Page 12 of Reckless Hearts

Back out at the party, I smile when I should, laugh when the others do, and make jokes in my own dry way. I’m hugging Ya-ya—my grandmother—when I look up just in time to see a white-faced Dahlia timidly step back out into the gardens.

My jaw grinds.

I’d love to say it’s another testament to my love for my sister that I quite literally told Dahlia in no uncertain termsnotto leave. To stay, for the sake of my sister and her birthday, instead of throwing her off the fucking roof myself.

But while I can lie as easily as breathing to the rest of the world, when it comes to myself, I’m brutally and nakedly honest. I’m incapable of lying to me myself and I, or convincing myself of a non-truth, even if it helps to soothe a pain or save me from myself.

I wish I could. But I can’t. Not even when it comes to Dahlia.

The thing is, there’s no lie with her. There’s just two opposing, mutually exclusive truths. One, that I hate her. And I don’t mean dislike intensely, I meanhate. I hate that behind that “poor little girl with the tragic backstory but a heart of gold and a plucky attitude”bullshit, she hides a venomous snake. She’s a thief of truth. A conniving little cunt who got as deep into me as anyone or any weapon ever has. And Iloatheher for that, almost as much as I loathe New York.

But then there’s the second truth: that in the process of cutting her way into me, Dahlia Roy flayedherselfopen tomeas well, in a way no person ever had before, or has ever since. And try as I might—and holyfuck, have I tried—she refuses to leave my subconsciousness. Like a nasty little addiction, an obsession I can’t shake. And I hate that six years on,farafter I should have purged her from my system, she still lives rent-free in my goddamn head.

Like a tumor. A disease. A plague.

And yet…despite all that… When I see her step outside, I smile in spite of myself.

Ilikethat she’s heard my threat and heeded it well. She hasn’t run. She hasn’t ghosted Callie on her birthday because of her own fear of me. Now I just need to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do about that.

She probably should have left.

No, scratch that. Sheabsolutelyshould have left, and run, and kept on running until this city and my goddamn family were far, far behind her.

But she didn’t.

Ya-ya pulls away with a final pat of my cheek. She walks over to a little silver bell hanging from the arbor, beneath which the dinner table is stunningly laid with candles, boughs of greens, flowers, shimmering silver confetti, and lavish food and wine.

“Now, we eat!” she crows, clearly a glass deeper into the champagne than she’d usually allow herself to get.

Which is precisely when I make my move.

It’s a subtle one: nothing overt or crazy. But humans are so much easier to herd and control in subtle ways than any of us like to believe. We all think we’re the masters of our own choices; free thinkers, the lot of us. But we’re not. We’re sheep.

…Well, most people are, even the ones I love.

Some of us are wolves.

The crowd of family and friends begins to walk over to the table that I happen to be closest to. And so I do one simple move: I reach down, pluck up one of the forks, and set it on top of the salad plate it’s sitting next to.

Then, without batting an eye, I round the table to find a seat directly across from it. Where I sit andwait, like a crocodile lying just beneath the surface, waiting for its prey.

There’s no place cards. The rest of my family and their friends and significant others take whatever seats they like around the table. Ares sits next to Neve, her sister Eilish sits beside her newish beau, Gavan Tsarenko, head of the Reznikov Bratva. He and I actually have some friends in common, though it’s unclear if he’s aware of that yet.

I nod at Cillian Kildare when he and Una take seats almost directly across from me. I know more about him than I’m sure he realizes. Because that’s what I do: I watch people. I learn about them and their darkest secrets and memorize the things I’m sure they’d rather keep to themselves.

Cillian, for example, is a lot like me. Dangerously so, in fact. I believe the current fashionable term is “neurodivergent”.

Personally, I’m quite fine with old word they used to use for people like Cillian and me.

Psychopaths.

Cillian keeps his true nature hidden about as well as I do, though, notquiteas well. Those closest to him—Una, his nieces Neve and Eilish, and his number two, Castle, who I gather is basically family to him at this point—are aware of what Cillian truly is. Or at least, mostly aware.

None of my family knows what I am.

They never will.

I glance down the table to where Callie is—to my laser-focused mind—painfullyobviously saving the seat next to her. I even know who it’s for. And when he—Castle James, that is—looks right at it, and then right at her before moving to the opposite end of the table, I allow myself a smug feeling.

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