It’s worse than hearing her in the elevator.
That’s what I’m thinking about when she gets on her knees and begs, her eyes shining up at me with so much desperation that I have to curl my fists to stave off the impulse to snatch her up and take her away.
What’s done is done.
It’d be a lie to say it doesn’t give me a rush of satisfaction to see her looking at me like that. Helpless and so fucking willing. She’d blow me if I asked, and she’d do it right in front of her own father. She’d beg and scrape. She’d finally say the words I’ve been hungry to hear, all these years.
I love you, Nick.
But it’d be fake.
There was a time that wouldn’t have even bothered me much. The words would have been enough—the curl of them on her lips, the shape of my name on her tongue. I would have been okay with the fantasy. But now, I know better. I’m chasing a figment, the wavy mirage never within reach.
Lavinia Lucia will never love me, and I hate her for it. I hate her for not unfurling. I hate her for keeping the deepest parts of herself away from me. I hate her for enjoying my dick enough to spasm in pleasure around it and then crying herself sick because of it. I hate her for never giving me a chance, but most of all, I hate her for only being able to see the mangled, deficient parts of me. I’ve taken lives, carved up bodies, dragged hookers from abusive John to abusive John, but none of them ever made me feel as fucking unworthy as her.
I can either spend the rest of my days striking out against that certainty, steadfast until she’s black and blue beneath the burden of my hurt, or I can do this.
Perez steps forward, eyes zeroing in on the pale patch of skin below her jaw. I’d sucked a mark there as I fucked her into a sore, gasping mess, and from the flicker of disdain in his eyes, I can tell he realizes it. “So you took her for a spin, huh, Bruin? Must not have been all it was hyped up to be.” He smirks, looking her up and down. “I get it. Great tits, but she’s kind of bony. I’ll fatten her up, though—chain her to the bed, put a couple babies in her. She’ll do.”
Lavinia stands rigidly between us, unwilling to move forward or back, and I have to clench down on the instinct to pull the gun from my waistband and bury a bullet into this piece of shit’s head. The thought of him touching her, claiming her, using her up like his cum dumpster… it makes my insides writhe like they’re on fire. The only saving grace to the rising tide of fury within is the knowledge that she won’t be getting pregnant anytime soon. The implant I paid for is still nestled securely in her upper arm. It certainly helps that his right arm is in a cast, a bandage still concealing the sad stump of the finger I’d cut off.
He can only have her because I’m letting him.
He strides forward, casually noting, “Since you were so nice about returning her, I guess I’ll let the fact you’ve soiled my property slide.” But when he approaches her, reaching out to grab her arm, she rears her head back. I see it coming from a mile away—can clearly remember the force she likes to use, and the stunning accuracy with which she uses it.
She spits right into his face.
There’s a moment of stillness, Perez’s eyes slamming shut with the wince of the impact. My lips twitch involuntarily, but then he balls a fist and slams it into her cheek, sending her stumbling back.
I’ve tried not to give much thought to slapping her the other night. I was worked up and on edge from meeting with the Lords’ tracker guy, feeling like a string pulled too taut. It was going to snap—if not at her, then somewhere else. It didn’t feel good to do it. There was no sense of satisfaction. No inner swell of pleasure.
I haven’t gotten more than two hours of sleep since.
So when I pull my gun, some of the anger is pointed uselessly inward, still pissed at myself for being weak, for only showing Lavinia the most rotten parts of myself.
But Perez is who I point the barrel at.
“Drop it, Bruin.” Lionel is standing back, his own pistol pulled. “No need to make this messy, son. Walk away.”
“I’m not your fucking son,” I grind out, watching Lavinia gain her bearings.
Perez doesn’t give her time to fully reorient herself, thrusting out to grasp her by a handful of hair. “Don’t worry,” he snarls into her face. “I’ll make a good little bitch out of you, eventually.”
I flinch against the word, remembering the comment that set the whole night off.
“You’re so good at being someone’s bitch.”
I don’t walk away because Lionel orders me to. I walk away because I know if I don’t, I’ll kill one of them. It skitters beneath my skin like a livewire, the need to rend and destroy. Mayhem. That’s the South Side way. Only it’s the West End’s way, too. The fists of Forsyth always strike back.
But my hands are tied.
I speed away from the warehouse like I’m being chased, fisting the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles and tendons twinge.
The first stoplight I reach, I bash the heel of my palm against the wheel. “Fuck!” I do it again, wishing it were Perez beneath my fist. “Fucking fuck, fuck, fuck!”
I already wish I could take it back, but what would be the point? Keeping her chained to my bed? Putting my babies into her? Watching as the spark slowly fades from her eyes, turning her into a dead, empty thing? That’s not the Lavinia I want.
I want the girl who kicks me in the face. I want the mouthy little shit who spits into the faces of men who can’t have her. I want the bitch who’ll slash a guy’s stomach open for having the nerve to touch her. The irony isn’t lost on me that all the things I love about her have been driven in one way or another by her hatred for me. But goddamn it, I’d wanted so badly to feel her softness. To drag her up against me at night and sink into the sweet scent of her. Foolishly, I’d imagined her affection. Fingers running through my hair. Kisses pressed into the skin of my neck. The weight of her body on top of mine as she took her pleasure from me.
I get the call when I’m halfway across town, putting as much mileage as possible between me and the warehouse. I get a glance at the screen and gnash my teeth, fumbling to answer. “What?!” I snap, not ready to deal with how my brother is going to react to my unilateral decision to dispose of the Duchess. The image of her on her knees like that begging me not to leave her is still burned into my retinas like a sick slideshow.
“Nick. I need you to come up to the cliffs,” Sy says, voice low and full of a weight that brings me up short. “Now,” he stresses, and I know that strain in his voice. I’ve heard it every night since Tate’s death, my brother’s voice over the phone, thick with something dreadful.
Not even giving it a second thought, I slam on the brakes and spin into a sharp U-turn, tires squealing off the pavement. The cliffs are outside of town, overlooking the river. I haven’t been there in years, and I doubt either of them has either. “Is he…?”
“He’s…” he pauses, voice rough. “He’s not okay, Nicky. He needs… I need your help.”
Sy hasn’t called me by that name since before I left for South Side, blind with grief and defiance and the impulse to hurt. Two years hasn’t beat it out of me and I doubt it ever will, but it has taught me that my brother’s been hurting just as much.
“Be there in ten,” I say, hanging up as I stomp the gas pedal.
The ride is quiet and filled with the pervasive scent of Lavinia’s shampoo, still lingering in the cabin. I try to put her out of my mind, focused on the task ahead as I reach the old dirt road. I turn down the path, going slower than I’d like over the potholes and rocks. It’s just past four in the morning—too early for the outdoorsmen and too late for the rowdy high school kids who come up here to party. I know, because we were those kids.
When my headlights cut across the clearing, I stop the car next to Sy’s, gravel spewing from the force. Remy’s motorcycle is next to the narrow clearing in the trees, the trail leading up to the part of the cliffs called Widow’s Rock. It’s dark, but my eyes adjust easily, the large moon hanging by the horizon leading the way. The incline is steep, but levels off at the top, the ground turning to a craggy granite. I haven’t been up here in ages, but it’s not a surprise this is where Remy came to have a breakdown.
This is where it all started—or, I guess, ended. It’s the before and after. The place that caused the fracture between us. It feels almost poetic that this is where I’ve been called after the hellish night I just went through with Lavinia.
Dead girls, all around.
These last few weeks have obviously been a buildup for Remy—the dreams, the benders, the nonsensical rambling. Maybe it’s the transition to Duke, or maybe it’s been her, another girl circling us, wary yet tenacious. Maybe he wasn’t ready for that.
I sure as hell wasn’t.
As I approach the figures in the distance, I notice Remy pacing back and forth along the edge of the cliff, backlit by the pale moonlight. The glowing ember of a cigarette burns between his fingertips, his eyes red and ringed in purplish smudges. His free hand is thrust in his hair, tugging it into wild peaks. I don’t need to look him in the eye to understand what’s happening here. I can feel the erratic current rolling off of him. My brother stands a few feet away, neck tense, his hands flat at his sides. He’s trying to stay calm and in control, but Remy is a live-wire laying on the edge of a very deep pool.
“Hey,” I say lightly, crossing over the rock, “what’s going on?”
“Nicky,” Remy says, eyes flashing when he sees me. “I’ve got it all figured out. I mean, mostly—it’s mostly figured out. Things are still…” The ember of the cigarette bobs between his forefinger and thumb as he jabs his temple. “They’re still fucking weird, but I think I’ve got it.” Sy and I watch nervously as Remy paces toward the edge, pointing down. “Look at this. Look at it.”
I shoot my brother a look, but he just presses his lips into a tense line. “He won’t let me get any closer,” he says, voice low.
But Remy hears him and he spins around, snapping, “Because you don’t listen, Sy! I’m not crazy!” To me, he says, “I’ll show you, Nicky. I’ll show you, and then you’ll understand.”
Sy’s eyes flick to mine and he’s utterly silent, but I get the message he’s sending me loud and clear. Do what I can to keep him calm—to keep him alive.
Squaring my shoulders, I march up the rock, spine rippling with the currents of energy Remy is putting out. He’s restless as I approach, pacing away only to pace back, walking in tight, aborted circles. The closer I get, the tighter the circles become, until he’s reaching out and grabbing my shoulder, shoving me toward the edge.
It’s a steep drop into nothingness, the river below quiet and still, barely rippling. It’s like the air around us is holding its breath, not even a breeze.
“Look,” Remy says, breathless with some strange anticipation. “Look at it, down there.”
I chance a better peek over the edge, shrugging. “It’s the river, Remy.”
He makes a sharp, frustrated sound. “Don’t look at the river; look at what’s on top of it.”
I squint into the dark, trying to find a boat or a figure—something distinctive against the backdrop of the water’s reflection of the night sky. But there’s nothing. I look up at him, shaking my head in confusion. “There’s nothing down there.”
Huffing, he pinches the cigarette between his lips to reach into his back pocket, pulling out his phone. He begins thumbing through it, and when he turns the screen, thrusting it in my face, it’s a photo of a row of canvases. They’re the ones in his room—the half-finished paintings of a night sky. He’s always talking about that now. Falling into the sky. Flying into the stars. Some such nonsense.
“The stars,” he says, pushing the screen closer. “Don’t you get it?” When I meet his gaze, his eyes are wide and hopeful. He must see the bewilderment on my face because he releases a tight, irritated growl and thrusts a finger toward the river. “I didn’t fall into the stars! I was remembering the reflection, Nicky. I fell into the fucking river.” His eyes follow the tip of his finger, something hard and haunted crossing his features. “I don’t remember hitting the surface. I must have passed out or hit my head—I’m not sure.” His fingers return to tugging at his hair, forehead creased.
I look over my shoulder at Sy, who’s clearly struggling to hear. “When did this happen?”
This question just seems to inflame him more. “You’re not listening!”
“I’m listening!” I bark, throwing my hands out wide. “But you need to start telling me something, Remy, because right now, you just look like a fucking lunatic who’s standing on the edge of a cliff! Seriously, dude, take stock for a second!”
His fingers go still in his hair, and then begin rubbing. Morosely, he frowns. “Okay, that’s fair.”
“I believe you,” I promise, because that’s always been Remy’s problem. “I know you talk in these winding fucking riddles and everyone writes you off, but not me.” I make sure he’s looking me in the eye when I add, “Never me. You just have to give me something to work with.”
This seems to make some of the tension in his neck bleed away. “I can show you.” Suddenly he’s stalking away from the cliff, to the north side of the rock. I throw Sy a look and we follow him, but it’s only to the boundary where the lush grasses meet the granite.
“There,” he says, pointing his cigarette into the grass. He stares, voice going gruff. “The yellow flowers.” There’s a patch of wildflowers scattered like weeds, and even in the dark, I recognize them as the ones my mom had on her table the other night. Remy’s body vibrates with a shiver when he adds, “She was laying here.”
Sy and I realize he’s talking about Tate at precisely the same second, both of us sucking in a sharp burst of air. Without wanting to, I find myself imagining it. Her body. Lifeless and cold. I came here the day after she died, trying to find the blood—the evidence.
I figured she died on the rock.
And then Remy says, “I saw her.” He tilts his head, looking pensive. “She looked so peaceful. Like she was just… stargazing.”
“What?” Sy stares at him with a baffled expression. “You weren’t here when they found her, Remy. You were in Saint Mary’s being—”
“I wasn’t here when they found her,” he agrees, cutting in. Looking between us, he seems anything but crazy when he says, “I was here when they shot her.”
My response comes instantly, every hair on my neck standing at attention. “Who?”
Remy shakes his head. “The red lights I kept seeing… I think they were taillights. I can remember the gun going off. I remember seeing her laying here. I remember the way the gunshot smelled, and the black glass of the lake, and then I remember falling into the river.” He looks up at me, intense but perfectly lucid. “I think I was trying to get away, Nicky.”
“Don’t encourage this.” Sy tells me, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Tate killed herself, Remy. You know this. We’ve talked about this.”
Before Remy can argue, I ask, “Why is this just coming out now?” I’d known from the start that the police were full of shit. That there was no way Tate did this to herself. It didn’t track. Sy never believed it. Remy? He was gone—locked up. I spent two years in South Side searching for clues, digging up dirt. The only person from home I kept in contact with was my dad. Manny Perilini keeps secrets better than anyone I know, and he would only keep mine if I promised to keep him in the loop, checking in weekly. Sometimes I’d come to him with paper trails or rumors going around down on the Avenue and we’d talk it through like a puzzle, struggling to find some link.
But the Lords were clean.
Well… not clean. Daniel had so many skeletons in his closet, he was basically running a mausoleum. But nothing connected to Tate—nothing that would make me suspect any of them even gave half a shit about her, if they even knew she existed.
Remy gives me a grim look, replying. “My dad. What’s his number one rule?”
Sy and I know this like the back of our hands and we recite it automatically. “No scandals.”
The Maddox family is old money, with all the trappings. Reputation. Heritage. Tradition. Power. And none of them are as hard-assed about it as Remy’s dad. Sy and I used to find this hilarious—Timothy Maddox running after his troubled son, always wrestling down any inkling of vulgarity. It was like watching someone attempt to make a fish breathe air.
Remy pulls something else out of his pocket—a folded piece of paper. He snaps it straight, thrusting it toward me and Sy. “This is a dispatch report made three hours before Tate’s body was found. Someone saw a young male wandering along the road. Read it.”
I take the paper and squint to make out the words, but Sy is already there with his phone, illuminating the page with the glow of his screen. The dispatch log describes a call reporting someone disoriented along the access road leading south. Injured. Wet. The person was picked up by…
“Your cousin?” I look up, and Remy’s nodding.
“He picked me up and… I guess he took me to my dad once he realized something was wrong.” His jaw goes tight when he looks away, back to the river. “You know the rest. My dad put me into Saint Mary’s, and I don’t know what happened there, but they did… something.” He cringes, digging a tattooed knuckle into his temple. “Some kind of mind control.”
Sy finally speaks up, voice dry. “Mind control? Remy, you realize how ridiculous that sounds?”
But I don’t think it sounds ridiculous at all.
I mean, yeah, the mind control thing does. But Timothy Maddox has more money than almost anyone in this town, and Remy’s mind was fragile before he apparently witnessed his best friend being gunned down. Throw some trauma in his brain and get him all turned around? I can see Remy losing the threads of what’s real.
I fold the paper back up, asking Remy, “Tell me what else you remember.”
He gets this brightness in his eyes—a spark of elation and relief—and begins, “This is the best part. Because I jumped—I know I did—but here’s the thing: I wasn’t alone.” He dashes back to the cliff, ignoring Sy’s muttered curse, and glances over his shoulder to make sure I’m following. “The stars, right?” He sounds breathless and too alive as he glances down at the water. “I saw Vinny, and she reminded me of them, because she fell into the stars with me. It’s the first thing I remembered. I dreamed about it.”
Sy catches up, face twisting. “Wait, you’re saying Lavinia was here?”
My stomach sinks at the sound of her name, and for a moment, I’m so caught up in wondering where she is now—is he touching her, hurting her, fucking her—that I almost miss Remy’s reply.
“I wasn’t seeing Lavinia,” he says, a wild fervency in his eyes as he looks between us. “It was someone else. Someone who had Vinny’s hair and lips and eyes.”
Sy asks, “What does that even mean?” but it’s already clicking in my brain.
Remy turns to look at the river over his shoulder, a ghost clouding his eyes. “It means I jumped from this cliff with Leticia Lucia.”
We arrive back at the tower beneath the dim glow of dawn, tired and dragging. I unlock the door, all the while thinking how pointless that’ll be now. Mostly, I’m fighting the impulse to run upstairs and tell Lavinia about her sister—even though I don’t actually have much to tell. She’d want to hear it, though. Somehow, I just know that. I know it just like I know that wherever she is right now, she’s hating me for what I’ve done.
We climb the stairs slowly, with heavy steps and ticking brains. If Leticia, Remy, and Tate were at Widow’s Rock that night, then I can’t for the fucking life of me figure out why. Leticia was North Side Royalty. Maybe she went there to kill one of them. Maybe Remy’s got it wrong. Maybe she didn’t jump with him, maybe he pushed her. Maybe she pushed him. Maybe Leticia killed Tate and Remy followed her over the edge of the cliff.
My mind whirrs with the possibilities, and the only thing that brings it to a halt is stepping through the last door to a quiet, dark, empty living room. I stand there for a moment as Remy and Sy walk inside, going about the rituals of dropping their keys, taking off their shoes and jackets, quiet as they wind down. It hangs around us ominously, these new morsels of knowledge we’ve gained.
Somehow, they’ve just raised more questions.
And then Remy starts up the spiral staircase to the loft.
I’ve noticed him doing that more lately—seeking her out to check the star inked beside her hip—so it doesn’t surprise me. It does, however, make me tense when he comes back down. He doesn’t even look concerned, detouring into my bedroom.
It’s only when he steps out, taking a cursory peek into his own, that he turns to me. “You see Vinny anywhere?” His eyes flick to the door leading up to the belfry, and he doesn’t even wait for an answer.
He just starts walking to it.
I drop my keys loudly into the bowl beside the door. I guess I can do that now. I suppose it’s fine to take the gun out of my waistband and leave it right on the table, pulling out the clip first.
“Lavinia’s not here.”
The announcement emerges in a muted, solemn voice, and I feel more than see the two of them turn to look at me.
There’s a long beat of silence, and then Sy’s defensive voice. “I dropped her off. I made sure she was locked in before I left.”
“I bet you did,” I mutter, remembering what she looked like, writhing on top of him.
But Remy’s more perceptive and he lands heavily from the bottom step, eyes boring into me. “What did you do, Nicky?”
I shrug my jacket off, busying myself with the routine. “I cut a deal with the Counts.”
When I finally raise my gaze to Remy’s, I’m met with his tensed jaw, a look of comprehension stealing his features. “You gave her to them.”
I don’t say anything at first, annoyed that I have to explain myself. We all knew she was more mine than theirs, but now they’re looking at me expectantly, waiting for an explanation. “Lionel was coming for her, anyway. There was some kind of deal that we didn’t know about. Some bullshit between him and Daniel. I just saved him a trip.”
Remy twitches.
And then he barrels at me, full speed.
I have no time to react, and neither does Sy, before Remy slams into me. His hands fist in my shirt, lips distorted in a snarl. “What did you do? What the fuck did you do?!”
I shove him off, barking, “Why do you care?! Neither of you even wanted her! We can get another Duchess.” I look at Sy, hoping to find an ally. “You wanted Verity, didn’t you? Now’s your chance.”
Hotly, Sy clarifies, “I never said I wanted Verity.”
But Remy jabs a finger into my chest, eyes aflame. “She belongs to all of us. It’s not your place to sell her out.”
“Yes, it fucking is.” I slap his hand away. “Lavinia was mine. She was always mine!” I look between them, Remy and Sy, and give them as much honesty as I can muster. “She didn’t want us. She didn’t want me, she didn’t want either of you, and she sure as fuck didn’t want to be trapped here. What was I going to do? Set her free to be gunned down in the street?” Breathing hard, I ignore the twinge in my chest and let the words bitterly spill from my mouth. “I gave her what she wanted.”
Remy shakes his head, looking at me in that way I hate. As if I’ve betrayed him. As if he doesn’t know me. “I need her.”
My face screws up. “You need her? For fuck’s sake, you didn’t even know her!”
“She keeps me on the ground!” he argues, a thread of desperation in his voice. “Neither of you even know. You weren’t here when I went up to the belfry, but—” He pauses, eyes flicking to Sy, and there’s a wildness in them that confuses me. “I couldn’t tell what was real. I was up there.” He points to the ceiling. “I was up on the edge, and I would have jumped. If it meant waking up from the dream and having Tate again, I would have stepped right off.”
Sy gapes at him, baffled. “What are you talking about?”
“The day I cut my arm.” Remy thrusts his arm out, showing the two purple scars. “It happened in the belfry, and I was going to jump. Not,” he stresses to Sy, “to kill myself. That’s not what I wanted to do. But everything got so mixed up and it just seemed like the answer.”
Sy steps back like he’s been physically pushed, his expression morphing to horror. “You were going to jump off the fucking tower?”
Remy looks like he wants to argue, mouth twisting into several aborted denials. But he doesn’t. He visibly clamps down on them, looking Sy in the eye as answers. “Yeah, I was. But she stopped me.” He rushes forward, expression urgent. “I can’t explain why. Maybe it’s that my memory was all mixed up, confusing her for her sister. Or maybe it’s because she understood what was happening when no one else bothered to ask. But when I look at her star—when I count the points…” He lifts his hands in a wide shrug and they land limply against his legs. “It helps. She helps.”
“So tattoo the star on me,” I try, mentally categorizing where my nearest patch of un-inked skin might be.
Remy slides me a wry look. “No offense, brother, but it’s not the same. I need her skin. Don’t give me that look,” he says to Sy.
“You don’t need her skin,” Sy says, sneering. “You just want her pussy.”
Remy snipes back, “Don’t act like she’s never gotten your dick hard.”
Sy bursts, “Well, she’s obviously not our problem anymore! And personally, good riddance. She was nothing but a complication. Find yourself a new set of skin, Remy.”
Remy watches the two of us, jaw going taut, before he storms away, disappearing into his bedroom with a wall-shuddering slam of the door. Silently, Sy does the same thing, taking the path to his room in a slow, straight line.
Once they’re gone, it’s just me.
I stare up into the empty loft, imagining I can see the shape of her body beneath the nest of blankets she’d made. I wonder when it’ll fade, this nagging question in the back of my head. Where is she? What are they doing to her? Is she kicking their asses? Is she breaking free?
My musings are interrupted by the appearance of a tiny white paw peeking through the bars. I approach the spiral staircase like I’m walking through a fog, taking each step like I’d rather be doing anything else. It’s dark up here, but the second my head clears the height of the platform, I see him.
The Archduke—Archie—is pacing a circle around her blanket, sniffing, searching.
He was downstairs when I left, which means he somehow managed to clumsily climb his way up the staircase with those stubby little legs.
“She’s not here,” I tell him, knowing that he’s looking for her. “She had to go away.”
Archie turns to me and then lets out a raspy little kitten cry.
I’m drawn to the platform, taking a look over her space. It’s clean, but cluttered. The tool box sits near the door that leads to the belfry. A stack of books about horology stacked next to it. I walk over to her nest and bend, lifting the pillows. Underneath is the box I stole from under Lionel’s floorboards, the bands still securely in place. Next to me, Archie climbs my foot, butting his little head against my leg. I look down at him and watch as he rubs the side of his cheek against it, and I spend a second wondering if I’ll ever feel as much like absolute shit as I do right now.
I pick both the kitten and the box up, tucking him into the crook of my arm, a warm reminder in the cold silent tower below. The three of us have been at odds for a long time. Lavinia was just another wedge between us and, apparently, so was her sister.
Somehow, I think on my way back to my room, Archie squirming against my side, North Side was involved with the murder of my best friend, and I’m more resolved than ever to figure out who the fuck killed her.
