Page 124 of Savage Enemy

In answer, the grandfather clock struck midnight.

I crossed myself and rose from my knees, ready to take my fate into my own hands.

I hadn’t bothered to pray for myself.

CHAPTER 25

VAL

The moment my tiptoes touched the wood beyond my bedroom door, I felt like a hungry sixteen-year-old girl again, risking punishment for some bread and a slice of cheese.

Same as during my childhood, I counted all my steps. Four steps from my room to the next door. Twelve more steps to the back staircase.

I didn’t dare peek at any of the doors as I passed by them, some silly superstition about looking at them would make them open, and then someone would catch me.

With my heart pounding into my throat, I made my way down the stairs. Through muscle memory, I knew which of the wooden steps creaked and which didn’t. I balanced on one foot as I skipped the next step and aimed for the one beyond it.

On the sixth step, I glanced up at Saul’s room. No light shone from beneath his closed door.

More steps. I leaned over the circular banister and looked up again. The light from Aris’s room sliced under his closed door. He could be awake just as long as he didn’t come out and catch me.

I continued my slow creeping down the stairs, clutching the railing like a lifeline, listening for anyone to come around the corner at any moment.

Last stair tread—then fifteen steps to the kitchen.

After tiptoeing in, I pressed myself against the wall, ducking under the windows in case one of the guards happened to look toward the house. I couldn’t risk having them come in to investigate any strange moving shadows.

Though if they did and they caught me, what would I say?

I promise I wasn’t going to run away. I was just planning to murder my twin and commit suicide by shooting at you.

Somehow, I didn’t think that would go over well.

Four steps to the storage closet. I opened the door and sidled in, leaving the door cracked for the moonlight and streetlights filtering through the windows to come in. A bulb hung from the ceiling, but I didn’t dare risk it.

Apparently not everything had stayed the same. Someone had replaced the wood shelves with glass cabinets, secured with, of all the dumbest things, a padlock.

What the fuck was the point of having a cabinet full of guns when it took too long to get one out?

Ammo, however, laid outside of the locked cabinets, but what good were bullets when you didn’t have a gun? Throwing them really wouldn’t have the same impact.

My plan went to shit over something I couldn’t have known.

I shut my eyes for a second to focus. I needed another plan with the same results—Aris dead by my hand, and my quick death from their retaliation. If Saul wanted to ship my corpse to the Russians, that was between him, the Russians, and God.

I nodded. I could still do it. Just had to improvise.

But I didn’t know where in the house to find another gun.

Rummaging through random drawers and cabinets in any of the rooms seemed like a bad idea.

Maybe if I went back upstairs to Marco’s room. I couldn’t remember if his light had been on. I doubted he was asleep, though. Marco had always been more of a night owl.

I might find a gun in his room, but also get caught. If he caught me, then what? Explain my suicide mission and hope he felt bad enough to help me out?

Marco and Aris had no love lost between them, but it didn’t mean Marco would help me kill our brother. He wouldn’t like the message it sent to the other families.

I wouldn’t even consider involving Santo. He might have been a grown man covered in ink and scars, but in my head, he was still that sweet boy from my childhood.

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