Page 52 of Thrown to the Wolves

I wish I didn’t have to. I wish I could walk around with her scent still on me, comforting and heady. Because this is the last time I’ll have her all over me like this.

The last time.

After I dress, I grab together my shit and pause to look down at her one last time. She’s out fast, the mild sedative I slipped into the water keeping her well under.

I could do it now. Easy mark. Cut her throat or slide my stiletto blade into her heart like all the rest. But I don’t. It wouldn’t be…

It wouldn’t be fair.

I turn away from her, away from the horrible guilty knot that’s getting tighter and tighter in my chest, and pull out my phone. The tracker signal pulsates strong and clear, showing me exactly where Aurora Verderosa is right now.

Still out shopping for wedding stuff, it seems.

I couldn’t believe it when she walked right up to me in that cafe. It was fate, I decided then and there. I’d been going back and forth in my own mind, wondering whether to come clean to Lyssa, beg for her help…

But then, like a sign from the Universe, the very woman I was looking for strolled up to me. Invited me to her goddamn wedding. Hugged me, so that slipping a tracker into her large, oddly unstylish handbag, was easy as pie.

And she’s still wandering around Chicago now, as Grandmother’s haunting ultimatum replays in my mind.

Grandmother had a gift for me, and I knew I wasn’t going to like it. But I still wanted my vengeance. And one way or another, I planned to get it. Carefully. Slowly, if need be. But I would put Adam’s killer in the ground, no matter who they were.

I just had to be sure, first. And if it was Grandmother who gave the order…

“Ah, that must be my sweet little Scarlett,” Grandmother’s saccharine voice rang out from the sitting room as the elevator doors opened on her penthouse. “Don’t be shy, dear. Come let me lay eyes upon you.”

For a moment my head swam, and I heard myself muttering under my breath, “Grandmother, Grandmother, what big eyes you have.” But I headed on, into the sitting room where Grandmother reclined in her high-backed wing chair like a queen, tented fingers pressed to her pursed lips as she studied me with reptilian focus.

“Ariadne said you had a gift for me?” I forced the words out, keeping my tone neutral.

Careful. Ariadne’s warning still hung in my ears. She knows.

“Indeed I do, dear girl.” Grandmother rose and crossed the room to where I stood rooted. “The gift of loyalty, Scarlett. Of true loyalty and devotion to this noble sisterhood you find yourself in.”

I had no idea what she meant.

Her bony fingers feathered along my jawline, and I fought not to recoil from her touch. “You’ll do anything I ask to prove yourself,” she murmured, not a question but a statement of certainty that made my skin prickle with foreboding. “Won’t you, Scarlett?”

“You know I will.” The words only fueled the anger that had become my constant, simmering companion. But I forced them out, meeting Grandmother’s dark stare. “So…what is it that you want from me, Grandmother?”

A slow, satisfied smile split Grandmother’s lips as she withdrew her hand. Turning, she crossed to an intricately carved credenza and retrieved an electronic tablet. She tapped it on, bringing up the feed in the torture rooms here behind her bedroom, the one that she used as some kind of sick entertainment as she watched her trainees punish each other.

And as Grandmother offered it to me, the tablet’s weight seemed to magnify, so that it sagged in my hands.

“Look at it,” Grandmother commanded with glacial calm. “Let us understand each other fully, Scarlett.”

I lowered my head and looked. There, staring up at me with terror-glazed eyes, were Mom and Dad—bound, gagged, and clearly at the mercy of their captors, four of those highly-trained male guards that hovered around the high-rise all the time.

My head snapped up. “You—” I choked out, and then swallowed, breathing hard. “What do you want? Money? I’ll get you anything, just please?—”

“Money?” Grandmother let out a peal of laughter, cruel mirth making her face screw up in delight. “Oh no, Scarlett. As I said, this is about loyalty…and you’ll prove yours through obedience, like any good soldier. That is my gift to you, you see. To make you understand the value of loyalty.”

“But I am loyal,” I insisted.

Taking the tablet back, she leveled me with a look of cold appraisal. “Please don’t treat me like a fool. I know that you have been tempted by a particular…deserter. I know you have been meeting with her regularly. In secret.” Her lips curled with disgust.

“You want me to kill Lyssa? I’ll do it.”

“You can’t.”

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