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EMERY
As soon as I step outside, the sirens are everywhere. It’s like the apocalypse is coming. For all I know, it is.
For me, anyway. This could be the end of life as I know it.
The noise blares from every direction. I’m sure it’s coming from the main road, but for a second, I stand outside a side door of the mansion, unsure of which direction to run.
Then I hear Adrik’s voice in my head.
“Stick to the trees.”
The landscaped garden is mostly shrubs and delicate, ornamental hedges. Dogwoods and cherry blossoms surround paved paths and stone fountains. But just beyond are towering oaks and pines. Protective shade. Cover. Safe passage.
I sprint for the treeline, tripping over my own clumsy feet several times and splaying out on the grass. I want to stop and lie there, to curl up and mourn everything that it feels like I’m losing.
Whatever is happening is too big for me to comprehend. I don’t know what I’m doing. The only reason I’m not still standing frozen in confusion in the foyer with Pietro’s dead body is because Adrik instantly understood what was going on.
The man never stops moving. He always has a plan. He never doubts, never fears. He just acts.
Please let him make it out.
I don’t know who or what I’m praying to, but I need to do something to help and it’s all I can think of right now.
Please keep him alive.Please keep him safe.
I’m stumbling through the trees when I feel the earth shudder. I half-expect the ground to open up and swallow me whole. But then, a second later, I hear the explosion. It rocks the ground and rattles the trees. Flocks of birds screech and fly into the air, disappearing into the cloudless sky.
Except it isn’t cloudless. Not anymore.
When I look behind me, back towards the compound, there’s a sprawling plume of noxious gray smoke. It’s growing, spreading across the sky, blotting out the sun like a biblical plague.
“Oh my God,” I moan, dropping to my knees.
A series of smaller explosions rumbles through the earth as I stare back at the aftermath. I keep waiting for the clouds to rearrange in the sky and tell me the story of what happened.
But there are no answers.
“He always has a plan,” I say under my breath, trying to convince myself to stand up. To keep going the way I was headed and not spin around and sprint back to him. “Adrik has a plan. He knows what he is doing.”
When I drag myself to my feet, my knees are damp with mud and my palms are scraped and dirty from falling so many times. But I keep moving. Going back won’t help now. The only thing I can do is get out of the area. Make it to Stefan’s house. Make it to Isabella.
Adrik told me Stefan lived just beyond the property line. What he didn’t tell me is that the property line is walled off with an eight-foot-tall stone fence. I walk for a few minutes, searching for an opening, before I give up and decide I have no choice but to scale it.
I’m in sandals—not exactly rock climbing footwear—but I manage okay. The rocks are large enough that I can fit my fingers into the grooves between them and haul myself up.
When I finally reach the top, I swing one leg over the wall and sit down. I’m exhausted and dirty and trembling everywhere from the exertion. My body is sore. I’m thirsty.
But then I look back towards the compound and everything else fades away.
I didn’t realize it, but I’ve been walking uphill and the trees have been thinning out. Sitting on this wall and looking back, I can see the very top of the house peeking over the leaves.
Or… what is left of the house.
The roof of one entire wing is gone, replaced by plumes of smoke. Steel beams jut out like bones in a graveyard. A sob bursts out of me, and I clap a hand over my mouth.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No, he’s fine. Adrik is okay.”
If I cry now, I’ll never stop.
If I cry now, it will make this too real. Too permanent.
So I can’t cry. I have to keep moving.
I gingerly pick my way down the wall and back to solid ground. Then, like Adrik directed, I walk towards the old church steeple.
“Stefan lives in the shadow of that abandoned church,” Adrik said. “And yes, he is in on the joke.”
I cross a narrow, unmarked road and crisscross through other yards and properties, always keeping to the edges and the shadows, waiting to make sure the coast is clear before I advance.
Finally, I emerge from a skinny gap between two houses and see the church in front of me. The doors are boarded over, but the stained glass windows are still intact. And just next door, there is a tall two-storey home with a black car in the driveway. The windows are tinted.
This is it.
I feel like a madwoman crawling out of the desert as I cross the road and run up the porch steps. Before I can even knock on the door, Stefan yanks it open.
Of course he was watching. I'd be more surprised if he hadn't seen me coming.
“What the hell happened to—” he starts.
But before he can finish, I throw myself at him and wrap my arms around his neck. “Have you heard from him?”
“Heard from—” Stefan drags me away from me and takes me in from head to toe. Then he looks around. “Where is Adrik?”
My stomach bottoms out. It's a miracle I'm still standing, because the blows just keep coming. “You haven’t heard from him? He hasn’t called you?”
I can tell by the stunned look on Stefan’s face that he hasn’t heard anything from Adrik yet, but he still pulls out his cell phone and checks. He shakes his head.
“No. Fuck. What’s going on?”
The story spews out of me in an incoherent ramble. “We went to see Viktoria, but she wouldn’t talk to me. But Adrik left a bug in her house. We got in the car to listen to it, but then she called Yasha, and Yasha knew about the bug. He told Adrik that he wanted to meet, and—”
Stefan lays a hand on my shoulder and leads me inside. I didn’t even realize I was still standing on the porch where anyone could see me. Where anyone could hear me.
“You’ve got to slow down,” he says. “I knew the two of you were going to see Viktoria. And then I got a call from the security team that Adrik was evacuating them. I tried to call him to ask what the fuck, but he didn’t answer.”
“Yasha,” I say, realizing all of the shit from today—all of the shit from the last six years of my life—can be summed up in that one name. “Yasha is what happened.”
“Adrik’s brother?” a small voice asks.
I look over and Isabella is sitting in the dining room with a tablet in her lap. Travis is sitting alert next to her, his brown eyes nervously watching me.
I sigh in exhaustion, in relief. “Isabella.”
Isabella arches a brow as I cross the room and wrap her in a tight hug. “Why are you all muddy, Mama?”
“I walked here,” I say.
“Why?”
