But she wasn’t there.

  I checked my watch. Five minutes late. She couldn’t have left, could she?

  Something twisted inside my gut, like watching the seams unravel in a perfectly knitted sweater—all the hard work, wasted.

  “I’m thinking too much,” I muttered, and sat beneath the bare branches.

  I traced our words on the tree, thinking about the only girl I’d ever love.

  I wasn’t ready to give her up. I didn’t know if I ever would.

  Minutes passed. Then an hour. Then two.

  Worried, I paced before the tree. Cold sweat dotted my brows.

  If only I had a phone, I could text her, see if she was okay. Maybe someone needed her at school.

  Everything was probably fine. She probably left a message for me at the apartment.

  Lead seeped through my veins as I biked home.

  When my building came into view, the lead turned to anvils in my shoes.

  It was quiet. Unusually so. Nothing in this neighborhood was ever quiet. It was like the Reaper came and took every soul with him.

  Nonsense.

  My breathing echoed in the damp stairwell as I climbed to the third floor. I turned right, moving past the apartment numbers.

  Twelve…thirteen…

  I stopped in front of the door that should’ve been number fourteen. It was sixteen now, after Dad changed it for reasons I still didn’t understand. Something about fourteen being unlucky.

  The doorknob burned.

  The lightbulb flickered overhead, then popped. Little Beatrice cried loudly behind the door.

  Panic seized me. Did someone leave the stove on? I yanked out my keys and unlocked the door.

  A baseball bat slammed into my side. I crashed onto the floor.

  “Kian!” Mom’s muffled cries finally reached my ears.

  The world swirled as I lifted my head. She was bound and gagged beside Dad by the TV. Two men in ski masks hovered, guns pointed at their heads.

  Flames engulfed the drapes, bitter smoke stifling the air.

  Sofia whimpered, hands clasped over her mouth. She was curled up on the sofa, little Beatrice next to her.

  Dark spots swam in my vision.

  I crawled toward them. “Mom,” I gasped. “St-Stop this.”

  Slowly, I staggered to my feet, the floor tilting.

  The men laughed.

  “Look at him. Weak. Can barely stand,” the short one sneered.

  “We have nothing.” I swayed and pulled out the remaining cash I had left. “This is all we have. Pl-Please let them go.”

  The tall man barked out a laugh. “The boy thinks we’re here to rob them.”

  The shorter man yanked Sofia off the couch. She shrieked. “This one’s a beauty. Be a shame to waste her.” He eyed his partner. “Don’t think The Association would mind if I take her?”

  The other man shrugged.

  Mom screamed through her gag, her head shaking wildly. Dad threw himself against the short man’s legs.

  Sofia struggled, her terrified eyes meeting mine.

  “Take me! Whatever it is. Take me. I’m strong. You can use me. I’d do anything. Let my family go.”

  The short man studied me with interest.

  “Anything, huh? You’re pretty too. Maybe I could use you.” He covered my sister’s mouth, muffling her cries. A sadistic glint shone in his eyes. “Drop to your knees, boy. Beg us.”

  I kneeled, my pulse hammering inside me. Glass shards from a broken vase dug into my skin, but I barely felt them. Beatrice’s cries rose to screams, her little face mottled and red.

  The shorter man snarled and pointed his gun at her.

  “No!” Mom cried. The man swiveled in her direction.

  Bang!

  Time suspended. I flinched. The sound burned into my skull.

  Mom collapsed onto the floor, lifeless. Dad wailed. He threw himself over Mom.

  No. No. No. I crawled toward her still body.

  Beatrice’s shrieking ripped into my heart.

  Another gunshot thundered against the walls.

  She stopped crying.

  The tall man socked me across the face and white-hot pain exploded behind my eyes.

  The room tilted, my limbs clumsy and slow, and smoke suffocated my lungs.

  Through the haze, I still saw everything.

  But nothing compared to the pain and grief shredding my insides.

  Pools of crimson spread across the white tiles. Sofia kicked and flailed, her eyes bright with fear as the short man carried her out of the apartment.

  Dad’s mournful sobs. His body over Mom’s as he begged her not to leave him. Words I didn’t understand. The Association. The Six.

  Bang!

  Then the horrifying silence.

  Black venom invaded my senses. Flames rose, a vicious monster, devouring everything in their path.

  My vision flickered. Once. Twice.

  Ragged breaths throttled out of me.

  A sweet scent drifted to my nose—the melted chocolates in my pocket.

  I heard Elise’s laughter and imagined the elm tree in spring as darkness overtook me.

  I woke to fire singeing my shoes, the smell of melted plastic corrosive to my nostrils.

  And pain, so much pain.

  Flames surrounded me, and for a moment, I thought I woke up in hell.

  I staggered to my knees.

  Mom. Dad. Beatrice and Sofia.

  Images of what happened slammed into my mind. My family—I choked as black smoke invaded my nostrils.

  But I still crawled toward where I saw them last.

  Glass shards dug into my hands. More coughs wrenched out of my lungs. Too much smoke and the scorching heat—it was like my skin was melting off with each inch of forward movement.

  And when I looked up, unable to get any closer with the burning furniture in the way, a sob lodged in my throat.

  A fiery inferno had unleashed its wrath on everything I knew—four walls of crackling, burning hell. Charred smells reached my nose—the snapping beams and roaring flames warning me to get out.

  It was too late for my parents and little Beatrice. Much too late.

  Moisture clouded my eyes as I crawled toward the door. If I didn’t reach it before the flames, I’d die too.

  And I wanted to. But I couldn’t, because Sofia was out there.

  I needed to find her.

  Pain scraped my legs as fire climbed my jeans. I rolled, snuffed it out, and dragged myself to the threshold, finally finding the strength to stand. A silver glint on the entryway table, which was still untouched by the flames caught my eye.

  My dad’s beloved lighter. I grabbed it.

  Something white flapped onto the floor from the table. Feminine scrawl with one word. Kian.

  My sweet Lana Elise.

  I grabbed it and stumbled out of the building as sirens blared in the distance.

  Glass and rubble crunched underfoot. I leaned against the alley wall, my lungs heaving in desperate breaths.

  I unfolded the note with soot-darkened fingers.

  Kian,

  Dad has pneumonia, so I have to go back to New York early. Sorry I couldn’t tell you in person. I’ll email you when things calm down.

  I miss you and love you so much.

  I’ll be dreaming of college in Chicago and being with you again.

  Maybe I can come back during Christmas.

  Love,

  Your Elise

  P.S. Two kind gentlemen were here looking for your family earlier. They brought presents from Albania. I knew you guys were secretive about your address, but they showed me photos of your family and said they were your uncles. So I told them to wait at the stairwell. I knocked, and your parents said they weren’t expecting visitors. Anyway, the men weren’t there when I went back to tell them you weren’t home. They left the presents, though. I hope they’re something nice for you and Sofia. You guys deserve the world.

  Shock was a liver punch to the gut. I slid onto the ground, not caring about the metal scraps and glass shards stabbing my backside.

  My fist crumpled the paper, my mind reeling from what Elise wrote.

  What she did.

  “Fire’s out of control. Spreading southbound,” a fireman hollered in the distance. “Need reinforcements!”

  Sirens bellowed. Police arrived in swarms.

  Don’t trust the police. Another one of Mom’s rules. Most of them were in the mob’s pocket.

  I staggered away, clutching the letter, my mind still refusing to accept reality.

  A sharp pain speared my gut as I collided with a few box crates.

  I caught my reflection in the half-boarded window. Blond hair covered in soot. Hollow eyes. Perfectly unmarred face. How was I alive, and how were they…gone?

  “Pretty boy.” The shopkeeper’s voice. The murderer’s. “Kneel. Beg. Pretty boy.”

  I fished out the pocketknife from my pocket and extended the blade.

  A hiss escaped my lips as I carved a line down my left cheek.

  Crimson dripped down my face.

  But I barely noticed the pain.

  Nothing could compare to the agony obliterating what was left of my heart.

  Pretty boy no more.

  The smoke thinned. My heart hardened.

  And from that day on, I would never kneel again.

  Chapter 40: OBSIDIAN PAST

  Present: Chicago

  Lightning sears the dark room in a flash of white as the wind beats against the windows. A rare thundersnow storm descends upon us.

  Cece meows and scurries out of the bedroom, no doubt to find Hannah or Ren for comfort.

  Unease knots my chest as I brush my hair at the antique desk. My silk nightgown clings to my skin after my shower.

  Where is he? It’s midnight, and Elias is usually home by now after doing whatever he does with his shadowy business.

  Ever since the Benefaction a week ago, something has shifted between us.

  I’d wake up to my usual Geraldine’s Chocolates on the nightstand, but now they’d be accompanied with a single, long-stemmed rose, and the lounge chair would be pulled up at my bedside.

  Instead of feeling exposed, butterflies would swarm in my gut at the thought of him watching me sleep.

  And a secret voice would whisper in my head.

  Why doesn’t he stay?

  “Kian’s gone… Don’t hope for anything more.”

  Maybe he’s right. The cutthroat, brutal Elias today is nothing like the sweet, gentle boy of my childhood. I saw it at the Benefaction—his viciousness as he protected my honor, the bloodlust in his eyes.

  But then, there’s his tender touch as he mended my dress. The way those emerald pools still stare at me like I’m his salvation.

  And so, despite all the red flags he waves, I realize one truth.

  If he asked—if my sweet Kian or my savage Elias asked me to give him a chance—I’d say yes. Not because it’s smart or safe, but because my heart calls for it.

  No one’s ever made me feel the way he does. And maybe I’m still the hopeless romantic wishing for a certain music box, or the girl who’d look at her parents’ wedding photos, dreaming about an enduring love—even if it ended in death.

  My heart aches when I trace the carvings of the little cherubs on the desk—gold-tipped arrows and all.

  That’s why it looks familiar. A long time ago, when innocent Elise told gentle Kian about her dream house, she mentioned such a desk.

  And he got it for me, all without ever revealing who he was.

  A crash startles me. The front door slams open.

  Heavy footfalls reach my ears.

  My muscles tense in anticipation. I know that gait, that sound.

  Elias.

  I set down my brush and stand just as the door swings open.

  My breath goes shallow.

  Elias grips the doorframe, his dark suit jacket and shirt unbuttoned, tie hanging around his neck. His thick hair is in disarray, like he’s been yanking at it.

  But it’s not his dishevelment, the antithesis of the calm, conniving dealer of secrets, that steals my breath.

  It’s his eyes.

  A swirling tempest haunts those greens, like he’s seen one tragedy too many.

  His broad chest rises and falls, breath ragged, fingers white-knuckled around the doorframe.

  I stand frozen, every nerve blooming toward him, like he’s the sun I’ve been missing.

  Thunder rattles the windows, but I barely notice.

  His eyes darken as he slowly uncoils from the threshold.

  A muscle tics in his sharp jaw as he advances toward me.

  Something clatters onto the desk, followed by a loud thud.

  My brush. The stool I was sitting on.

  I back up before realizing it.

  My universe narrows to the five feet of air between us.

  “E-Elias,” I whisper, “What’s wrong?”

  Something’s different. I stand at the cliff’s edge, seconds away from plummeting, the ground ripped away from me.

  He doesn’t answer me. He only swallows, his steps slow but measured. My back hits the wall by the bed.

  Elias stops a foot before me, his gaze intent on mine, and slowly peels off his leather gloves.

  “You know, Kian would still be alive,” he rasps, his voice thick, “if it weren’t for you.”

  He braces one hand on the wall, the other grazing my cheek, the gentleness completely at odds with the fury in his words.

  “What are you talking about?” I furrow my brows. Awareness lights low in my belly, liquid heat spreading with each graze of his scarred fingers against my skin.

  My body cants toward him, craving his touch, his words, anything.

  He lets out a hollow laugh. “You really know nothing, do you?”

  Another shiver moves through me when he trails his finger down my neck, slowly and torturously, until it rests on my racing pulse.

  His question finally registers, along with his accusation. A new fire ignites in my gut.

  Indignation and fury.

  “I don’t know what you think I did.” I push at his chest, but he doesn’t budge. “But I know what I went through.”

  Tears sting my eyes as I relive those dark months after the great Saints Hollow fire—images of death and destruction from the news scorched into my memory. I bite back the sob crawling up my throat. I refuse to cry in front of him.

  “I didn’t know if you were dead or alive! I called the hospitals so many times, they recognized my voice. Do you know how devastated I was when I found out your parents and little Beatrice died? How I was scared out of my mind every time I checked the casualties list, praying you and Sofia weren’t there?”

  I shove him again. Hard. Again and again, the bottled-up pain from all these years bursts out of me like the storm outside.

  Elias takes my hits like they were nothing. He lets me use his body to vent my anger, while dark emotions swirl in his eyes as he keeps his finger on my pulse.

  Like he’s trying to catch me in a lie.

  “Then one day out of the blue,” I choke out, “I get an emerald pendant in the mail. No note, no return address.”

  I tug the pendant free from my neckline. His eyes flare. The gem flashes under the dim light. “I knew it was you!”

  My throat burns, but I push through, because this torture, this injustice, I can no longer keep to myself.

  “I sent emails. I searched for any trace of you online. Nothing!” My vision blurs and I bite my lip. “I loved you, Kian. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving you, and you discarded me like I was nothing, like I—”

  “You brought them to our door!” he bellows, his fist driving into the wall next to my head.

  I jolt, stunned into silence.

  A vein jumps in his temple, a wet sheen clouding his eyes.

  His pained eyes.

  “What?”

  “The Association,” he grinds out, “you led them straight to us.”

  No, he can’t—What?

  “I waited for you at Hollow Gardens for hours…hoping you’d show up. And during this time—” His voice cracks. “They went to my apartment, tied up my parents. They—”

  “No.” My mind is stuck on his earlier statement. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. “I didn’t. You told me not to. I was careful. I never told anyone—”

  I gasp, my eyes snapping up to his.

  “Young lady, do you know where I can find the Lestes?” the taller gentleman asks with a smile as I descend the stairs after bidding Elias’s parents goodbye and leaving my note on the entryway table.

  I stop mid-step and frown, unsure how to respond.

  The man motions to the shorter man by his side, who holds up two large paper bags.

  “We’re their cousins from Albania,” he explains, his voice thick with a foreign accent, “b-but I lost their address in the cab. Silly me.”

  I eye their appearance—the tall one in a clean suit, the shorter one sharply dressed in a polo. They don’t look like the thugs loitering around the corners, cigarettes dangling from their lips.

  The tall man rubs his head like he’s embarrassed. “The young lady must think we’re stupid. Show her the photos.”

  The shorter man laughs and sets the bags on the floor. I catch brightly wrapped packages within. He fishes out his wallet and pulls out a photo.

  I smile—it’s a family photo of the Lestes. God, Kian was so much younger back then. The baby fat on his face, so cute.

  Clearing my throat, I eye the duo again. I bite my lip and make a decision.

  “Stay here,” I murmur. “Let me check.”

  The men sigh with clear relief. “Thank you, dear.”

  I run back upstairs.

  My vision refocuses on my cold, brutal husband staring at me with anguish.

  “They were your relatives,” I whisper. “Your cousins.”

  An icy chill slithers up my spine, up, up, up, until it wraps around my lungs.

  “We don’t have cousins. We don’t have relatives in Albania, Lana.”

  No. No. No. I clamp my hands over my ears. This can’t be.

  The floor slants. My legs give out from under me.