterprises is headquartered here, it is the most important for the business.
The Avery family is here. Most of them, at least. Camilla, Liam, and their mother are seated a few tables away, and Camilla’s voice can be heard over the crowd as she charms every man and woman at their table. I don’t understand it. Don’t people see beyond the physical? She’s lovely to look at and listen to, but she’s rotten on the inside. I felt that from the first instant I saw her.
Ana and Caius are seated at their table, probably to keep an eye on them. There is one empty chair there. I know Santos noticed because I saw how his jaw tensed when he did.
Thiago Avery is missing tonight.
My father is here. He is seated at the table farthest from ours, banished to the shadowy corners when once he sat at the head of every table. He doesn’t smile or acknowledge me in any way, but he does glare at my husband.
I see how he picks up his usual drink with his left hand. Whiskey with dinner. Whiskey with breakfast. Not to mention lunch. The right one is gloved and rests uselessly on the table beside his untouched plate. I shudder at the thought of why that is and glance to my husband, who is laughing at a joke someone makes. How many sides are there to this man? His violence is at his core. It’s etched out in his skin. If these people saw that, saw him bared, would they smile so easily? Would they want his approval? His feigned friendship?
Then there’s the other side. This one. Genial. Relaxed. Socially acceptable among Avarice’s high society. This one doesn’t matter because it’s not real. It’s put on for people who don’t matter.
The way he is with me is another side. As I think it, he wraps his hand around the back of my neck under my hair. He gives a gentle, warm squeeze. I catch his mother’s glance when he does it, and I see how her eyes narrow infinitesimally. I won’t let her get to me tonight, either, because this is the side of my husband I like best. This is the side that makes my heart skip a beat and has me wishing I was alone with him. Wishing I had his weight on me and the strength of his arms circling me.
Waiters come to clear our plates, and in the midst of it, Odin appears at the back of my chair, setting a hand on my shoulder.
“Maddy,” he says. There are drops of rain on the shoulders of his jacket, and his hair is damp.
“Odin.” I take his hand, feel how cold it is.
“Santos,” he greets my husband with a nod.
Santos pushes his chair back and stands. “Odin.” He extends his hand to shake, but it takes Odin a moment. He does, although his smile is forced.
“Were you outside?” I ask.
“Just getting a breath of fresh air.”
“In this weather?” Santos asks.
“I’ve lived in Avarice all my life. It doesn’t bother me. If you don’t mind, I’ll take my sister for a dance.” The orchestra is playing a waltz, and several couples are already on the dance floor.
I watch my brother. Something is up. He sounds strange, his body too stiff, and I have a sinking feeling it might be about the image I passed on to him—the one of Santos at Uncle Jax’s house the night Uncle Jax died.
Santos’s expression shifts. I think he’s going to say no, but Odin doesn’t wait for a response. He shifts his full attention to me and holds out his hand, palm up.
I take it and stand, worry settling like a brick in my stomach.
“Of course,” Santos says because what else can he say with all these people watching?
Odin keeps my hand in his as we walk solemnly toward the dance floor. We weave through dancing couples to take a spot at their center, and I’m very aware we’re putting plenty of space between us and the Augustines. We begin to dance.
“What is it?” I ask when Odin doesn’t speak right away but only looks at me, worry etching his face.
“I watched you with him throughout dinner. You seemed not unhappy.”
I shrug, trying to appear casual although I feel guilty. “I was just glad not to have to be near Caius and Ana. Not to mention his mother. She is a witch. It’s confirmed.” He gives me a pitying smile. “What is it, Odin? Tell me.”
“How has he been with you?”
“Fine,” I say, not wanting to go into it. Because I’m not unhappy, not right at this moment, and I should be. I should hate him. “He’s not unkind to me. Mostly. You’re scaring me. Tell me what you found out.”
Odin smiles at a couple whose arms brush ours as they spin. That smile remains on his face as he turns back to me. It’s not real though—not remotely so as he says, “There’s more security footage.”
My heart drops.
“I thought… The electrical issue…” The investigators had told us there had been an outage and there was no usable footage.
“It’s not good, Maddy,” he continues as if I haven’t spoken.
My throat goes dry, my chest tightening. “Tell me.”
“He was there for over an hour. I saw when he entered. Saw him out on the back terrace at one point.” There are cameras all over the exterior of the house. Our uncle was obsessed with security. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were cameras planted inside. “Time of death was consistent with when Santos was in the house.”
I stop dancing momentarily, the room blurring around me, the floor tilting beneath my feet. Odin gives me a nudge to keep me moving.
“No,” I say, shaking my head as I try to make sense of it. “No. He drowned.”
“He was an accomplished swimmer who did the same laps in the same pool for over twenty years. You and I have always known he didn’t drown.”
“But…” I don’t want this to be true.
“And there’s more.”
My hands feel clammy against Odin’s suit jacket, and the meal I ate sits heavy in my stomach.
“When Santos was a few weeks shy of eighteen, he killed a man.”
“What?”
“I don’t know the full story. Had to do something with the man’s daughter. He was arrested.”
I know his past is violent. He’s made no secret of it.
“But then the whole thing went away. Like no crime had been committed. And Santos went MIA for five years. The Augustine family didn’t have the kind of power to make that happen. Not then. They were low level criminals. Thugs.”
“Is that when he lived with the Avery family?”
He nods, looks over my shoulder. “You know about the Commander then? He told you?”
“A little.”
“The Commander headed up a secret police force that operated out of Miami, but there was more. His power reached much farther. And this force, I get the feeling a lot of people turned a blind eye. The end justifying the means sort of thing.”
I think about what Santos said about Thiago’s scar. But then Caius’s different version comes to mind.
“This Commander had private dealings in the northeast,” Odin continues. “Holdings and investments up and down the coast, actually. From what I gathered, he used Santos as well as his own son, Thiago Avery, as his enforcers.”
“God.”
“They did some bad shit, Maddy. Really bad.”
“May I cut in?”
Odin stiffens.
I startle at Santos’s sudden appearance. When did he get so close without us noticing? And what did he hear?
Odin turns to face him, but Santos doesn’t take his eyes from me, and I can’t drag mine from his. Odin hands me off because Santos wasn’t asking, and I shudder when Santos’s big hands touch me, one wrapping around my waist to span my lower back, the other holding my now limp hand.
I watch him, my husband. I knew what he was the night I met him, didn’t I? What man does what he did to me when I was only fifteen years old? The Augustine family is a mafia family. No matter how far they’ve come, their hands are dirty, and they’ve probably climbed that social ladder on the backs of the corpses they’ve left in their wake.
But my uncle? Was my uncle one of those corpses?
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I shake my head, force myself to breathe. “It’s hot in here. I need some air.” I slip out of his grasp before he can stop me, and honestly, if I don’t, I might just throw up right here on the dance floor.
He follows as I weave through the room, hurrying to one of the exits. The closest one happens to be at the back of the building.
As if on cue or some strange sign from above, lightning crashes overhead as soon as I step outside. I jump, shuddering with the sudden cold. Sea water slams loud and violent against the cliffs beyond, the eerie beacon of the lighthouse ever present over the wild sea. I run from the building, the music, the light inside, and all those happy people.
“Madelena!” Santos is behind me, but I don’t stop. Water pelts my bare arms, my hair, my face. It’s ice cold but nowhere near the snowstorm of a few nights ago, the remnants of which have turned to slush. “Madelena, stop!”
He catches me, his hand closing over my arm and tugging me into his chest. Momentum has me bouncing backward, but he keeps me from falling. Santos’s forehead creases with worry. I shiver, my teeth chattering, and within a moment, he’s slipped off his jacket and has wrapped it around my shoulders. It’s warm and smells like him, like the cologne I had made for myself years ago. I want to hug it to myself.
The thought leaves me with a longing so deep, it hurts.
Because I realize something, and the knowledge of it has me stumbling backward out of his grasp and doubling over.
“Madelena?” Santos asks.
How long has it been? How long have I been falling in love with this man?
Are you so unaccustomed to being wanted?
Because as I straighten to look up at him, I know that’s what it is. I have been falling in love with him in small increments over the years. From the first words he spoke to me, and every time he appeared as if by magic to rescue me from one evil or another, I have been falling in love with Santos Augustine. I have been wanting to be wanted by him. And this new truth, his betrayal, it hurts so much.
“Did you kill him?” I blurt out, wind howling, stealing my words, carrying them away.
“What?” he asks, walking us farther from the glass walls of the building to take shelter around the corner, out of the wind.
“Did you do it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“My uncle. Was it you?”
He stops, and for the first time in all the time I’ve known him, he is at a loss. Shocked even.
And I have my answer.
I try to pull free, but he only tugs me closer. “He drowned,” he says, voice different. Controlled. Low and dangerous.
“There was camera footage, Santos,” I tell him, because it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?
He waits, forehead furrowing.
“The gift someone sent, that muff? I thought it was you at first, but it wasn’t. And the muff wasn’t the gift. It was to hide a message someone wanted to send. A warning, maybe.” I’m not sure if I’m explaining it to him or trying to understand it myself.
“What are you talking about?”
“There was a photograph tucked inside it.”
“What?”
“It was a photo of you.” My voice breaks on a sob and it takes me a minute to continue. “A still captured on the security cameras my uncle had all around his house. It was you. You were there the night he died.”
His grip tightens on my arms as his jaw clenches with barely controlled emotion. He clearly never thought I’d find out, never thought anyone would.
“It’s not what you think,” he says.
“When you said you might leave things out, is this what you meant?” When I try to pull free, he tugs me to himself. “Let me go. Don’t touch me.”
“We need to get you inside. It’s too cold.”
I shake my head, but it doesn’t matter what I want. It’s never mattered what I wanted. Not when it comes to Santos Augustine.
Within moments, I’m half-walking, half being carried toward a staff entrance. Warmth immediately envelops me as the sound of dishes clattering and orders being called out overwhelms me. Santos keeps me close, my face buried against his side as we make our way to an elevator reserved for staff. As soon as the doors close and we’re alone, he pulls me back to look at me.
“Christ,” he mutters.
“What else have you lied about?”
“It’s not what you think. Give me a minute.”
The elevator doors slide open and we’re on our floor. There’s no guard at the door. He’s probably on break since no one’s up here.
Santos marches us to our apartment—can I call it ours?—and once we’re inside, he releases me. I take two hurried steps away as he drags both hands through his hair.
“You killed him,” I say.
He shakes his head and crosses the room toward me. I back up but I’m nowhere near as fast as him. He takes my arms, shakes me. “Where is it? Where is the photo?”
“You can’t hide from this, Santos.”
He releases me, mutters a string of curses, then digs his phone out of his pocket and types out a furious text.
I look around the room, not sure what I’m looking for but when I see a letter opener on the desk in the corner, I go for it.
“Why did you do it? Why kill my uncle? He was innocent. He never hurt anyone!”
“You didn’t know him like you thought.”
“I knew him!”
Santos looks at me, then at the letter opener in my hand. It’s sharp. Maybe not as sharp as a kitchen knife, but it’ll do some damage.
“Give me that, Madelena,” he says, eating the space between us, clearly not worried about me with my letter opener.
“Tell me why!”
“Give it to me. Now,” he says, words quieter as he’s closer, but no less threatening.
I slip behind the couch because I need to put distance between us. He’s bigger than me, faster than me, and he knows how to fight.
“What did I tell you just hours ago? What did I tell you about trust?”
I snort. “You wanted me to blindly trust you and you know what?” Tears blur my vision. “I am so fucking stupid, so desperate, that I wanted to.”
“You’re not stupid,” he says, seeming caught on that word. “Give me a minute to explain.”
“Desperate then. An easy target. Get back. Get away from me!” I tell him and turn the point of the knife to my own throat because he won’t care about getting hurt himself, but he will care if I hurt myself.
No. Care isn’t the right word. His plan will be disrupted if I hurt myself. He doesn’t care about me. I was a fool and an idiot to ever believe he might.
“Maddy.” He holds his hands up, palms to me. “Put it down.”
“I’m not Maddy to you. I already told you never to call me that!”
“What did I tell you about hurting what is mine?” he asks, changing tactics.
“I. Am. Not. Yours!” I push the edge of the blade into the tender spot at the center of my collarbones, feeling that familiar sharp pain of skin breaking, the warmth of blood streaking flesh.
“Madelena!” Santos leaps toward me, and he’s so fucking fast that I scream when his hand closes around my wrist and his weight forces me backward. I trip on something behind me and we go tumbling down. He mutters a curse, wraps one arm around my middle, and releases my wrist to cup the back of my head just before it bounces off the coffee table. He curses again as he flips us before we hit the floor hard, the sound of the crash of his head against hardwood deafening—all while he keeps a tight arm around my middle, so I bounce off him, his body a firm cushion. Air wooshes from our lungs and warmth pools between us.
I try to push off him, thinking he’s going to attack but his arm around me keeps me pinned to him. But there’s something else. His expression is off. He’s blinking hard like he’s trying to process something.
“Tell me why, Goddamn you!” I scream, finally sitting up as his arm slips from my back.
And that’s when I realize what I’ve done. When he doesn’t move, and I look down at us, I realize what the warmth is. The wet warmth.
“Oh my God. Oh my God!” I clasp my free hand over my mouth, my gaze locked on the other which is still holding the letter opener. The letter opener that is lodged in his side. “Santos?”
“Madelena… It’s not…” It’s barely a whisper. “Give me…”
The door opens, startling me. I look up to watch Val enter. He’s typing something out on his phone. We’re behind the couch so he doesn’t see me right away, and he definitely doesn’t see Santos. But when he does spot me, he stops, cocks his head to the side. He walks closer and when he sees Santos on the floor, his phone slips from his hand and clatters to the hardwood.
“Santos!” He’s on his knees in an instant.
Without thinking, I pull the letter opener out, feeling the strange almost squish as I do, and fall backward before scrambling to my feet. Val reaches for his phone, and I watch him close his hand over Santos’s bleeding side. He dials, trying to wake Santos as whoever he calls picks up.
“Get up here,” he commands. “We need a doctor!”
I look down at Santos.
Oh, God. Santos. He’s perfectly still, though. There’s too much blood and his face has lost all color.
“What did you do?” Val screams at me, and before I can think I’m running. I’m running out of that room and out of the apartment. The elevator dings and I charge past it to the stairwell and down the stairs, stumbling all the way, falling down full flights before I catch myself, that bloody letter opener in my hand as I sob because I don’t think he’s going to make it.
God.
I think I killed him.
When I reach the ground floor, I use the emergency exit to get out of the building. An alarm sounds, but I don’t care. I can’t.
Rain stings like shards of glass. I hunch over and hurl up dinner. The taste is bitter in my mouth as I run. I run and run, and maybe it’s subconscious where my feet are taking me. Maybe it’s where I was meant to die all along. Maybe all my mom did all those years ago was condemn me to living a life that wasn’t meant to be lived.
I stabbed him. Did I kill him? He asked me to trust him, asked me to give him a chance to explain, and I stabbed him. I didn’t give him a chance.
My feet carry me to the lighthouse entrance, my hair blowing wild in the wind. I’m freezing. Only when I am inside do I realize how cold I am. In here, the wind stops hissing. The waves stop crashing against the killer rocks.
Killer.
Am I a killer?
I clutch my stomach, sick again as I make my way up the winding stairs to that small room. I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was so cold. It’s always so cold here, but that day, there was snow on the ground and a new storm was brewing. Mom’s hair was a wild halo around her face. She was so beautiful with all those dark waves and her pale face, with her strange eyes that I realize now had that sheen to them in her manic periods… when she was off her meds.
She’d been crying. She’d cried so much her face was pink and puffy. She kept petting my hair so hard it hurt. I remember when she let go of my hand. When she stopped trying to pull me free from the railing I clung to because I didn’t want her to take me. I knew what would happen if she did. She stuffed the note into my pocket then, and held my face and asked me to forgive her.
Is that what it is? Is it the words forgive me? Is that why I belonged to Santos from the first moment he spoke them to me? Because my mother had said the same two words to me. They were the last thing she said before she killed herself.
I remember crying, reaching out for her, because even at five I knew what she was going to do. I knew. But she didn’t look back after that. Once the door closed, it was only seconds before it was over.
I didn’t see her fall. I didn’t hear her body hit the ground. If she screamed, it was swallowed up by the ocean waves constantly crashing against the rocks. But I knew when she was gone. A stillness settled over the place like nothing I’d ever felt before. The stillness of death. The finality of it.
When I reach the top of the stairs, I drop to a seat, unable to go on. It’s dark. The only light is from a lamp that burns at the window. My stomach churns, my head throbs, and I swear I can taste his blood. Setting the letter opener down on the ground beside me, I rub my face. Salty tears burn my eyes, leaving streaks along my cheeks. It takes me a full minute before I look up, look around. I listen for that stillness. That same silence. I press the heels of my hands into my face to stop the tears, but they just keep coming. I press them to the space over my heart to stop the pain but that, too, just keeps hurting.
What happens now? What happens now that Santos is gone?
Just then, lighting breaks overhead, illuminating a shadow that moves along the window. I let out a scream and scramble to my feet, tripping backward against the wall. I don’t know what I’m expecting. Who I’m expecting. My mother’s ghost? Santos’s?
Sirens wail in the distance. I shake my head to clear it. There’s no one here. It’s just me. My heart thuds against my chest as I look around. What am I doing here? There’s only one thing to be done, isn’t there?
I shift my gaze to the door that leads to the catwalk. I remember my father talking about the lock they’d installed after my mother’s death. Too late, he’d said. She’d have found another way, I think.
Confused, I go to it, turn the handle to push it open. The sound it makes is one I’d forgotten, but now that I hear it again, it reminds me of that night fifteen years ago, the night my mother jumped to her death. It’s like fate when I step out onto the wooden planks laid over the damaged catwalk and stand in the fury of the storm.
Are you so unaccustomed to being wanted?
He’d wanted me.
And now he’s gone. I made sure of that.
A sob breaks from my chest, and I take a step toward the railing, ignoring the yellow tape warning of danger.
I can almost see my mother as she disappeared that night, her hair a dark river down her back. My hands shake as I reach for the rail. I grip it and make myself look down. Rain slashes my face, my clothes, soaking me through as the sea crashes against the cliffs, the water so high the rocks are almost invisible.
Is this where she went over? I don’t know. I close my eyes, listen to the chaos around me, and wonder what I’m doing here. Am I going to jump, too? Is that why I came?
“Stop!”
I gasp, startled, spinning around, the railing wobbly behind me. The beacon pans over the sea and between that and the lamp at the window, I can make out the face of the man who must have been the shadow I saw. Except that it doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t belong here. I bring my trembling hands before me holding the letter opener between myself and the hulking man with the scar that circles his neck. The cool, steel eyes trap me as they take in the state of me.
Thiago Avery’s eyes.
He holds his hands out, palms up, and looks me over. I look down at myself, too, to see what he sees. The bloody mess of me. I wonder if he hears the low keening coming from inside my chest over the fury of the storm.
“What did you do?” he asks, taking a step toward me.
I walk backwards away from him, away from the door that leads back into the lighthouse.
He follows me, but he’s cautious. “Stop. It’s not safe.”
The wind seems to grow angrier as I look over my shoulder and down at the sea below.
“You can’t be here, Madelena,” he says.
When I look back at him, he’s closer. “Get away from me!” I yell, brandishing the letter opener between us.
He looks at it, then back at me. I see another shadow through the window, this one inside the lighthouse. I’m sure I’m not imagining it when Thiago glances at it as the shape moves.
“Give me that,” Thiago says.
I look up at his open palm and shake my head.
“I am not your enemy,” he says, taking another step toward me. I’m almost out of space. The railing is broken, and the catwalk is closed off a few feet from me. I can’t go around. That shape inside moves again, and again, Thiago glances at it. When he looks back at me, he seems angry. “Your enemy is much closer to home, and in his veins is the blood of a monster.”
The sound of the heavy metal door opening has us both turning, me trying to see around Thiago, him looking over his shoulder. Between the darkness and the rain, I can’t see who it is. What I know, though, is that I need to get away. Heavy footsteps approach us, and as I look around me for an escape, the railing I’m holding onto whines.
A moment later, there’s a sharp crack, and I scream as it gives way and cling to it as my feet lose purchase on the slippery planks.
Thiago calls out my name, lunging toward me and just as my grip beings to slide from the railing and I’m sure I’m going to go over, a hand wraps around my wrist and I’m jerked to a stop, jerked again when he hauls me up onto the catwalk. The air is knocked out of me for the second time this night as I crash against the wall, my head hitting unyielding stone. My vision falters, going dark, stars dancing. I’m going to be sick again.
Thiago says something, or someone else does. I force my eyes to open. Lightning crashes, illuminating the sky, and I see Thiago. His attention is on the man who is a shadow to me. Just before the night falls dark again, I watch that shadow lunge for Thiago.
I scream, rain pelting me when I look up to see that terrible scar circling Thiago’s neck, the cold steel of his eyes, and finally, the terror in those eyes as a hand slams against his chest. Thiago reaches for that hand, managing to catch the wrist momentarily, but it’s too late. He’s lost his balance.
Something clatters to the catwalk, bouncing and I hear the grunt of air leaving Thiago’s lungs and then the scream as his body goes toppling over the edge, that broken railing hanging useless behind him.
Before I can process what’s just happened, before I can scream or even breathe, the man who just pushed Thiago over grips my jaw and slams my head so hard against the wall that this time, there are no stars, no blurry vision. No momentary reprieve. There is only darkness.