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When the bomb blew up The Banshee on the night of the soft opening, I was at Hades’ place getting ready. My phone started going crazy with texts and social media notifications about it, and when I couldn’t reach Hades, I bolted out the door in a blind panic.
…Right into Leo.
Leo, with a gun, a bloody knife, and the slain bodies of three men behind him in the open sliding door of a van with “Athenian Dry-Cleaning” stenciled on the side of it.
Leo, who demanded I get in his car.
Leo, who then crumpled to the ground as the brick broke in half over his head, revealing the other nightmare from my past standing behind him, smiling chillingly at me.
Hugo.
I shiver as my mind replays the manic hours that followed: the sight of Hugo dragging an unconscious Leo to his car. My freakout when I saw my sister bound and gagged in his back seat which was only silenced by Hugo digging the barrel of a gun into my side.
My sobbing pleas for him not to hurt her as I let him shove me into the passenger seat. Leo’s horrible groans from the trunk as Hugo drove us north out of the city, following the Hudson up into the Catskills.
The groans finally going silent right before we pulled up to this little house, which has been our prison ever since.
I swallow, my gaze stabbing out the kitchen window to the brownish lawn outside with the fresh little mound of dirt in the far corner.
Leo’s final, inglorious resting place.
I’m not sure if the irony that one of my demons was slain by the other has sunk all the way in yet.
Hugo turns away, and my eyes instantly snap to Nora’s across the table.
“It’s going to be okay,” I mouth to her.
Her face is pale as a ghost’s, and her eyes are wide and full of terror. But she nods back at me.
“Don’t you want your breakfast, my love?” Hugo purrs in a voice that feels like cold slime being poured down my neck. He turns, smiling this creepy, way-too-focused smile on me. His pupils are dilated, and when my gaze slips past him, I see the answer to my unspoken question: a little hand mirror streaked with white powered lines and a rolled-up dollar bill sitting next to the stove.
“I—”
“I made it just for you.Justthe way I know you love it.”
I glance down at the egg in front of me. I’ve had poached eggs maybe twice in my entire life.
“Don’t you remember?” He smiles a sloppy, cocaine-fueled grin at me. “It was our second date. We were at La Tua Pasta, that little Italian place next to Borough Market.”
I havezeroidea what he’s talking about. But I can see the mania in his eyes, and it’s not just from the coke.
There’s a reason this man stalked me, and that reason isn’t necessarily “me”. He’s insane. And between that and the drugs—not to mention the fact that he’s just kept Nora and I locked in a goddamn windowless basement with a bucket for a toilet for five days—I am very, very afraid of him and what he’s capable of doing right now.
Not for myself. But for Nora.
“Oh, of course!” I smile. “Yes, I remember now. Mmm, poached eggs, thank you!”
He grins widely. “You’re so welcome, sweetheart.” He lifts his brow. “Well? Why haven’t you touched it?”
“My…” I swallow. “Hugo, my hands are tied.”
He glances down to my wrists, which are in fact bound to the arms of the chair, just as Nora’s are to hers.
“Silly me,” he sighs, chuckling to himself. “I’ve been so worked up about making this utterly perfect for you, I wasn’t even thinking. Forgive me?”
Not in a million fucking years you absolute dirtbag creep.
“Of course,” I smile broadly at him.
