Page 28 of The Wraith & Her Killer

Remember, your heart is mine.

His form disappears behind my watery vision and through my uncontrollable sobs, I kiss his cold, unmoving lips just as his body falls completely slack.

I’m ripped away from him suddenly as I become airborne for a moment, but before I can fight to get back to Adris, the muzzle of a gun crashes down against my temple and my vision swims, the world around me being swallowed into oblivion. I reach for him despite the growing distance between us. I think I’m crying out his name, but the words sound so hazy and muffled that I can’t be sure. Everything moves in a blur as I’m thrown haphazardly into the backseat of a vehicle before peeling out and speeding down a hill.

The device in my ear crackles one last time as I’m taken further and further away.

“We’re here! Adris? Oh, fuck! Odessa, where?—”

BOOM!

An explosion shakes the earth beneath the car, a fiery mushroom cloud rising from the place where Santino’s hideaway once stood.

I want to scream but my own body is shutting down. A final tear rolls down my cheek before giving in. The last thing I see in my mind’s eye before surrendering to the darkness is Adris’ pale, lifeless body as I’m carried away from where I left my heart.

And now they’re all gone.

Rune. Calix.

Adris.

It’s all because of me. The death-seeking wraith.

13

ONE WEEK LATER

Have you ever heard the sound a heart makes just before it stops beating?

Well, I have, and it’s my least favorite sound in the world.

We buried three empty caskets today.

The Kuznetsov and Volkov bratvas, and many others gathered to pay their respects to the best assassins “they ever had the honor of training.”

I stood there, numbly staring at the caskets and trying to mask the deep ache of the chasm in my chest where my heart once beat. But the cavernous space was just as empty as the three boxes laid out before me.

Ivory for Calix Sterling.

Gunmetal gray for Rune Volkov.

Pitch-black for Adris Knox.

Emptycaskets, because there was nothing left of their bodies to bury after the explosion that ensured his father’s plan to backstab my own father ran smoothly.

My life had taken a total three-sixty in a matter of days. I was never even able to savor the taste of freedom, and now I’m back tobeing caged. I haven’t spoken in a week, not since that first day, when I was reunited with Papa.

At first, he was in complete disbelief, then relief mixed with sorrow before he pulled me into his arms and hugged me like he would never get another chance. Little did I know, that would actually be the case.

I took the chance on telling my Papa everything that Adris’ father had done, how long he’d been working with Santino and planned to overthrow him, how he killed his own son to further his own plans.

And for a moment… one small, fleeting moment, it looked as if Papa believed me, that he would take my side and have Boris punished or killed oranythingthat would’ve taken him away from me and my family and the looming threat he had imposed behind my father’s back. But that moment vanished when he told me he would “get to the bottom of the matter” and I was escorted to a room. Not the room that I used to share with my mother, though. This room was larger by comparison, but it was barren, save for a single bed and an empty dresser.

Hope was such a temporary emotion that I had clung to too tightly, though. Because Boris Knox is a master manipulator, convincing my father that I was simply speaking fallacies due to malnutrition and delirium after a decade of unsavory servitude to Ferrero.

His belief in Boris’ concocted story had multiplied the ache I felt when my father believed him so easily.

“You’re not well,” Papa said, suddenly looking down at me as if I were nothing more than a patient in a mental institution after begging him to believe me. “Just give me time, little one.We’ll fix this.”

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