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Acid laughs softly. “Long live the Coldlake Syndicate.”
2
Salvatore
Ninety minutes earlier
The day Ophelia’s body was found, I stopped believing in happiness.
There’s no point in trying; there’s only existing, and suffering. Existing isn’t so bad. You get to make money. You get to drink good wine. You get to fuck. The syndicate and I had plans for Coldlake.
But there was no joy anymore. It was all sucked out of me when I laid eyes on Ophelia’s broken body. Her mutilated face. The terror in her dead, staring eyes. I thought I’d seen everything, but who could do something so heinous to another human being?
Then Evelina’s body was found. Then Sienna’s, and finally Amalia’s. The whole of Coldlake should have been screaming for justice, but the city was silent.
That’s when I realized.
Everyone hates us.
Chiara’s eyes were filled with hatred and fear the night of her seventeenth birthday, and by then I was so twisted that I loved it. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her until I could taste her revulsion.
How fun it was to play with Chiara those early months, toying with her the way a cat toys with a mouse. Mocking her with kisses. Tormenting her with my presence. Goading her into blushes and angry words. This girl was going to hate me more than anyone else in the world.
Only, she didn’t hate me. Chiara’s hatred was for her father and her father alone. Something shifted inside me, and for the first time in eight years, I didn’t feel sorry for myself.
I was sorry forher. I wanted revenge forher.
Then, I just wanted her.
The first time she smiled at me, halfway drunk and sitting on the edge of the fountain where Ophelia had sat all those years earlier, I saw what I’d become. The person everyone believed me to be. A man my sister would have hated.
You’re a criminal, Salvatore, Ophelia once said to me,but that doesn’t mean you have to be a monster like Dad.
From my position behind a broken-down piece of wall, my gaze sweeps over the abandoned building. I flex my hands on the assault rifle I’m holding and notice that my palms are sweating.
I want to end this. I want this over once and for all and to return to the woman I love. My love for Chiara is pure, but if I never get justice for Ophelia, regret will slowly poison me from the inside out and I’ll turn back into the monster I was for eight long years. A man who delights in hate.
I take a deep breath to settle my pounding heart. Vinicius, Cassius, and Lorenzo are all in position, dressed in black and holding guns of their own. We have all four corners of this property pinned down and no one’s getting in or out alive without our say-so. Any minute now, I could be face to face with the man who brutally murdered Ophelia. I want to cut strips of flesh from his body and make him tell us why, but I think I want him dead more than I want to hear vile words spill from his mouth.
There’s a skittering of stones, and adrenaline shoots through me. Someone lurches out of the shadows and toward the building and I take aim with my gun. Their footsteps are uneven and they’re weaving like they’re drunk or drugged. I can barely make them out in the darkness. Mr. De Luca? No, this person is too small to be a man and the wrong shape. It’s a woman.
Someone is creeping along behind the figure, low and stealthy. A wisp of blond hair pokes from underneath his ski mask. Lorenzo. He’s following closely but not attacking, seeming just as puzzled about this person as I am.
As Lorenzo passes a parked van, one of the many vehicles in the lot, the back doors burst open and several figures pounce on him.
A woman screams.
The flurry of movement is so unexpected that it takes me a moment to realize what’s happening. I bring the barrel of my gun around to fire, struggling to make out who’s who in the darkness. I can hear the dull thwack of a rifle butt on flesh and the blond man grunts in pain.
“Lorenzo.” I’ve yelled loudly enough that the other two will hear me, and I raise my weapon.
I’m about to peer down the sights to take aim at one of the figures when a tall, lean man steps slowly out of the van. All the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Whippet thin, he holds himself as still as a stone and radiates cold. I can’t see his eyes as his face is covered, but somehow I know he’s not blinking.
It’s him.
It’s fucking him.
I don’t know how I know, but I feel in my gut and my blood and my bones that I’m looking at the Black Orchid Killer.
