“It’s not personal.” I step over him. “It’s for dramatic effect.”
There are three more between the gate and the front door. These men know me, except the first one who was new.Was.The ones now standing between me and her are men who have been on the Capello payroll for years. Men who know what I am, what I do. Men who woke up this morning with plans for the rest of week. Plans I’m now ruining. A necessary byproduct.
One never sees me coming. I drop from the shadow of the wall, hook my arm around his neck, and drive the karambit straight through the base of his skull. The blade punches through bone with a wet crunch. He drops like a sack of meat.
The next one tries to fight. He swings, lands a glancing blow to my jaw. I smile — cold, feral — then break his arm at the elbow with a sharp twist. He screams. I bury the karambit in his eye socket, pushing until the hilt kisses his cheekbone. The scream cuts off mid-note. I rip the blade free in a spray of blood and brain matter.
The last one between me and the door actually gets a shot off but misses by degrees. I snarl, close the distance, and slam him face-first into the stone pillar. Cartilage crunches. I yank his head back by the hair and open his throat with two savage slashes — one horizontal, one vertical — until his head is barely attached.
I leave them exactly where they fall. Storm through the front door, dragging blood across her pristine floors with my boots.
The house is quiet inside. Evening light slanting through the tall windows. Everything is cultivated, spotless, peaceful — the kind of peace only a woman who has never once feared what might walk through her front door could afford.
Valeria is about to learn what fear tastes like.
The sitting room door comes open hard enough to hit the wall, and Mary is the first thing I see, standing by the window with a glass of something, mid-sentence, turning at the sound.
For a split second, my plans halt completely.
She's not supposed to be here. Not tonight. Not in this room. My mind had mapped this encounter a hundred times on the drive over. Valeria alone, the confrontation, the truth laid bare. Mary was never in the picture. Mary was supposed to be somewhere safe and unknowing while I burned this part of our lives down.
She looks at me. And her face does the thing it always does when she sees me — that immediate, unguarded relief, like a woman who has been quietly worried and is trying not to show it. My little sister. The tiny bundle of weight in my arms in a hospital room. The reason.
The whole reason.
"Reth — oh, thank God, I've been trying to reach you for—" Then she reads my face, and the relief dies. Her eyes carry the alarm of someone who has known me long enough to understand the difference between the versions of me. "What's wrong? What happened?"
My gaze finds my next victim. Valeria, sitting in a high-backed chair by the fireplace with her legs crossed and a glass of champagne catching the light and an expression on her face that stops me for one cold, clarifying moment.
She's smiling.
Not the smile she performs. Not the warm, patient thing she wields. This is something underneath all of that — small andsatisfied, the expression of a woman who has been waiting for a guest she invited and is pleased they arrived on time.
She knew.
She knew I was coming. She knew Mary was here. She arranged it, the same way she arranges everything, three moves ahead, the board already set before I walked through the gate. Mary is in this room because Valeria put her here.
The realization lands cold and absolute and changes nothing about what happens next.
“Mary, where’s Lucas?” I don’t take my eyes off Valeria.
“He’s at home with Samuel. Why?”
I’m across the room in three strides, and my hand snaps around Valeria’s throat like a steel trap.
"Reth!" Mary's glass hits the floor. "Reth, stop! What are you doing?"
I don't stop.
Valeria's hands come up to my wrist, clutching as I drag her ass from the chair. Her eyes find mine and the composure doesn't crack — it adjusts. Becomes something between entertained and interested.
I slam her back against the wall. The champagne glass shatters somewhere to our left, and Mary screams something I don't process. I drag Valeria forward by the throat, one step, two, and slam her back again. Harder this time. Her skull hits the wall with a sound that echoes through the room and her eyes go briefly unfocused — the first real crack in the composure, the first moment she looks like something that can be hurt.
"You think this is a game?” I lean in so close she can smell the revenge on my breath. "You think everything is a game.”
"Reth." Mary's hands are on my arm. Shaking. "What the hell is going on? Let go of her!”
“Ask her,” I grind out. “Ask Valeria exactly what the fuck is going on.”
