I can’t breathe.
Can’t breathe for the agony crushing my lungs, gripping my heart tightly and squeezing, squeezing so hard that I drop down to my knees as the car pulls away.
Taking the liar with it.
I force myself to swallow, to suck in oxygen as I stagger to my feet and run a hand over my hair in disbelief.
“What the hell just happened?”
My voice is a whisper. And it hurts, it hurts so damn much to think of that moment when I walked into my mother’s bedroom. I didn’t believe Angelica when she told me they were leaving, didn’t want to believe that Anastasia would do that to us. To me.
But Stasi was right where Angelica said she would be. Helping herself to our mother’s jewelry.
I jog back upstairs, heading straight to the dressing room. I want to see if anything is missing.
My eyes flick across the spilled items on the floor. Stasi’s bag sits beside it, and when I check inside, it’s empty.
Another pulse of pain.
Gone. She’s gone.
This is for the best, I tell myself. She’s poison.
But my resolve wavers as I stare at the floor. Something… something doesn’t look right. Frowning, I yank open the drawers and look inside. Piles of jewelry are jumbled up in piles, not in the neat sections they’d normally be.
As if… somebody threw it back inside. In panic.
She wants me to go, and she’s threatening to say things.
I was putting it back.
I don’t want to go.
I don’t want to leave you.
And as I kneel, I see her things tossed in amongst the jewelry. As if… as if she changed her mind, before I walked in. Flipped her bag over.
My fingers brush against a familiar folded note, Stasi’s name scribbled in my spiky handwriting across the front.
There’s nothing else here. None of the clothes paid for by my father. None of the expensive bags, shoes, that he tried to give to her, only giving up when it became clear that she wasn’t interested in any of that.
My breath catches in my chest. These were the things she wanted to take. The only things.
And I stopped her from getting them.
I threw her out.
And then I’m up, sprinting down the hall, taking the stairs three at a time and flying out of the door. “Stasi!”
She can’t possibly hear me. How could she?
But my feet eat up the space between us, pounding at the gravel as I run, faster than I’ve ever fucking run before. The wind whips against my face as I race through the gates, trying desperately to catch just a glimpse of the cab lights.
Maybe, just maybe, they’ve stopped. Pulled over.
I don’t know how I’m ever going to find her otherwise.
I let her go.
I made her go.
Please. I’m sorry. Please.
Because I think I’ve just made a mistake. A fucking terrible mistake.
The image of Angelica’s nails digging into her skin rips into me, and I roar her name again.
And again.
Even as I have to stop, my breathing jagged as my lungs scream for air, and there’s still no sign of her.
She’s gone.
And I let it happen. Made it happen, in my anger, too furious to see what she was trying to tell me, even as she begged. Instead I dragged her out, making her leave her things behind, throwing her at her vile mother as if I was tossing out the trash.
My eyes close.
I don’t know what to do. How to fix this.
But my dad will.
It takes me longer to make my way back to the house. As I reach the courtyard, an engine rumbles behind me, and I whirl around in sudden, desperate hope.
But it’s not her.
Instead, my father pulls up, headlights flashing over my face. The doors open, footsteps crunching on the gravel, and he’s there, his hands on my shoulders.
“What is it?” he says, his head spinning towards the house. “The twins? What happened, Silas?”
I stare at him wordlessly. I don’t even know how to explain it.
But slowly, the words start to tumble out. My father takes a step back, his face paling. His hands fall away from my shoulders as he turns towards the house.
He doesn’t love Angelica. Not the way he loved my mother. I know that. But he liked her well enough, enjoyed her company.
I follow him upstairs, right behind him as he ducks into their bedroom.
“Dad,” I say hoarsely. “I need… I need you to find Anastasia.”
But he’s not listening. He’s digging through the drawer next to his side of the bed, muttering furiously.
“No. No, no, she wouldn’t—,”
He stops. Just… stops. And he turns, a small box in his hand.
“She took them,” he says quietly. And the pain in his voice… I don’t know how to respond to that. Instead, I step forward, looking down at what he’s holding. When he looks up at me, his eyes are wet. “Our wedding rings. Your mothers, and mine.”
There’s a roaring in my ears. “Angelica?”
My father nods slowly, his eyes dropping to the empty box. “I… I should have known, really.”
His voice breaks, and I don’t know what to do.
“Dad,” I whisper, “I’m sorry. But – but we can find them. Get them back.”
Get Anastasia back.
My dad lifts a hand to his chest, massaging it. He looks pale, dazed. “Yes. We’ll – we’ll do that.”
He takes a step. Another step.
“Dad?” I ask warily. He looks… he doesn’t look right.
And I watch in growing horror as my father, my strong, tall father, falls, like a puppet with its strings cut.
He hits the floor too quickly for me to catch him.
I think I cry out. A noise tears from my throat, one I’ve never made before.
And then Rafe and Kit are there, talking rapidly, begging, as I pull my dad into my arms. Pressing shaking fingers against his pulse. But there’s nothing there, nothing to try and save, even as Rafe shouts into the phone, screaming at the emergency services with increasing desperation.
His lips are blue.
Why are his lips blue?
The lights are blue too.
They dance across the wall as they finally arrive, far too late to do anything at all.
“Silas.” Kit grips my shoulder, my little brother. He squeezes gently. “Silas. You need to let him go now. It’s alright.”
His voice breaks.
That’s not right. He shouldn’t be comforting me. It needs to be the other way around.
They don’t… they don’t have anyone else now.
And then I realize, as Rafe’s voice echoes from around me. “Where’s Angelica? Anastasia?”
They don’t know what’s happened.
If they hadn’t done this… if Anastasia had trusted me, then it wouldn’t have happened at all.
My father would not have died from a broken heart.
My brothers would not be orphans.
And maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone.
Slowly, the grief hardens. Solidifies, into anger. Icy, cold anger. And I open my arms to it, embrace the numbness that steals over me as the days turn into weeks, then months. Years.
As I struggle to learn how to do the things my father once did, so easily.
Until he was taken from me. Because of them.
And as the years slip by, I settle into his shoes. Outgrow them, even. Increasing our income, our influence, until even the royal family is reliant on us to subsidize their overblown, flamboyant lifestyle. We become the most influential men in Sorelle, and all I can feel… is numb.
Numb is better than the pain.
But no matter how much money I throw at the search, I can never find them. Angelica and Anastasia are gone, as if they never existed in the first place.
Stasi.
