“Oh, shut up,” Grace muttered, slightly pink.
Together, the girls dragged the bodies into the closest supply closet, bound and gagged each of them, and locked the door.
“We’re leaving now to give Tock the signal,” Lola told Enne. “You wait here. Once the other lords arrive, you’ll be needed on the stage in the ballroom.”
Enne swallowed, resisting the urge to pull both her friends into a hug. This could be the last time she ever saw Lola and Grace again. After Enne was gone, she liked to think they would both move on. That Lola would enroll in university like she’d clearly always wanted. That Grace would find an ever after softer and frillier than any of Sadie Knightley’s novels.
But the omerta forbid her from letting on that something was wrong, so she said, “Good luck,” when she really meant to say, “Goodbye.”
They each gave her a nod and disappeared out the door, leaving Enne alone to guard the hallway—or so they believed.
But her piece of Levi’s plan was over, and it was time for her own plan to begin.
She repeated her mother’s words to herself—something she hadn’t needed to do in a long while.
Never allow yourself to be lost.
Never let them see your fear.
They steadied her heart, as they always had, and when Enne strode down the hallway, her chin lifted, she looked powerful.
If she was going to die, it would be on her own terms.
As she approached the lobby, where dozens of staff members and whiteboots watched the entrance, Enne reached for her mask and tied it, trembling, over her eyes.
It was the only way to stop Vianca. Because even if this was her casino and her party, this was not her city. Séance had a warrant for execution on her head, and in a choice between a death in Vianca’s office or a death at the gallows, it was a simple decision.
Séance was recognizable, but at a party like this, her mask might be mistaken for a costume. For Enne’s plan to work, she needed the whiteboots to besureit was her.
So she reached for her gun.
She trembled as she raised it, aiming for the ceiling and its hundreds of glittering lights.
The only way left to win, she told herself, tears blurring her vision,is to lose.
But before she could fire, Enne felt arms wrap around her, pulling her back. And she let them. She was ready to be apprehended, ready to leave this casino once and for all, even if it was in the back of a whiteboot car.
But when the person gripping her spun her around, she realized he wasn’t a whiteboot, and her heart sank with despair.
“You’re alive,” Levi choked out, wrapping himself around her and pushing her face into his chest. Enne froze at his touch, something that would normally fill her with relief, but now only filled her with dread. She could feel his heart pounding beneath her ear, but all she could hear wastick,tick,tick.
She had been so close, but he’d found her.
And he had damned them both.
“What did she do to you?” he whispered, fingers unlacing her mask. Wearing it was supposed to be her death sentence, but she felt twice as vulnerable with it removed.
Enne pulled away to tell him to leave her, to focus on his own plan for saving the North Side, but she couldn’t. Even as panic rose in her throat, the omerta forced her lips into a smile.
JAC
“I told all of you toShut.The muck.Up!” Jac hollered. The gangsters behind him—over a hundred in total, a mixture from all the gangs—immediately stopped their chattering.
Jac shouldn’t have felt surprised at his own authority. With Levi in the casino and Tock cutting off the party’s power, Jac was the only leader of the Irons present. But he didn’t think that was the reason.
Even now, he heard their hushed whispers of how he’d pushed Charles Torren to his death. That was his story. His legend.
He and Sophia stood at the window, peeking out at the front entrance of St. Morse. All of the gangsters had been divided into two groups, and theirs was stationed at the top floor of a pub, one that had closed down from the financial pressures of the curfew. Scythe and Rebecca, sitting in a booth across the room, were also here to supervise the Doves and members of the Orphan Guild.
