Page 31 of The Crimson Lily
I hear a chuckle.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“It’s a riddle,” he announces. “How typical…Your boss has quite the personality.”
“What does it say?”
“Pure and innocent, a carefree flower. Petals joined in a funnel that can tame a glower.”
I scratch my head, brainstorming how to answer this riddle, but it eludes me. Perhaps William has changed this one because I don’t remember it like that. I look to Béatrice and Alejandro, repeating what Maksim has just read out loud.
“A tulip?” Alejandro suggests.
I do know one thing about this riddle, which I immediately tell Maksim. “The answer should be given in Morse code using that button you see. Do you know?—”
I stop my sentence when I hear a sequence of long and short beeps. Maksim has figured it out on his own. I have no idea what he came up with, but the final door opens, and I feel relieved. We’re going to get this. I squint to see better through the low-quality image we’re receiving on our end. Alejandro and Béatricelean closer and squint with me. We wait for Maksim to show us what we’ve come all this way for. We wait for him to take the dagger in his hands and get the hell out of that place.
But none of that happens. Instead, deep within the safe, there’s a small piece of paper. Maksim takes it in his gloved hands and examines it. It’s a paper from the Opera hotel, with one simple sentence written on it:
Hello, Liliana. How does it feel to lose at your own game?
What the fuck?
At that exact moment, I hear a loud, shattering bang, and Alejandro is pushed against the wall. He tries to turn, to punch whoever stands behind him, but is greeted by a fist to the face. I scream and instantly rise to my feet.
“Liliana?” I hear Maksim’s whispers through the microphone. “Liliana, what’s going on?”
I can’t see what’s happening in the camera because another unknown person seizes me by the waist and lifts me in the air. A large man in a pitch-black suit carries me away from the desk and throws me to the floor. Then, he goes for Béatrice.
“Damn it, Liliana!” I hear again, then I hear nothing anymore.
These men appeared out of nowhere. The large one throws a hook punch at Béatrice.
Wrong move.
She dives in, latches on to his arm, and gives him her most powerful fist in the face. His head jerks back, and she continues with a drill of incredibly fast punches in his jaw and chest.
Alejandro tries to recover his stance, though his assailant is about to punch him again. Something inside me screeches—an instinct, a buried urge. I run to the man, pull his shoulder back, and strike him in the face with all my strength.
But that’s not hard enough.
He seizes my shoulders, forces me to cower back and fall on the bed behind me. Then, instead of hitting me, he seizes the gun attached to the back of his belt and points it at me.
A flash of metal, and all my thoughts halt.
A man pulls a gun to my head. I hear William’s voice behind me, ordering me to walk.
That same man is standing right in front of me, holding the gun firmly. I freeze. Béatrice dashes to him, but he holds his warning hand at her.
“You do anything and I shoot that bitch,” he threatens.
An American accent. I recognize the dark-brown hair and the beard. I recognize the big nose, the wrinkles by his green eyes. I’ve seen this man before, and I’m having the scariest déjà vu of all time right now.
The man signs for his partner, whose nose bleeds profusely, to take Béatrice and Alejandro and put them aside. His partner leads them to a corner, forces them on their knees, and ties ropes around them. He doesn’t hesitate to throw a punch in Béatrice’s face as revenge for what she’s done to him.
“Leave her alone!” I yell.
The American cocks his gun. “Keep your mouth shut, bitch!”
