“Snow,” someone whisper shouts from a few feet away, but my eyes remain glued shut. There’s something at the edge of my memory that I don’t want to remember, and maybe if I can keep my eyes shut and my head buried in the sand, I won’t have to deal with whatever it is.
“Snow!” they say louder this time, the voice so familiar it almost pulls me from the abyss of blissful ignorance. “I swear to God, if you don’t wake up, I’m going to kill you myself when we get out of this.”
Wynter.
The car.
Being followed.
Hitting my head.
Memories crash into me all at once and knock the air from my lungs as panic takes hold. My eyes fly open, and I’m faced with my sister hanging in front of me, her wrists tied and suspended from the beams above. It’s only now I realize my own wrists and shoulders are screaming in pain, the rope around my wrists cutting into me until warm droplets of blood run down my arms.
“Oh, thank God,” she says, looking around the space.
I follow her eye line and frown in confusion. Where the hell are we?
Burned rubble surrounds us, the remnants of the building scattered around the ground until they’re completely unrecognizable. The light is dim, only the moon shining through the stained glass above us illuminates the space.
Wait. Stained glass.
I take another, more frantic, look around us, and my stomach sinks. Oh my god. We’re in the church Elijah and I were married in. The one Rayne and Emerson and my parents all said their vows. It’s unrecognizable after the events of my wedding day, no longer the church I always knew and loved.
I haven’t given much thought to what happened here after Elijah got me out, too wrapped up in feelings of guilt and inadequacy, but seeing it now makes my heart ache painfully in my chest.
“Are you okay?” Wynter asks quietly. “Your head is bleeding and I think you’ve pulled your stitches.”
I follow her gaze down my body to where crimson red seeps through the fabric of my gray sweater. “I think I’m okay. Are you? How’s the baby?”
Wynter lets out a breath and winces as it jostles her bleeding wrists. “I’m okay. The impact of the crash was minimal, and they didn’t drug me. They just put a bag over my head, so I couldn’t see where we were going.”
“The baby?” I ask, my eyes falling to her rounding stomach.
“She’s fine. She’s kicking away in there.” She squeezes her eyes shut to stamp down the emotions rising to the surface. Her maternal instincts are kicking in, even if the baby is still months from being born.
“I meant what I said, Wyn. If you get the chance to run, do it. Don’t worry about me, just worry about getting the two of you to safety.”
“I’m not going to leave you, Snow,” she whispers.
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do. If you get the chance, run. Don’t look back. Just get yourself and my niece the hell out of here.”
Tears slide down her cheeks despite her best efforts to hold them at bay.
I tear my eyes away from her before her gentle sobs can beckon my own and take another look at the debris around us. The doors and low windows are boarded up, meaning none of them are the escape route we need. There has to be an entry point though, because how else would they have brought us in?
Before I can figure it out myself, the sound of a door opening behind me has a cold sweat gathering at my brow. Being alone in a creepy, derelict church where I married Elijah was one thing, but facing the unknown enemy who has been meticulously destroying our lives is something else entirely.
The sound of heels clicking against charred concrete echoes through the church, and I watch as confusion tugs at Wynter’s expression. It’s a woman? The person who has been stealing our shipments, and taking out Elijah’s dealers, and who orchestrated the attack on my wedding day, is a woman?
“Ladies,” she greets as she comes into my line of sight. Holy shit. She’s stunning. The woman has long, deep brown hair that curls down her back. Her lithe body is adorned with an expensive-looking red pantsuit, but it’s her eyes that draw me to them. There’s something almost familiar about this woman, but I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what it is. “It’s so nice of you to wake up.”
“Apologies. It’s really quite rude of me to pass out with a head injury. I’ll try to remember that in the future.” I can’t hold back the snark in my tone. What harm is it going to do at this point? And the more attention she gives me, the less she will focus on Wynter.
I’m met with a deep blue glare, but I can’t bring myself to regret my words. Whoever this bitch is, she’s expecting a pair of spoiled Mafia princesses, and that’s not who Wynter and I are. Not anymore at least. Perhaps that’s who we were before our parents died, but we’ve both grown into women they would be proud of and ones who shouldn’t be underestimated.
She tears her attention from me and turns it to Wynter, taking steps toward her and giving me a chance to observe her closer. The outfit she’s wearing is obscenely expensive, right down to her Louboutin pumps, which means she has plenty of disposable income, especially when she decided to wear it to a decrepit, burned church where she has hostages hanging from rickety beams.
If I were an evil mastermind, I’d be doing it in a more modest outfit, and flat shoes.
“Your sister has always had a smart mouth, hasn’t she?” The stranger approaches Wynter before placing her open palm on her growing belly. “The miracle of pregnancy,” she murmurs.
I tug at my restraints, hissing through the agony in my wrists until the wood above me creaks from the pressure I’m putting it under.
She turns back to me with annoyance. “You’re wasting your time. Even if you manage to get free, the building is surrounded. There’s no escape for either of you,” she pauses before eyeing Wynter’s stomach again. “Or all three of you, I suppose.”
“Who are you?” Wynter asks, her voice calm and even. The mask she wears for the world has slid into place, and she looks as composed as she does in the boardroom making million-dollar deals.
Our captor laughs, her head dropping back and her dark hair swaying from side to side. “I thought you were smarter than that, Wynter. I thought if anyone could work it out, it would be you.”
“What are you…” She trails off as she stares at the woman closer, the slightest hint of recognition flickering in her eyes.
She huffs out a bored sigh and steps toward the only seat in the building before lowering herself to the clean metal fold-up chair. “I don’t really have all day for one of you to work it out, so let me tell you a little story.” She crosses one leg over the other and places both hands on her knee, settling in for whatever tale she thinks we give a fuck about. “Once upon a time, there were two crime families who ruled Chicago. The Russo family and the Masters family. As a way to unite the two families and bring unity to the underworld, the Russo’s married their baby sister off to the head of the Masters’ organization, and the two of them had a son, Everett. But before that, before the Russo’s concocted the plan to sell off their sister for the good of their organization, Daniel Masters had a woman on the side that no one knew about. She was young and beautiful, but she wasn’t what was best for the family, so he shipped her and their daughter off on the same day he married his new wife.”
A small gasp leaves my lips as the pieces fall together. She isn’t saying what I think she’s saying… is she?
“You’re lying,” Wynter whispers, the words barely audible despite the deathly quiet surrounding us.
“You’re more naive than I thought if you think that.” She scoffs but doesn’t bother to stand from her seat.
I’m surprised her security team has allowed her in here with no protection, but then again, we’re not exactly a threat right now, strung up and powerless.
“In case you couldn’t put those pieces together, Snow, my name is Annalise Masters, and I’m Everett’s sister.”
No one says anything for long moments as her words wash over us, but there’s no response I can drag up that does the situation justice. The fact that the man I have considered a brother for most of my life has a long-lost sister none of us knew about, there are no words.
“Why are you doing this?” Wynter asks at last. At least one of us could come up with something to say, and I suppose the longer we can keep her talking, the better chance we have of being rescued.
“Because the Masters’ family business should have been handed over to me, not overtaken by a bunch of people who had no ties to the Mafia, and no right inserting themselves into our business.”
I stare at her, confusion milling around in my head. “But you would have been, what, thirteen when your father was killed and our family took over. What on earth do you think you would have done with a Mafia empire?”
“That’s not really the point though, is it?” Annalise hisses. “The point is that l finally have my revenge, and it couldn’t have worked out any more perfectly if I tried. A Russo.” She gestures to me. “A Saint James.” She points to Wynter. “And a Masters.” She smiles fondly as she rubs Wynter’s stomach again. Each time she does it, I get more and more agitated by the movement. “It’s a shame you all have to die, but that’s just the cards you’ve been dealt.”
My eyes clash with Wynter’s and despite her best efforts, fear dances behind the ice blue so similar to my own. I should be scared. This woman is clearly unhinged and threatening to kill us as part of some fucked-up revenge plot, but I have to believe Elijah and my brothers will come for us. I have to believe that the reason Elijah asked about our rings is because the sneaky bastards put trackers in them. And I have to believe that Annalise and whoever works for her aren’t setting a trap for the rest of our family to knock us out in one fell swoop.
I brush my thumb over the delicate platinum band adorned with tiny diamonds and pray to any god who will listen that they’ll find us in time.
“Where have you been all these years?” Wynter asks.
Annalise shrugs. “Here and there. After Daniel sent us away, he would send money every month to take care of us, but when he died, that money stopped. We bounced around for a while, sometimes sleeping in our car, sometimes on the street. It wasn’t much of a life for a young girl, constantly looking over her shoulder, always afraid of being hurt by those stronger than her.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Wynter says genuinely. I’m glad she’s taking the lead to keep her talking, because there are no words for the level of fucked up this situation is. I thought the whole long-lost sibling thing only happened on those trashy tv shows I like to watch when I’m sick, but I was wrong.
Annalise eyes her for a moment before continuing her story. “It wasn’t until I was sixteen that I met Steven. He was older than I was, but he was willing to pay my mother a pretty penny for my hand in marriage, and she took the deal. At the time, he was a small fish, just one of the many players in Los Angeles, but he wasn’t looking at the big picture. He only saw the small time, the drugs, the occasional gun, maybe some information. There was so much more money to be made, he just needed to have the vision.”
Steven? Why does that name sound so familiar?
“Steven Lounder?” The blood has drained from her cheeks, and if possible, she’s paler than she was before.
“So you know of my husband then?” She grins.
Wynter looks to me, her eyes pressing closed for the briefest of moments to gather her composure. “Steven Lounder is a big-time human trafficker. He’s the head of the Lounder Cartel on the West Coast.”
Understanding washes over me and dread settles low in my belly. It explains everything. The shipments that went missing without a trace. The hits we didn’t see coming. The lack of chatter on the street about a new player. There’s nothing new about the Lounder Cartel, and their reach rivals even our own.
“The day I convinced him to start dealing in humans was the day our business really took off. There’s such a market for pretty girls, so many men with fantasies they can’t play out with their wife.” She shakes her head, but her smile remains firmly on her lips. “I thought about selling the two of you. Even knocked up, you’re worth a pretty penny. But if I were to do that, my idiot brother still has a chance to save you, even if you would be bloody and broken long before he could try.”
“What’s your endgame here?” I ask, the words falling from my lips before I can swallow them down. “Say you kill Wynter and I. What next? Everett isn’t the head of the family, and you’re not staking any claim on the Russo family?”
“Smart girl.” She smiles. “You know, I really thought you’d be a bit stupid. You have that whole dumb blonde thing going on and the press, boy oh boy, do they have some colorful opinions of you.” She blows out a whistle. “You’re right. Punishing baby bro is just an added perk to this whole plan. Same as your husband. The Russos ultimately are the reason we were sent away, so they have their own sins to atone for. But although this all started as a revenge plot, it grew into something much larger. It’s an opportunity to expand our business to the East Coast and taking over Chicago’s underworld will only strengthen that. Angelo Russo had the right idea, but your family stood in his way with your bullshit morals.” She rolls her eyes. “Just more reason you never should have had control of the family, and once your brothers are weakened by the loss of the two of you, and Everett is too distracted by his grief to do the job he normally does, it will be easy to take down the rest of the organization, and Elijah. After all, kingdoms always crumble without their queens.”
My chest aches at the thought of Everett losing Wynter and the baby, of Storm and Rayne losing both of us, of Elijah losing me. With each minute that passes, the more nervous I become that they’re not coming, or that they can’t get to us. I can only imagine what’s on the outside of this church, and if every other move Annalise has put into place is any indication, she’s probably two steps ahead.
I’m surprised they didn’t scan us for trackers. That would have been the first thing I would have done, and I’m not an evil mastermind trying to take my revenge. Maybe that’s her plan. Lead them all here to rescue us and kill us all while she has the chance.
“Well ladies, it’s been lovely speaking with you. I’m sure under different circumstances, we could have been friends.” She shrugs. “But I must get going. Places to be, people to see. You know how it is.”
The door behind me pushes open and two heavy sets of footsteps fill my ears, followed by the sound of water splashing against the carpet.
Wynter’s eyes widen as she watches their movements, horror creeping into the edges of her mask.
It’s not until the scent of petrol fills my nostrils that I realize what’s going on, and panic overwhelms me. She’s going to burn us alive.
Out of all the ways I’ve imagined dying, burning to death isn’t high on the list of the ways I want to go. In fact, if I had to rank them, it goes right down the bottom with being hunted by a deformed monster from one of those terrible horror movies Wynter and I used to watch when we were teenagers and sleep together for a week because we thought the villain was coming to get us.
The moment metal drags against metal, followed by the sound of a flame igniting behind me fills my ears, bile rises in my throat and fear grips hold of me until I can’t breathe through it. The panic roaring through my body is all-consuming as my reality settles over me.
I’m going to die.
And what’s worse? I’m going to watch my sister, my best friend, perish right in front of my eyes. I wonder which one of us will succumb to the flames first, who will have to be the last to take a breath and forced to watch the other burn.
The door clicks shut behind me and I’m immediately overcome by a cloud of smoke. Our time is almost up. There’s so much I have left to say to my sister, but I can’t think about saying goodbye.
You are a Saint James, and a Saint James never gives up, a voice in the back of my mind reminds me.
I tug at the ropes above my head, barely holding in the scream of agony shooting down my arms. Blood drips from the cuts on my wrists, but I don’t stop, not even for a moment.
Wynter screams at the top of her lungs. “Help! Someone help us!” The terror in her voice causes a pain in my chest to slice through me, but I can’t allow myself to focus on anything I’m feeling. Instead, I lean into the adrenaline, using it to give me the strength I need to not fall apart.
If that bitch thinks she can take out the whole Chicago Mafia in one swoop, she has another thing coming, and I can’t wait to see the look in her eye when she realizes she’s made the biggest mistake of her life by underestimating us.
