1. Clara

CHAPTER 1

Clara

Smoke fills my lungs, jolting me awake.

My eyes fly open, but there's little to see through the hazy darkness. Worse, I don't remember the room around me. I roll clumsily out of the bed and hit the floor shoulder first, then spend an awful second trying to free myself from the sheets. I can breathe a little more easily down here, but there's still no light to see. Am I in a prison cell? A basement? I'm not bound, thank god. I pull the collar of my shirt up over my nose and crawl on my belly, reaching out frantically for walls, for furniture, for any clue of where I am and where the door out is.

My searching hands find a seam in the wall, and I reach up for the handle, then jerk back with a hiss. The brass is scalding. My hacking cough sounds more like a sob.

The window then. Please let there be a window.

I crawl around the edges of the room, reaching up with one arm to slap at the plaster, praying every inch to hit glass instead. Thick fabric hits my face. Curtains? I grapple with them, yanking them aside, and milky moonlight floods the room. Well, what I can see of the room through the smoke.

It's a bedroom, a comfortable-looking but impersonal one that tells me it's a guest room, and I remember. Last night, I slipped out the back gate of my uncle's house, with no intention of returning. I showed up on Raleigh's doorstep, and despite everything- my uncle's betrayal, the war between our families, the ten years of radio silence- my best friend let me in. It's her house I'm in now.

It's her house that's on fire.

This is my fault.

There's an ominous orange glow coming in from under my door now, and even from my spot on the floor the smoke is getting thicker. I don't hesitate again. The window latch doesn't budge under my fingers- jammed intentionally or otherwise I don't know. I yank on it, cursing and sucking in a black lungful for my trouble. My head, my vision, the room is spinning, and the more I try to breathe the harder it becomes. I scrabble at the window latch, as if it'll open just because I really really want it to, but it's no use.

My first night of tentative freedom, and I'm going to burn to death.

A shadow darts through the moonlight. I gasp, sucking in more smoke, and pound my fists against the glass. Too late I think that the silhouette might not be a firefighter, but the fire starter. Too late, because the shadow is back, looming on the other side of the window. It knocks on the glass. There's something club-shaped in its hand.

"Stand back!" it shouts, and I trip over myself to get away from the window. The club swings. Glass explodes over the floor. Jerking the ruined screen aside, the shadow climbs into the room. Now that there's only smoke between us, I realize just how big it is, broad-shouldered and solid.

A man, holding a baseball bat, which he impatiently tosses back out the window. The glass on the carpet crunches under his shoes as he comes toward me, and I have to fight not to scramble away. I don't recognize his hazy features- he's not one of my uncle's men- but that doesn't mean he's not dangerous.

"Raleigh, get over here!" he orders, ducking under the smoke. Then he freezes. "Who the-"

Before I can react, he's in front of me. One large hand grips my upper arm while the other loops around my waist, lifting me effortlessly off my feet. I yelp, but he's already carrying me toward the window. With a deft swift swing of his legs, he propels us both out of the house and into the side yard.

I've never been carried by a man before. The sensation of his powerful body beneath his well-tailored suit sends a thrill through me. But there's no time to savor the fresh air or the brief fantasy of my rescuer. He drops to one knee and deposits me on the rocky landscaping like an oversized bag of flour.

Before I can catch my breath, he grabs his baseball bat and presses the end of it against my sternum.

"Where is my sister?" he demands from above me. His expression is hidden in the silhouette of his body against the moon, but I don't have to see it. His voice is ice cold with menace.

"I-I don't know," I rasp. "I was asleep-"

"If you're lying to me, I'll take you apart. Don't move," he orders. Then he's gone, the weight of the baseball bat with him, and I finally gasp for air.

He came here looking for Raleigh. My sister , he called her. Which means the man that just threatened to dismantle me is Thomas Warwick.

My blood enemy.

I hardly recognized the man standing over me from the quiet, distant teenager I remember him as. Time has filled out his body and added well-defined muscles that ripple with every movement. But his voice, it's the same. Hard and hollow .

The last time I saw him, I was fifteen, painting my nails with Raleigh in the back garden of the old Warwick estate. He was inside on the second floor, looking out his bedroom window, his head propped in his hand. I saw him in that window more often than I did in flesh and blood, but that didn't keep me from imagining what it would be like to talk to him, just once. On that day, his eyes had drifted from the sky down to me, and I'd blushed and smiled. He'd looked away before I could tell if he smiled back.

That night, the Warwick estate was burned down to nothing, there were bodies in the back garden, and Thomas Warwick Sr.'s monopoly over the city was ruined by my uncle's hand.

For a long time, I just lay there, my lungs burning with every breath. The rocks aren't exactly polished stones, and there's definitely more than one piece of glass digging through my clothes, but moving is impossible. Above me, smoke drifts out the window, filling the sky and cutting off the moon.

I have to get away from the house. Before Thomas comes back—before his people surround the place—I have to go.

For one wild moment, guilt floods me. I came here tonight looking for shelter, and now Raleigh's house is burning down, and all I can think about is getting away before whoever started the fire finds me lying here like a sacrifice. Raleigh could be dead, and I've already written her off as collateral damage.

Maybe I left my uncle's house too late to save my own soul.

Slowly, groaning with every shift of my body, I manage to get myself to my knees, then my feet. Every breath makes my insides feel like sandpaper. There are cuts and scrapes on every one of my limbs, but I ignore the welling blood and lurch toward the front of the house. Through the cotton in my head and ears I hear sirens. The cement drive slopes down to the street, and there-

My stomach swoops.

A matte black car is parked halfway up the lawn. Behind it, emergency vehicles are pulling up, flashing lights dazzling my already stinging eyes. Through the blur of my tears, I see two figures by the car. One is Raleigh, sitting on the hood of the car while the other, Thomas, examines her brusquely for injuries. Their voices are rising.

"-get here so fast?!" Raleigh demands, and my heart aches with relief. There's a husk in her voice from the smoke, but otherwise she seems to be unharmed. Thomas must have gotten her out all right.

"Did you forget I own the house?" I hear Thomas say. "I'm notified every time a smoke alarm goes off. Now answer the question. Who is the woman staying with y-"

"Clara?!" Raleigh slips off the car's hood and takes a step toward me.

"Raleigh! Are you all right?"

But Thomas is already coming toward me. His baseball bat is gone but his fists are still clenched. The red glow coming through the windows of the house behind me gilds his blond hair and turns his hazel eyes into twin fires. His square-jawed face is completely impassive, like I'm a piece of lint he found in his pocket. I hardly recognize him anymore, and there's no familiarity in his face when he stares down at me.

"Don't talk to her," he warns. "Talk to me. What were you doing here tonight?"

He really doesn't know who I am. If I'm an ignorant bystander, he needs to either pay me off or threaten me into silence. And if I'm not, he needs to know who I work for, so he can plan a counterattack.

More than ever before, I wish I knew nothing about the world we're both part of. I'd take the hush money and use it to fund a better life. Unfortunately, who I am will immediately doom me, and I don't know how to force the words out.

Despite the bright color in his eyes, I feel cold under his gaze. I take a breath, but it rubs my lungs too raw, and I start coughing. A hand closes around my arm, and I jerk, but Thomas holds me firmly. He's so close I can feel the heat of his body. Or maybe I'm feeling the fire eating through the house.

"The quicker you start answering my questions, the quicker you can go back to bed and forget any of this happened," Thomas says quietly. "I can even make sure it's in a house that's not on fire."

Around his broad shoulder, I finally get a clear look at Raleigh. She's hovering by the car in rumpled red velour pants and a lacy camisole. Her dyed black curls are wild around her face and shoulders. She could be fresh out of bed or ready for a Victoria's Secret photoshoot, as usual, except for the smudges of soot on her face and hands. She looks as dazed as I feel. When our eyes meet, she seems to come back to herself.

"Tommy, it's Clara," she says, her voice as ravaged as mine. "Remember? Clara…" She licks her full lips. "Speare."

Thomas's hand clenches on my arm, almost hard enough to hurt. It's his only reaction; his expressionless mouth doesn't even twitch.

"Clara," he repeats, voice cool, "Speare."

His hand uncurls from my arm, and he tucks it smoothly into the pocket of his suit pants. He doesn't step away, but there's suddenly a space between us, like he's a snake coiling in preparation for a strike. His eyes scan the other people on the scene- the firefighters dousing the house with water, the paramedics hanging respectfully back- and apparently spies no threat. Aside from me.

"Get in the car," he says. "Both of you."

Raleigh's mouth flies open. "But-"

"You'd rather practice your damsel in distress act at the hospital and get some paramedics to drive you back to the estate?" Thomas cuts in, and she snaps her mouth shut, flushing. I remember her propensity for flirting when we were younger and feel embarrassed for her. Some things haven't changed much.

Other things, I think, as Thomas turns back to face me, have changed completely.

I swallow, trying to wet my throat enough to be able to speak. "Th-Thank you for pulling me out," I say. "You saved my-"

"If I'd known who you were, I wouldn't have bothered," Thomas says without apology. "Now. Get. In. The-"

Another black car pulls up to the curb and jerks to a stop, the squeal of its wheels cutting Thomas off. An impossibly tall woman in a crisp button-up and black pencil skirt steps out. Her bleached white hair is pulled into a stylish bun, and her maroon lips purse at the scene. She looks like she belongs on some runway, or at a CEO's desk, with her sleek fashion sense, dagger-sharp cheekbones, and perfect brown skin. But aside from Thomas, she's the most dangerous person here.

Iris Agostinelli was the second in command of the Warwick family long before Thomas became the boss, and I wouldn't be surprised if she outlives us by decades.

Her dark eyes take in the entire scene with a single shrewd flick. Unlike Thomas, she recognizes me instantly, and her eyebrows fly up her forehead.

"What are you doing here?" she asks sharply.

Thomas's expression doesn't change at the interruption. "That's a question I keep asking and not getting an answer to," he says pointedly. "Iris, take Raleigh to the estate and make sure she gets a proper check-up. I will follow with Miss Speare."

My stomach drops. Raleigh looks just as horrified. "Tommy, can I talk to-"

"Yes," he interrupts. "At the estate. Not in front of your house, which is currently burning down."

That shuts her up. The odds are that this wasn't an accident, and that the arsonist, whoever they were, is still nearby. There are a lot of witnesses here now, but Thomas isn't going to take any more chances tonight.

"Get in the car," he repeats, and this time, his eyes are only on me. "Now."