Page 42 of Girl Anonymous

His smile mocked her dismissal. “And you—what will you do?”

“Wait with my mom. Help Alex recover. Work. Wrap andprotect art objects. Watch for Serene and when she appears, kill her.”

In a voice as flat and black as his eyes, he asked, “Have you ever killed anyone?”

She looked out the window.

He took that as a no. “It’s not as easy as you think. Most people, even if they’re threatened, even if they’re attacked, hesitate before they injure the other person. If done correctly, vengeance is cold, well-planned. You use any means at your disposal: a knife, a fist, a firearm, a garrote, to end the life that seeks to destroy you and yours.”

She turned back to him and told him the truth, although she knew he wouldn’t listen. “An explosion.”

“Yes. An explosion. It’s personal, and once you’ve started, you can’t stop or the other will recover, and you’ll never be safe again.”

He’d killed people. She got it. “I understand. But brutalizing my sister and leaving her to die so horribly means I’ll never be safe, anyway. Serene knows Alex. She knows me. She knows what she’s begun.”

He leaned back in his chair, studied her as he slipped a black-and-gold fountain pen between his fingers. “You can stay here. I’ll take care of you.”

A crash sounded from the kitchen.

Maarja almost laughed. Another hope dashed, for his gaze never even flicked in that direction.

Nor did Maarja’s. All her focus remained on him. “Four nights ago—or five? I don’t know—you were all about cruel fate and unifying marriage and inevitable consequences. Now, without a hint of passion or even humanity, you’re offering me a position as your mistress.”

“Four nights ago, you rejected all that I offered. Why would you want more now?”

“I don’t want it. I’m pointing out your inconsistency.”

“Aren’t we a couple of inconsistent dupes?”

She got it. He was right. “Fair enough. But I’m not staring at you as if you had just crawled out from under a rock.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tabitha inch the door open and lean forward enough to listen. “I assume by your current judgmental behavior you still think I had a hand in the robbery? That I gladly gave my sister over to brutalization and death? Or that both of us were complicit without realizing the consequences of throwing our lots in with such inhuman beasts?”

“It’s time for you to tell me the truth. All the truth.”

Her heart stopped. Just for a moment. Just to give her a pretaste of the death he would provide for her. When her heart started again, she saw the knowledge in his eyes. He knew. Somehow, he knew. Somehow in the last few days he’d managed to pry into her deepest, most thoroughly forgotten secrets and weave them into a cloth that he would put over her face and use to smother her.

She stepped back, clasped her hands behind her, and in a formal tone said, “There are many truths in this world, Dante Arundel, and I know a few of them. To which one do you refer?”

“Cast your mind back. Back to that moment when your mother blew herself apart to kill my father.”

“Yes. She died so that I would survive.”

“Such a careful answer. You reply without denial or affirmation.”

Her supposition had been right. This was a setup. Why, she didn’t know, but she was sure these were the last moments of her life. Her heart thumped like a bass drum, but without any rhythm, unless fear had its own rhythm. She wanted to beg, cry, remind him of the night they’d spent together, offer herself without pride or hope to be used as he wished.

She bit down on her tongue. If she was going to die, she didn’t need to waste precious breath on humiliating herself. “You’reangry in a way you weren’t when we arrived here at the hotel. What has happened?”

“Today while you slept in that massively comfortable bed, I received a video taken on that fateful day in my father’s throne room.”

“A video survived?” Another frightened breath, another heartbeat that announced her day of reckoning had arrived.

“The Arundel security videos were kept in the hopes that someday, as technology advanced, they could be recreated from their twisted remains.”

She nodded as if approving of the foresight.

“One of the things no one could ever figure out was how your mother triggered the explosion. It was suggested by our people who were there and survived that she had shoved explosives up herchatte.”

Maarja took a deep shocked breath.

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