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I should have known. I should have seen that he couldn’t handle being second to me.
“So now, we’re in trouble, because Brutus knows, which means if I don’t toe the line he’ll tell the world what we did. Without Constantine’s support, it would be the brazen bull for both of us.” Antony hugs Mackenzie to him. “Not to mention the fact that a few days earlier, Constantine casually mentioned that one of his soldiers, Brentwood, was at Malloy Manor looking for something for a client – it can only be the treasure, which means the client could only be Senator Marlowe. Only instead of finding the cache, he found the mangled, decaying bodies of Howard and Ainsley. Brentwood knows that without his resources, only someone with intimate knowledge of the house would be able to find that underground room – the only person not lying dead within it. My girl.” Antony’s voice grows fierce. “Brentwood knew Mackenzie killed her parents. And he told Marlowe, the tough-on-crime senator. That meant Mackenzie couldn’t show her face in Emerald Beach – especially not on the arm of an August soldier – without Marlowe slapping her with the full force of the law. Our entire plan was shot to shit.”
“But Antony came up with a new plan.” Mackenzie nuzzles her head in her shoulder. “With a little help from me.”
“I had to move quickly,” Antony says. “You’d stopped making noise. You’d be dead in minutes. I told Mackenzie to hide, and I pulled you out and took you to Malloy Manor. I told you whatever I needed to tell you to make you cooperate, because you were our scapegoat, our life insurance. The real Mackenzie Malloy needed to disappear, and the fake Mackenzie would squat in her house like a termite, burrowing in deep until Brentwood returned to finish her off. Except that he never did. And all the while Brutus grew more powerful, and although I looked every chance I got, I never found the treasure.”
“So instead of ruling my beloved city by Antony’s side, I had to leave without my inheritance,” my sister pouts, as if this is somehow so much worse than what she and Antony did to me. “Can you imagine how horrible it’s been? Laying low, having to work menial jobs, living in dingy squats and gross hostels, missing Antony like crazy, eating food not fit for human consumption, watching news stories about the interloper living in my house. No wonder my eyesight started to deteriorate.”
Holy shit. The contact lenses Noah found in Antony’s bag – they weren’t his. They were hers.
It was Mackenzie who tried to shoot me and Noah. This explains why she missed, why she got me confused with Odette in the darkness…
How close has she been to me this entire time?
How did I not sense she was there?
Mackenzie leans in and taps my cheek, her nails not registering against my numb skin. “And then you had the nerve to enroll at Stonehurst Prep.”
Antony sighs. “I tried to stop her, babe.”
“I know you did, but she is my sister. She has to do things her way and screw the consequences for anyone else.” Mackenzie smiles indulgently down at me, like I’m a child who’s colored on the furniture. “But it worked out okay in the end. I came back to Emerald Beach as soon as I heard. I didn’t tell Antony I was in the city at first. I knew he’d try to send me away again—”
“—for your own good.” Antony touches her cheek.
“Is he always this overprotective of you?” Mackenzie giggles. “I mean, obviously he was. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be alive now, not with all the people who wanted you dead. But as long as you were still alive, still the ghost of Malloy Manor, it meant my enemies hadn’t made their move.” She kisses Antony’s cheek. “You did the best you could, babe, but you haven’t taken care of things like I would. You weren’t proactive. So I came back to make everything right again. Starting with Brentwood. He was so surprised when I showed up for tea, and too busy staring at my tits to notice the drugs I put in his drink. Antony was so pissed when he found out what I did—”
“—you’re too impulsive, doll. It’s your greatest flaw. Claudia was sniffing around, and I couldn’t have her find out the truth before I became Imperator.”
“Luckily, Antony had the clever idea to make it look like Brutus killed Brentwood. And I took his gun,” she rubs her shoulder. “It was so heavy. It hurt my arm when it kicked back. I was so close to you and Noah, but I still couldn’t hit you.”
“You shouldn’t have tried,” Antony coos. “You were such an adorable klutz. I had everything under control.”
They’re both insane.
Mackenzie pouts again. “I was just so tired of waiting. Of being the good little girl while my sister lived my life. And I wanted to find the treasure before you did. Practically every day you were at school I snuck in and searched for it – I used the maintenance shed at first, but then you locked it up, so I started using this tunnel.” She wrinkles her nose. “I hate it down here. It’s so filthy. And there are spiders. But it would all be worth it if I could find the treasure. I saw all the things you’d done to my house. You let an animal sleep in my bed. There was fur everywhere. Muddy pawprints on the marble. Scratches in the Hermes sofa. Such disrespect for my things. All my favorite dolls broken. I needed to teach you a lesson,” she smiles, miming her slicing the knife into Queen Boudica.
My veins surge with rage. I try to throw myself out of the coffin. I imagine my fingers sliding around my sister’s neck and squeezing the life out of her for what she did to my kitty. But of course it’s only in my warped, grey-tinged mind. I’m glued in place, weighed down by the drug that’s slowly dragging me into oblivion.
“You should have seen Claudia after you sliced that fleabag cat of hers.” Antony kisses the top of Mackenzie’s head. “She went to war against an innocent boy. She was so easy to fool.”
Alec LeMarque was far from innocent.
“The only reason I agreed to go to Germany was to give my babe time to search the house top to bottom,” Antony says. “But she still couldn’t find the treasure. We were starting to think Howard might’ve been telling the truth.”
I remember walking into the house after getting back from Germany and everything feeling strange, just slightly out of place. I put it down to jet lag, but it was her. That’s been the only time she slipped up, the only hint that something wasn’t right before she showed up at Vault and at school pretending to be me.
Antony peers down at me, his breath hot on my cheek. “You’re still conscious in there, aren’t you? You’re hearing every word of this but you can’t do a thing. How does it feel, Claudia? How does it feel to be completely helpless? And we have so much more time left with you before we kill you. I kept telling Mackenzie to be patient, that I’d make sure she’d be able to savor this moment once it arrived. She’s been waiting so long, you see. So long for her real life to begin.”
Antony kisses Mackenzie’s head again. “I kept telling her to stay away, that you’d get yourself killed within a week of stepping outside that house. But you kept fucking making trouble, getting the wrong side of every story, telling those boys the truth about you, digging us deeper and deeper into this mess. Meanwhile, I solidified power so I could advance to Imperator and Mackenzie got rid of Brutus, but then you fucking show up at Saturnalia and declare yourself the new ruler of August.”
“Antony was so pissed,” Mackenzie giggles. “You should have seen him storming around, slamming doors, cursing your name to any god that would listen. But I pointed out that this was all actually perfect. We just had to be patient a little longer. We let you build our empire for us. And you’ve done even better than we ever could have imagined.”
“And while you were alive, standing in the firing line, my babe was safe,” Antony says. “I decided to see how long you’d last, how much of your father’s empire you could reclaim before someone took you out. Which was inevitable with the chaos you were bringing down.”
“You were so distracted with your plans for world domination and your little harem and your hatred of Brutus that you didn’t notice us maneuvering you behind the scenes,” Mackenzie grins. “If you knew all the times I’ve pretended to be you, steered you in the direction of your own self-destruction. I’ve even fooled your boyfriend into kissing me.”
Eli saw right through you. Because he loves me. He protects me—
