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As if in answer, my phone starts to ring. Gritting my teeth, I pick up, making sure my voice is calm. “This is a new low, even for you.”
He chuckles. “I’m surprised you came alone. It was brave—but stupid.”
“Come out and face me like a man.”
“As you so often like to remind me, I’m an old man. And old men have the luxury of falling back on their brains as opposed to their brawn. My days of strutting into enemy buildings to face my foes are done, boy,” he hisses. “I want this war done.”
I can hear rumbling in the foundations of the building. And that’s when it hits me. The building is empty and lifeless…
Because it’s about to come down.
“This doesn’t win you the war, Vittorio,” I growl. “My brother will take off your head even if I don’t.”
The foundation creaks like the old man Vittorio claims to be. Even the shutters have started to shake. That’s when I spy the massive teak cabinet in the corner of the room. It looms like something out of a nightmare, huge and overwrought and twisted.
“I had hoped he and the rest of your idiot band of merry fools would accompany you into the building. One stone, many birds, as they say. But you decided to be noble. Disgusting.”
“Even death won’t protect you from me, Vittorio Zanetti,” I warn as the starter explosions begins to pop off around the perimeters of the building. I rush towards the teak cabinet and throw the doors open. I have no idea if this will work, but it’s my only shot. “My ghost will kill you, even if I don’t.”
He’s cackling with laughter when I hang up on him. I have just enough time to shut the teak doors before an earth-shattering boom from the far side of the building splits the world into a million little pieces. The next one might very well be the last thing I ever hear.
I’m fumbling with my phone trying to send off a text to Wren. If these are my final few seconds on earth, I want to spend them writing to her. Leaving her with my last words, my last promises.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I mutter as my fingers fly over the keyboard.
I finish and hit Send, but I don’t know if the message goes out before the closest explosion erupts. Even through the thick wardrobe, it’s awe-inspiring. Death by fire. A fitting end, if it is indeed my end.
Heat and heaviness knock me in every direction at once as the teak cabinet topples on its side. It feels like I’m being crushed to death. No, I am being crushed to death.
If the weight on my chest doesn’t kill me, the dust in my lungs will.
My phone lights up, and even though it’s barely an inch from my fingers I can’t reach it. I can’t move.
The darkness, the heat, the fucking weight… It’s swallowing me up between its black teeth. I desperately want to fight, but the jaws are too strong.
As consciousness starts to fade, I have only one thought. One feeling. One name on my lips.
Wren.
39
WREN
It’s been a while since I’ve had a bad dream, but this one’s a doozy.
I dream that I’m locked in a cage hanging over the ocean and Dmitri is lying on the beach, wrestling with a giant, black serpent with fangs almost as big as he is. I can see the serpent’s moves before he makes them, but my voice is gone. Even when I try to speak, nothing comes out. Only my screams echo across the air towards the sandy wasteland where Dmitri is fighting for his life.
I feel helpless—able to see the future, but unable to make a difference in the outcome.
“Dmitri! He’s coming for your feet! Feint to the left! The left!”
But it’s like some invisible fingers have reached down my throat and ripped my voice clean out. The snake licks its fangs and I know somehow he’s about to go for Dmitri’s head next.
No! I groan on the inside. I can’t watch this. I can’t…
But it’s too late. In a blur of black motion, the serpent has clamped its jaws over Dmitri. One powerful bite and my husband is gone. Where he once stood, there are now only bloody streaks of gore and a wisp of his cologne.
The serpent rears its black head and looks up at me. It rises, uncoiling itself higher and higher and higher until it can look me levelly in the eyes. Its irises are a stunning and terrifying blue.
