Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 100493 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100493 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Twice.
Three times.
Silence.
Screams tear through the room, drowned in white noise.
Luce… it’s Luce screaming.
Asher stands motionless as his arm pins me behind him. No tremble in his frame, no frantic shifts of a man unfamiliar with the weight of a weapon.
Saliva burns down my throat, the room tilting under dust and adrenaline. This is a man built for violence, not sport.
He turns back over his shoulder, eyes dropping to me. Pupils darker, jaw locked, and veins roped along his forearms.
He isn’t scared.
My mouth opens but nothing comes out.
Luce screams through the ringing in my ears again. “Ivy! Nonna’s hurt!”
Shoving toward the head of the table, I feel his arm slip away, his fingers dragging against mine for a single second before letting go.
My knees hit the floor as soon as I reach her and I don’t think, don’t fucking process a single thing but save her.
I press my palm to her torso and gasp, blood spilling between my fingers the same way Asher’s did.
I blink.
This is different. This is too much.
Darkness closes in, the room shrinking to a black-rimmed tunnel. Control the scene. Lower your own breathing before you touch the wound, because panic is transmissible and bodies copy each other faster than language.
“Stay with me.” I press harder into her soft belly. “Nonna, look at me. Look at me.”
Blood spreads across the floor.
“Nonna?” Knives scrape down my throat when I swallow.
Her weak fingers find mine, still warm. “Ma petite...”
“Shhh.” I cradle her head, blood sticking her hair to my fingers. “Don’t talk. Save your strength.”
She gasps, pulling me down by the back of my neck until her lips touch my ear. She forces the words through the blood pooling in her throat and I catch every syllable.
“Le Boucher will take care of you Ivy. He always has, he’s the only one you can trust.” The words fumble through the blood pooling in her throat, but I catch every syllable. Of course I trust Emeric.
My mouth opens to answer, but she got goes stiff in my hands.
No!
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
IVY
Gone.
Blood drips from Leon and onto the blue-patterned tiles Nonna picked out when she renovated the kitchen, or tried to. It was the first time I realized we couldn’t hire people people for maintenance because it would run too high a risk.
This was our safe space, and Nonna made sure we always knew it.
Get up. Do something.
Jord hits the floor beside Leon, a sound scraping out of him I’ve never heard before. It drags straight down my nerves.
Reaching for Nonna with a hand that won’t steady, his fingers freeze an inch from her sleeve. They snap back to his chest. If he touches her, it becomes real.
I can’t focus on anything. Nothing but Nonna.
Nonna’s lips part but her chest stays still. I glide my fingers over her cheek, dragging crimson over soft brown skin.
This isn’t happening. This cannot be happening.
“No.” Blood continues to spread beneath her head. I can’t fix this. I—“no, no, no.”
Get up. Do something.
I’m frozen in place, watching the world I knew drain away.
Leon’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. “Ivy.”
I shake my head. “Do something. You know medicine, you’ve—“
“Ivy.” His hand catches my wrist, grip tight. “She’s gone.”
My stomach caves, heat and bile clawing up my throat. I want to scream, want to break Leon’s jaw for saying it, want to rip thirty minutes apart and drag Nonna from that table before the first bullet blew through the window.
Instead I sink back on my heels, blood dripping from my fingertips onto my lap.
“Ivanya.” Daniel watches me from the other side of the room, hands loose at his sides, just as Asher strolls past the shattered window like he’s bulletproof.
They’ll never find them.
I know this like I know the weight of a Desert Eagle in my hand. Like I know the exact angle to sever a femoral artery. Like I know the sound a body makes when it hits concrete from ten stories up.
Whoever did this is already gone.
Punk drags in a breath. “She was laughing. Five minutes ago she was laughing.”
My throat closes.
Death used to be a simple thing, until it landed on our doorstep.
Luce opens her eyes but doesn’t look at Nonna. She looks at me, hazel gaze steady. “You know what we need to do.”
“No.” It rips out of me. “We don’t touch her. We don’t—”
“Ivy.” Leon crouches closer, palms open between us. “You know this was him. Le Boucher—”
“Emeric wouldn’t do this!” I stand on unsteady legs. “If—if he wanted her dead, he would have—she said—”
Jord surges to his feet, chest heaving. “You make too many excuses for that monster. Fuck, Ivy! That codex is fucking rooted inside of you like a bad weed!”
“Stop.” Punk flinches at her own sharpness, shoulders pulling in. “Nonna wouldn’t want us fighting and Luce is right. We need to re-calibrate.”
They know. We all know. This wasn’t random. This was a message.