Page 23 of Thrown to the Wolves

My parents left first, unable to stand it any longer. And one by one, the other attendees drifted away, friends and family, their murmured condolences lost in the noise of the rain.

Until only one figure remained, a regal woman in a black veil that hid her face completely, holding an umbrella wide enough to cover two people. She moved toward me carefully, as though I was a wild horse that might suddenly turn skittish.

“It’s Scarlett, isn’t it?” she asked, bringing me in under her umbrella.

The way she said my name, laced with the barest hint of promise, made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I stared at her warily. “Do I know you?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know my name?”

“I make it my business to know things.”

“Who are you?” I demanded, taking a step back into the rain again.

“I am justice,” she replied simply.

I frowned, sensing the weight of her words, the dark power that emanated from her. I wanted to scoff, to call her out for portentous nonsense.

But there was something about her that made me believe her. And then I was suspicious.

“Did Adam work for you?” I asked, blinking at her through the rain.

She lifted the veil of her hat then so I could see her face. See that she wasn’t lying. “No, my dear. But I know the identity of his killer.” She paused, letting the revelation hang in the air between us. “Would you like to know, too?”

The police had been less than useless. And it wasn’t as though I knew who the hell to ask about Adam’s not-so-legal activities. For the first time since his murder, hope, fragile and treacherous, bloomed in my chest.

I followed the woman to a sleek black town car, my heart pounding as I slid into the leather seat on the back.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“You can call me Grandmother.” I said nothing to that, wondering again if this was a bad idea. Grandmother wasn’t all that far from Godmother, after all, which in turn wasn’t all that far from Godfather…

And whatever Adam had been doing, I knew the mob were involved.

Grandmother produced a tablet, and brought the screen to life to show me a video. I recognized the alley at once—and then I sucked in a sharp breath as I saw Adam come into view. Even from the sharp up-high angle, I knew him, that silly, gangly walk of his, and the Bulls sweater with Michael Jordan’s 23 printed on the back.

I watched, transfixed, as a blonde woman suddenly ran into frame. “What—” I began, but Grandmother shushed me.

The woman moved with lethal grace, and Adam didn’t even hear her coming until she spun him around and, with one strike, sent the knife into his chest. He collapsed at once, the trash bag falling from his hand, and lay there crumpled on the blood-slicked asphalt.

The woman turned and ran back the way she came—and then I saw it. She was wearing a mask. A wolf mask.

And then I saw myself, running to Adam.

Cradling him.

I sucked in a hard breath and looked away, looked up, catching a glimpse of cold blue eyes in the rearview mirror. I learned soon after that this was Ariadne, though I didn’t meet her officially that day.

Grandmother’s voice cut through the fog of my grief. “Scarlett, do you want justice against your brother’s murderer? To make her pay for the pain she’s inflicted on you and your parents?”

“I want…” I croaked, my voice cracking like glass. “I want her dead.”

Grandmother’s expression remained impassive, but her faded eyes glinted with what I would later recognize as profound satisfaction. “I thought you might say that. And I’d like to help you.”

“How?”

“I’m a woman who deals in vendettas—who equips those like yourself with the tools to reap the justice this world so often denies us.”

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