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The next second happens in slow motion.
There's a loud bang. Warmth splashes across the side of my face.
I scream, and scream, and scream.
But the gun that was held to my head clatters to the floor.
Twisting my neck, the shot came from my father. Laurent's slumped back in his chair, the side of his face disintegrated. I'm numb to the sight. I can't make out his features anymore, only the blood pooling on the concrete.
He's dead.
Laurent's dead.
And I'm alive.
My father crosses the room and starts yanking the restraints from me. He smells like death—like sorrow and decaying trees, like a lonely winter's wind rolling through a frosted graveyard.
I need to get away from him.
It's like he senses my thoughts.
"Don't even fucking think about running." His voice is hard.
But I can't give up without a fight. "I don't want to go with you."
"You don't have a choice. I'm never letting you out of my sight again."
He undoes the ties around my wrists first, then stoops to do the one by my feet. As soon as I have a foot free, I kick him in the face, hard. My foot makes contact with him, but he doesn't topple.
Instead, he looks up at me, uninterested, bloody nose and all.
"It's always a problem with you."
Then he slaps me so hard across the face I lose consciousness.
THIRTY-SIX
ALEXANDER
"This isthe last house in this area," Wesley says from the passenger seat.
I'm sitting in the back, watching the rows of townhouses zip by as the blacked-out SUV speeds through the vacant streets. George is at the helm of the vehicle, and Reggie sits beside me.
There are two more guys in the back.
I didn't care to learn their names as they're more brawn than brains. Reggie and George, however–they're smart. The three of us together should be able to figure this out. We've been at this for almost an hour now.
And each minute that ticks by, Alize could be closer to death.
Dread builds in the pit of my stomach.
"This one had a permit approved for a basement in the last six months," Reggie says. He's got a weird looking compact computer sitting on his lap. He twists the screen toward me. "I think this might be it."
The last three houses we swept came up empty.
They had obviously been empty for months, though one of them was tenanted. They didn't appreciate us barging in, but it hardly mattered. I left them with a reason not to snitch. I hope Reggie is right about this being the place.
He joined the Empire only a few months ago. He's Wesley's teenage cousin—the son of Ingrid's now deceased younger brother. Whoever murdered his father was after him, and in exchange for lending his skills to the Empire, he gets the relative safety of belonging to one of Europe's most influential criminal organisations.
