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“Bloody hell is right. I did some digging. Cleo deleted a ton of social media posts from around the dates of Dylan’s death, but I’ve found pictures of her tagged by other influencers. She was definitely in London when Octavia’s Ruin played their shows. And look at this.” George taps on another video. It’s all the girls leaving the suite in the early morning. “Cleo’s not there.”
“So Cleo is alone in the suite with Gabriel and Dylan?”
George nods.
Gabriel collapses into his chair, his head falling into his hands. I reach across the desks to squeeze his fingers. We will make this right, I promise.
I will eat her heart for you.
“This is insane,” Noah’s hands ball into fists. “How come the police haven’t questioned her?”
“Because this tape isn’t in the police files.” George taps the screen. “I had to get a hacker friend to recover it from the hotel’s backup server. Cleo St. James is the last person to see Dylan O’Connor alive, and someone went to a great deal of trouble to cover up her presence.”
Claudia
“You ready for this?” Eli squeezes my hand.
I’m not. I haven’t set foot on this property since the night Brutus dragged me from my bed and made my life a living nightmare. I haven’t had the desire to drive past or even look it up on Google Maps. I’ve locked this house and all its memories away in the metal box in my mind, casting it away on an ocean of hate so I didn’t have to feel.
Every good memory I have in this house is tainted by my mother’s blood splattered across the window, and my reflection glaring back at me, her eyes hollow, lifeless.
Every wish for how my life should have turned out has turned sour by the knowledge the people who own this house bought and paid for me.
I look around at the drawn faces of my princes, and my cousin with his arms folded and that ‘don’t fuck with our family’ glare on his face. I nod.
Antony unlocks the door, shoves it open. “After you, Imperatrix.”
My feet remain rooted in place, stuck to the marble walkway.
Antony’s had a key all this time.
Obviously he does. He’s Brutus’ tribune.
I’m too emotional today. I need to get a grip.
Antony sees me staring at the key in his hand and frowns. “Remember, having me by his side lent Brutus legitimacy. It kept me alive, and I kept you alive.”
And now I’m giving you the life you deserve.
I square my shoulders and step into the hall, into the life Brutus stole from me. My breath hitches as my eyes take it all in.
The house looks exactly the same, and yet completely different. I move through the foyer into the lofty living room, touching the objects my father touched, breathing in his scent amongst the dust and ruin. Brutus replaced many of my father’s antiquities with garish modern art. His tastes ran even more avant-garde than the Malloys. We move to the formal sitting room, and I can’t help but notice the sparseness of the furnishings. There are squares of bright wallpaper where my father’s art collection hung, and empty spaces on the shelves for objects that no longer reside in their proper place. On the floor in the doorway is the broken head of a horse – part of a Roman triumphal statue Daddy—Julian adored. The rest of the statue is nowhere in sight.
I touch my fingers to an inlaid table. “Where’s the bust of Caesar that used to sit here?” It was one of Julian’s favorite possessions.
“Sold,” Antony says. “Brutus needed money. He burned through your family assets in the first two years. That’s why he started working with Nero.”
In the corner of the room is a bright square on the rug where a stela from the fifteenth century BC Pharaoh Thutmose III once stood. I remember my father showing me chisel marks in the stone and the rough outline of an old carving beneath – Thutmose had removed the inscriptions celebrating his stepmother, the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut, and recorded his own achievements on top. “When one king overthrows another, they’ll obliterate their predecessor’s name from history,” Julian explained to me, his blue eyes shining. “Names carry power – never forget how easily a name, and its power, can be taken away.”
I pick up the horse’s head and hurl it against the wall.
I won’t look upstairs. I can’t face my old bedroom. We move down the hallway to the office. I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready to go inside, but I have to because I’m in this now. I’m fucking in this. I shove the door so hard it bangs against the wall. My heart stutters and Noah slams his body into mine, his eyes narrowing as he searches for a hidden shooter.
But there’s no assassin. No whacking will happen in this room today – there’s just me being eviscerated by my memories.
My not-father’s enormous oak desk is gone, replaced by some white Formica monstrosity with gold edges. His shelves of artifacts and gilt-edged books are gone too, and the pictures on the walls have been attacked – my father’s face scrawled out with blank ink or slashed with a knife. Brutus’ attempt to obliterate Julian August even as he stood atop the empire my father built.
The place is a dump – papers strewn everywhere, filing boxes overturned, food and weapons and random trash mixed in. “He cleared out in a hurry when I told him to go into hiding,” Antony says. He picks up a paper and scans the title, holding it weirdly close to his face, before bringing it out a few inches. “We should take what we can. Brutus kept records on paper only, and we’ll need these documents. It’s a pity we don’t have Julian’s material – Brutus allowed a lot of relationships and contacts to slide.”
