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I’d seen dead bodies before. I’d killed more than one man myself. But that’d been in the other part of my life. The most violence I’d encountered while skating was a bruise from a badly landed jump.
Balakin had nothing to do with my family’s criminal operations. He’d been patient and kind—he had a wife and two grown kids and a new granddaughter he’d been so pleased about last year…
Rafael grasped me by the arms and tugged me away, turning me in the same motion so the corpse was no longer in my view. “Come away from there, Lou.”
He sounded strangely gentle.
I bit my lip, willing back the tears that burned at the back of my eyes, and clutched on to the anger that was rising up alongside my sense of loss.
“We have to find whoever did this. We have to find them and make thempay.”
“We’ll do that,” Rafael said in the same steady tone, but I could tell from the slight roughness that’d crept into his voice that he was pissed off too. “We’ll take care of this. I need to make a couple of calls. But you shouldn’t have to keep looking at him in that condition.”
Maybe I should. It was my fault, wasn’t it?
Death to the Rose.
This had something to do with my family’s connections. Balakin had put so much time into training me when I’d never even been all that impressive, when I’d had to badger my own mother into letting me—
A chill swept through me that had nothing to do with the artificially cooled air. My heart skipped a beat.
I didn’t want to even consider the possibility, but now that it was in my head…
I pushed away from Rafael. “I need to get back to the house. I need to talk to my mother.”
* * *
It was evening before Mom answered my request to speak to her and summoned me to her home office. Apparently she’d been out of the house all day, although it was hard to tell for sure.
The Deadly Rose came and went at her pleasure, answering to no one.
The first confirmation that something was off was the fact that when I came into the grand room with its antique desk and bookcases, Mom sprang up from her chair and stalked over to wrap me in her wiry arms. She was tall enough that her chin rested against my forehead with the embrace.
The hug only lasted for a couple of seconds, but Mom rarely touched me at all. When she did, it was usually a poke or a smack to correct my position or to chide me for a mistake.
“I just heard,” she said in her crisply smooth voice. She stepped back, giving my cheek a slightly patronizing pat that felt more in character. “I’m so sorry, Luciana. I know he was important to you.”
I gazed back into her eyes, which were the same dark brown shade as mine. Her face had turned gaunt with middle-age, but she still looked elegant as ever with her bold but classically styled make-up and her black waves that she carefully dyed the gray out of.
We shouldn’thaveto worry about being judged by how attractive we are, but we will be. So we do our best to turn that prejudice toward serving our purposes.
Everything Mom did was part of a strategy. What was the purpose of the mask of mild sympathy she was showing me now?
“I don’t understand why someone would have killed him,” I said. “He never messed with anything criminal.”
Mom tsked her tongue. “Plenty of our enemies might not have realized that. Most likely, though, they went after him because of his connection to you. They were looking to strike a blow at us. Maybe they hoped they’d get information out of him and killed him when he’d given everything he knew.”
“He didn’t knowanythingexcept how well I can move on the ice,” I protested.
“Yes. It is unfortunate.” Mom folded her arms over her chest. “I suppose we should take this as a sign that it’s time you took on more responsibilities within our actual business. You can help me with keeping the lowlifes who’d attack us like this in line.”
There it was. My heart sank.
She didn’t even sound upset, just briskly business as usual. Because the horrific murder played right into her plans.
Wasn’t that convenient?
I studied her expression as I prepared my next words. “What if I want to keep skating?”
