Chapter 78

78

Jonathan

Mas and I went into the kitchen to make coffee, and now we are both staring off into space. I am perched on the countertop, watching the world outside the window.

Paris is exactly the same as it always is: too gray, too dirty, too busy. That is something I have always loved about Paris. No matter what I do—who I kill, who I hurt, who hurts me—the city stays the same. You bleed, you suffer, you die and Paris just sighs, I've seen it all before .

"I'm really sorry," I tell Mas for the umpteenth time. "I should have told you what my plan was, so you could have told me how stupid it was."

"Story of our lives," he says, scooping another spoonful of coffee into the machine. "It's fine. We can't go back. You're here now."

"As soon as Giselle tracks these people down, I will kill them. And we can all live happily ever after. Separately."

He jams more coffee into the slot and starts the machine. "I don't think separately works."

"What?"

He sighs, rubs the back of his neck. He wanders toward me, first gazing out the window, then turning to face me. "What do you want, Jonathan?"

"What do you mean?"

"In life. If you could have anything, what would you want?"

"I can't have anything ."

"Really?" He puts his hands on his hips. "Because you seem to have gotten pretty much whatever you wanted. Money. Success—albeit in a pretty niche field. You've gotten away with murder—literally—how many times? Do you really think it's that impossible for you to have something simple? To have what everyone else has?"

"I don't know."

We sit together in silence as the coffee machine burbles and steams. I realize I have not been in a kitchen—been in a home —with Mas since we were children. Back then, I never could have imagined a scene like this. I knew where Europe was, but not that I could go there. I could not have pictured this four-thousand-dollar coffee machine, these custom countertops and the view outside the window—so leafy, so chic, so fucking picturesque that it could break your heart if you let it all in, if you let yourself be a part of it.

I have kept myself in a cage for so many years that even when I see beauty, I see it through bars. I am the prisoner and the prison. I am the solution to all of my problems and yet I cannot set myself free.

The coffee machine beeps as Giselle and Eva enter the kitchen.

"She really is a genius," Eva says, hovering just inside the door.

"You found the forum?" I ask.

"No." Giselle smiles, resting her head on Mas's shoulder. "I found the administrator."