Page 75 of Till Death Do Us Part

“On the contrary, looking back, I was too kind. I should have tied him up, cut his dick off, shoved it down his throat, closed him in the trunk, and driven it into the river. But hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

Yulia scoffed, walking past us. “Take care with that one, Elaine. The Wolf has been dangerous since the day her trainer first branded her.”

“What?” I frowned. Vera waved her gun in Yulia’s direction.

“You’re just walking away? Give me a reason not to put a bullet in the back of your head right now.”

“You can hardly afford to balance the ire of the Blackbirds and the Whitecliffs right now. I’ll take my chances. Until next time.”

With that, she was gone, disappearing around the corner. Vera scoffed, putting her gun away.

“Figures. Always posturing.”

“She’s right, though,” Petra said, leaning against the car behind us. “If Yulia is going to step back and play wait-and-see, that makes our job easier. If a whole host of Whitecliff assassins took her place, that’d be a different story.”

“What if she tells the Whitecliffs about us, though?” I said. “If it gets out that we’ve formed our own family…”

“She won’t.” Vera nodded back to the house. “She’s a standoffish one. Always wants to be the main character. Can’t stand her. C’mon, let’s get inside, my feet are killing me. Especially the one Yulia stabbed.”

“Vera—” I caught up with her as she started for the front door. “Was it not her who gave you that scar? You said it was her, but she said…”

She stopped, looking back at me, and her eyes gleamed with something I didn’t recognize, a dark intensity that sent fear rippling through me. “Don’t,” she said, voice low. “We do not discuss that topic.”

“I-I’m sorry,” I breathed, voice shaky. Her expression softened suddenly, shaking out of a trance, and she took my hand.

“C’mon. Don’t make that face. I can’t stand to see my wife sad.”

“Ah…” I blushed, swept off my feet as she tugged me along towards the house. Petra chuckled behind me, something about the Wolf turning into a puppy, but I was swept up in Vera’s rhythm as we got into the house, as we saw Jenna and got a stern talking-to about risky activities, all of which Vera ignored.

The manor was clear. We’d made it back in one piece.

But the question remained.

Chapter 36

caitlyn

The encryption key worked. When Vera told me she memorized it, I was skeptical to begin with, and when she listed off a sixty-four-digit code, skeptical didn’t begin to describe it, but sure enough, it unlocked the system, and the mess of fields started to unscramble as they came into their real order.

“How do you even do that?” I said, turning in my chair down in the computer lab to look at where Vera was leaning against a server rack. “I mean, just memorize an entire sequence like that.”

“Some basic techniques. Break it down into chunks and use an encoding system to translate it into easy data.”

I folded my arms. “You’re making that up.”

She smirked. “I’d give you the details, but they’re trade secrets. Been trained in this since I was half your age.”

“I can’t believe my sister married an assassin.”

“She’s got a powerful personality.” She came over and leaned over the workspace, looking at the computer screen projected up on the wall, some heavy regressions running slowly to parse the patterns. “She’d probably be good at this line of work.”

I scowled at her. “So… what? Are you in love with her?”

“Well, it would be a shame to marry someone you didn’t love. Don’t marry for money, Caitlyn.”

“I know,” I laughed. “I wasn’t planning to. But you’re dodging the question with jokes.”

She gave me a deadpan look. “She’s very good in bed.”