Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

XERO

Less than an hour after the sedative wears off, I exit my car and step into the sun-drenched parking lot of Newton Crematorium. It’s a simple brick building that backs onto the Parisii Cemetery flower gardens. The only thing that stops it from looking like a church are its tinted windows and the tall chimneys rising from its roof.

I left Jynxson in the infirmary to distract Isabel, who’s likely to stop me from entering what could be enemy territory. The only people in the world who can shed further light on my twin theory are the Salentino twins, since they knew of Amethyst before she even visited Dr. Saint.

The disguise I’m wearing is enough to make me look different from the mugshot that went viral, but not so drastic that I arouse suspicion. Dark blond hair tint, a light covering of bronzing lotion, and iris-darkening contact lenses to alter the pale blue to something less memorable.

Footsteps hurry after me as I reach its entrance. I turn around and lock gazes with a furious-looking Camila.

“Don’t tell me Isabel sent you here to drag me back to the infirmary,” I say.

“She just wants to make sure you take your meds,” Camila snaps.

Nodding, I let her accompany me through the entrance into a white reception area where two bouquets of lilies sit in elegant vases on a mahogany desk.

A door opens to the right of the desk, and a hard-faced woman in black steps out. Her gaze skips over Camila and settles on me.

“I’m here to see Aria and Elania Salentino,” I say, meeting her stare.

“What’s it regarding?”

“It’s about their dead sister-in-law and missing niece.”

I could have phrased it better, but I’ve lost days in my search for Amethyst. Everyone thinks she’s some kind of sleeper agent who tried to kill me before taking out her mother and boarding a plane to join Father.

They’re overlooking the footage of her trying to escape in a straitjacket because her face is obscured by a mask. While we’re waiting for Father to give Reverend Thomas an address, I plan on proving she’s a victim who needs our help.

The door on the left opens, and a dark-haired man steps out holding a gun. He wears the somber suit of a mortician, but his face, marred by a broken nose and jagged scars, has the look of a gangster’s hired thug. He’s supposed to be menacing, but that shit on his face is a sign of slow reflexes.

“Who the fuck are you?” he growls, pointing the gun at my chest.

I raise my palms. “Easy now. I’m here because my girlfriend was abducted.”

He snorts. “The bosses don’t have any niece, and I don’t know any girlfriend. Now, I suggest you leave.”

My jaw clenches. Any other day, I would spend time entertaining this low-level grunt, but my entire strategy depends on speaking to Amethyst’s aunts.

“Take me to the Salentino sisters, and I’ll overlook your confession of being a forty-year-old virgin.”

He swaggers toward me, his lip curling. “Watch who you’re talking to, pretty boy, or I’ll?—”

My fist lands on his nose, making him stagger backward, but not before he tries to land a kick to my crotch. I sidestep, delivering another punch to his gut. He doubles over, and I snatch the gun.

A bulldog of a man charges out from the same doorway, brandishing a pistol. Camila rushes to his side, her foot connecting with his kneecap. As he stumbles forward, she disarms him and points his weapon at his head.

“Do I need to search every room in this building to find the Salentino sisters, or is one of you going to take us to them?” I ask.

Bulldog’s lip curls, his beady eyes darting to the forty-year-old virgin still clutching his gut. “Neither of them are here, but you can leave a message.”

“Tell them Dolly is back in town, and she’s dangerous.” I fold my arms across my chest.

The door on the right opens, revealing Aria Salentino, a woman in her mid-thirties with cropped black hair, wearing a man’s black suit with a matching shirt buttoned up to the throat. Despite the cuts she’s etched into her brow, nothing can detract from her delicate bone structure.

She motions for both men to stand down. “And who the fuck is Dolly?”

“The missing girl whose twin sister you helped fourteen years ago,” I reply.

Aria glares up at me for several seconds, her gaze never leaving mine. My pulse quickens. She knows. Knows that Amethyst isn’t an only child. Knows there’s a chance the sister who was either taken or sent away has returned for revenge.

“Put down the guns and come inside.” She disappears behind the door.

Camila and I exchange glances. I flick my head, motioning at her to watch my back. While I don’t think the sisters are dangerous, they’re connected to the oldest crime family in New Alderney. Elania could be inside, calling for backup.

After placing the weapons on the desk, we step past Aria into a tasteful office of black walls and hardwood floors covered in a charcoal rug. A black desk takes center stage, along with two leather chairs. The decor reminds me so much of Amethyst’s little study that my heart aches.

If I had protected her the night the first man from X-Cite Media came after her, instead of tormenting her from the shadows, she would have known the contents of that video would be impossible. Now, I’ll do everything I can to make things right.

The woman standing behind the desk is Elania Salentino. She’s identical to her sister, but with features softened by layered brown hair with highlights. She wears light makeup, with a figure similar to Amethyst in her body-hugging black dress, convincing me of the family connection.

“What’s this about twins?” Elania asks.

Aria stands beside the door, keeping a hand hidden inside her jacket, ready to draw her concealed weapon. I position myself by the wall between the windows, where I can keep an eye on both sisters. Camila stands by the corner wall, out of sniper range.

“I know Amethyst didn’t kill her mother, and I have footage of two identical-looking women at the airport.”

The Salentino twins lock gazes.

“Who are you?” Aria asks.

“Amethyst and I have been in a relationship for months.”

Elania snorts. “My niece is practically a shut-in. Besides, she’s too wrapped up in that prisoner to make time for men.”

“I never said we went out on dates,” I mutter.

“What do you want from us?” Aria asks.

“Anything that can lead us to Dolly.”

“We haven’t seen that one since she was a baby,” Aria says with a sigh. “Melonie was married to our brother, Giorgi, who was an abusive piece of shit. She skipped out on him a year after she had the twins and disappeared on us for nearly a decade.”

My heart skips. “Did he track her down?”

“Giorgi met with an unfortunate accident before he got the chance,” Elania says with a smirk.

“Melonie returned to us ten years later, looking for help,” Aria says. “She told us her new husband was dead, Dahlia had been trafficked, and Amy was abused so badly that she needed to be institutionalized. We sent private investigators looking for Dahlia, but she’d disappeared.”

“Which institution?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “It was such a long time ago. Most of the men my uncle sent to raid the asylum are dead. I don’t even remember the name.”

“What happened to the husband?” I ask.

Their eyes meet again before Elania says, “He died in a car crash.”

“Was Amethyst with him?”

“How did you know?” Aria asks.

“She mentioned losing her memories in a car accident, but she never said a word about having a sister.”

Elania walks around her desk and approaches me, her gaze sharpening. “Tell me about the footage at the airport?”

“Can I show you?”

She nods.

I pull out my phone and play both clips from the same day. One of a woman looking exactly like Amethyst boarding a private jet. The other of Amethyst running toward the camera in a straitjacket.

“How do you know it’s not the same girl in both clips?” Elania asks.

“I know Amethyst,” I reply. “She’s quiet, she’s introverted, she only has one real-life friend. She’s too sensitive about her mental health to stage herself as a lunatic being tackled by a guard.” My voice falters. “She’s terrified.”

Silence descends on the room, and the twins share another glance.

Aria stares me full in the face and asks, “Are you really her boyfriend?”

“Yes,” I say, my voice hoarse.

“If you’re not a cop, tell us your name,” Elania says.

I swallow hard, determination steeling my resolve. I can’t afford to blow my cover, but if telling them the truth will help Amethyst, then I have no choice. My heart pounds, and I clench my fists to keep steady.

“It’s Xero. Xero Greaves.” The words burn as they leave my throat, each one a calculated risk.

She nods as if she already guessed it. “Then you’ll know Roman.”

“Montesano was in the cell opposite mine,” I rasp. “Our exercise times overlapped, and we spoke a little in the death row book club. He shared some of his housekeeper’s home cooking.”

They exchange glances again before Aria asks, “Why do you think Amy is in danger?”

I tell her about X-Cite Media’s attempts to capture Amethyst, along with Reverend Thomas’s account of Dolly being forced to participate in snuff movies and surviving. I replay clips from where I interrogated Harlan Stills, the employee we lured out of X-Cite Media’s stronghold.

With each word, the Salentino twins’ disgust deepens. Aria snarls, her fury palpable, while Elania curls her lip in disdain. I can hardly blame them. Interrogating Stills the first time was infuriating enough.

“Why didn’t Melonie tell us Amy was in trouble again?” Aria asks. “We could have helped.”

“I think Melonie grew tired of covering up Amethyst’s kills,” I mutter.

Neither of them speak, not wanting to implicate themselves in covering up murders, but I’m almost certain they helped dispose of the brothers who went missing from her college.

“Give it to him,” Aria says.

I straighten, my gaze darting to Elania, who returns to her desk and pulls out a red, leather-bound book.

“What is it?” I ask.

“When Melonie returned from her disappearance, begging us for help, my mom wanted to put a bullet through her skull for losing one granddaughter and traumatizing the other, but Melonie handed over this diary, explaining how it happened.”

She presses the book into my hand. “The information there is fourteen-years old and might lead to nothing, but when I heard Melonie had been killed and Amy went on the run, I picked it up, looking for answers.”

“We wanted to be involved in her life, but her mother didn’t want her connected with our side of the family,” Aria says.

Elania’s features tighten with annoyance. “Judges tend to dole out harsher punishments for people connected to the Montesano family tree.”

I nod, already aware of how Roman Montesano was framed for the murder of a woman he hadn’t even met. “Thank you.”

Throat tightening, I turn to the door, gripping the diary, determined to show it to Amethyst once I’ve rescued her from the clutches of Father and her sister.

“Hey.”

I turn around and lock eyes with Elania. “When you find her, let us know. Our cousins have a small army of men who will march into hell to get her out.”

Nodding, I shelve her offer as potential back up.

As I step out into the hallway, my phone buzzes with a message from Tyler’s assistant. It’s a list of four locations the private jets went to around the time Dolly boarded.

Martha’s Vineyard Airport in Massachusetts, Helsing Island Airport in New York, Jackson Hole Airport in Wyoming, and Hilton Head Island Airport in South Carolina. Four far-flung cities, each one a potential rabbit hole leading to a dead end.

I walk out into the parking lot with Camila, clutching the little red diary. Her gaze burns the side of my face, and I turn to meet her eyes. The conversation with the Salentino twins has just confirmed my suspicions that Amethyst isn’t any kind of sleeper agent working for Father, but a woman in the clutches of psychopaths.

“What’s next?” she asks.

“If Father doesn’t reply to Reverend Thomas with the location of the shoot, we’ll have to scour the locations, one by one.”

“That’s going to take forever.” She unlocks her vehicle and picks up a paper bag from the pharmacy. “How are your lungs?”

Burning with frustration. Time isn’t on our side. Anything can be happening to Amethyst, and all we can do is gather information. I take the bag and mutter something about being fine. No amount of smoke damage can compare to what she’s suffering. Or even to what my heart endures with each passing moment of my desperate search.