37. Clara

CHAPTER 37

Clara

My uncle's blood is on my face. I want to wipe it away, but I know it will only smear, and I don't want it on my hands.

But it is on my hands, whether I can see it or not. Uncle Morgan is dead, and it's because of me.

This was my plan from the moment I stepped out of Thomas's room with his unloaded gun tucked into the back of my shorts. I could never sway my uncle to my side, and I could never escape him if I allowed him to live- at last, I'd accepted that.

But Paul… Paul had cared for me, had loved me like his own the moment my mother left this world. Of the two men- the one who had sabotaged me my whole life, and the one who had done everything he could for me despite the restrictions of his own principles- I knew who I had a chance of persuading.

I didn't know how far my uncle would go until Paul stepped in to stop him, but I knew he would.

I knew it, and yet it still feels unreal that my uncle's body is crumpled against the wall, bathed in blood… and I'm alive .

Paul steps over my uncle's body, coming toward me. His pale eyes are empty, distant. The knife in his hand- no, his whole hand- is dripping with hot red blood.

He's just betrayed the man he enslaved himself to for the last ten years, and for the first time… I wonder if that reality will break him.

But when Paul stops in front of me, he lets out a sigh that sounds like it's been pent up for a decade. His shoulders go back, a weight lifting off him at last. He cleans the knife off on his blazer, then sheds the blazer entirely and uses it to scrub most of the blood off his hands. Then he holds one of those hands out to me.

"Do I even want to know what the next step of this goddamn crazy plan is?" he asks.

He sounds… totally unfazed by what just happened. Is he suppressing his conflicted emotions, or is his relief great enough that the rest is washed away?

I take his hand, and he pulls me very carefully to my feet. Before he lets me go, he studies the side of my face, prodding the bones of my face to make sure there are no fractures. His fingernails are still caked with blood, but his touch is tender. Despite this, the pain makes me flinch away from him. He grimaces.

"It looks like it's just surface bruising," he says. "Mm, your eye's already turning red. Close your left eye." I do as he says, and he holds up a peace sign. "How many fingers do you see?"

"Two?"

"Blurry at all?"

"No."

He nods and reaches out to ruffle my hair, but must notice the blood still on his fingers, and stuffs his hand into his pocket at the last moment. "You know, you're the last living Speare. The family is yours, if you can keep hold of it."

I do my best not to look at my uncle's body, but it's impossible not to see the crimson splattered on every wall of my small cell and all over Paul's shirt and face. His wording is deliberate. If I want to take control of a family- a small empire- that is mine by blood, I'll have to fight for it for a long, long time. Maybe for the rest of my life. Even if I try to do things better than my uncle did before me, people will die and more blood will be spilled.

Remembering the power I felt when looking in the mirror of the boutique doesn't feel right when I'm standing feet from a dead body. It's easy to imagine being on top of the world when you can't see what has to be done to get there. Even if Paul did the dirty work for me, I manipulated him into doing it, and I have a feeling that will weigh on my conscience for a long time.

Being the boss of a mafia family is a fine fantasy, and to survive and save lives, I've done what needed to be done. But even now, it's not what I want. What I want is to create without fear. What I want is to love without reservation.

"The Speare family only exists because of betrayal," I say slowly. "My uncle stabbed his best friend in the back so he could take part of the city for himself. Because of him, we had to leave our home. I lost my best friend, and my mother, and-"

My chest tightens, but I can't help thinking about it. If I hadn't been taken away from the Warwick family, could Thomas and I have had a chance?

It doesn't feel possible anymore. The dynamic between us is too complicated by calculation. I want to believe that Thomas feels something for me, but how can I when everything he does is painstakingly planned?

As much as that hurts, it also solidifies my resolve. "I lost a future that might have been amazing. You lost one too, didn't you?"

Paul's smile is wry. "Maybe. But it's not too late to make a new one that's even better. "

I smile back, even though it hurts the bruised side of my face. "And if we're going to build a better future, we need to build it on a good foundation, right? Not one that's cursed by bad blood."

"So…" Paul crosses his arms, his smile gaining a hint of mischief. "What's your plan then?"

"My plan," I say, "is to burn this whole fucking place down."

I think Raleigh would be proud of me right now. It's too bad she isn't here to lend me her house-fire-starting skills. But Paul turns out to be an excellent substitute. After leading me out of the hall of cells I've been trapped in for three days, we split up- him to disable the fire sprinkler system and trigger the fire alarm, and me to sneak into the garage.

After three days of hardly any food or sleep, I feel like adrenaline is the only thing holding me up at this point. Carrying full jerry cans of gasoline from one corner of the armory to the door is more exhausting than it should be. When the fire alarm starts blaring, I force myself to pick up my pace.

I've collected ten jerry cans before Paul appears at the door and starts grabbing them, two in each hand. "The evacuation is in full swing," he says. "No one should stop us now."

"Did you get the C-4?" I ask, and he nods.

"Stashed it in the office. I assume we're starting there?"

"Definitely."

Paul is right. My uncle's men are too busy rushing out of the house to notice us creeping down side hallways. The office, which holds so many terrible memories of spilled blood and babbling screams, is the first stop on our journey. While Paul splashes gasoline up and down the walls, I slap a hunk of C-4 right on top of my uncle's desk. I don't care if there's money or guns or important paperwork in its drawers. Everything that ever belonged to him, from the stifling red curtains to the expensive bottles of pungent alcohol on the sidebar, is going up in flames today.

We move on to the next room, the dining room, where my uncle held all his strategic meetings- and where every meal I attended felt like a prison sentence. I can't count how many times he lost his temper at me for eating too little, not appreciating his generosity enough, or causing my silverware to clatter just a little. Then we prep the armory below the house, which I hope goes up with a fantastic bang. We douse my uncle's bedroom; the reception room where he would host important guests, and I would be forced to sit for hours in silence just to be ogled as the men got drunker and drunker; the wine cellar, from which my uncle fueled his worst rages; and finally, we empty the last of the jerry cans on the carpet running up and down the main hallways of the house. Even my old room isn't immune. I pour gasoline over my bed, where I had to sit and watch my uncle tear pages out of my sketchbooks whenever he thought my work was a waste of time. When our work is complete, Paul tosses his jerry can aside and hands me the detonator for the C-4.

"Want to grab anything from your room first?" he asks.

I think of the old sketchbook waiting for me at the Warwick house, and the window of my room painted with an enormous tree.

Whatever's left in this house can be replaced.

I shake my head. "You?"

He shakes his head back at me with a smile, and we jog into the backyard, which is really just a field ringed with outbuildings. Here we can watch the place go up from a safe enough distance. The sky is perfectly black, but whether it's late at night or early in the morning, I have no idea. Time disappeared inside that house, and now that I'm free, I feel like I've rejoined reality.

As soon as we've turned back to face the house, I squeeze the trigger on the detonator.

Fire explodes out of the windows.

Paul throws us both to the ground as walls on all three floors of the house splinter and fly in all directions. Smoke billows out of the gaping holes, and after a moment I see the growing red glow from inside that tells me the gasoline has ignited. Some sparks catch in the branches of the cypress trees, some in the grass, and some as far as the roofs of the outbuildings.

My eyes sting, but whether it's from the smoke coming toward us on the breeze or my tears of joy, I don't know.

"Time to go," Paul grunts, getting off the ground and pulling me with him. "I think we went a bit overboard on the C-4. Probably should've watched this from the front of the house, kid."

Probably, but then we would've been at more risk of running into my uncle's men, who might've stopped us. Even if it means we have to run a little too close to the burning house to get around it to the front yard, I'm glad we did it this way.

Except, when we get around the house, I'm hit by a whole new shock at the tableau by the front gates.

They're open wide, and the ground between them is littered with dead and wounded men. And outside the gates is a sea of headlights pointed at the house, blinding me to whoever is waiting behind them.

Is this a police raid? Or is it-

A silhouette breaks up the headlights and comes charging toward me.

"Thomas?!" I call, staggering forward over the bodies of my uncle's people. Paul steps in front of me defensively, but when the figure gets close enough, I see that it's Iris, not Thomas. For a wild second, I think she's charging at him to start a fight. Instead, Iris throws her arms around Paul's neck, he dips her low, and they kiss with open passion.

So… that's who Paul's been texting all these years.

I only have a second to take this in before Thomas appears out of the night. His eyes are on me, wide with naked relief. There's a wound on his right temple, still oozing blood down the side of his face and staining some of his messy golden hair. A red-soaked bandage on his right arm doesn't cover the bullet graze from the party, so he was injured again in almost the same place. He's dressed in a rumpled t-shirt and baggy pants, looking so unlike himself it's almost as upsetting as his injuries.

What's happened in the three days since I left him?

The tears that have been stinging my eyes finally fall. "Thomas?" I say again, horrified and so happy I can't even inhale.

Then Thomas scoops me up in his arms, his mouth crushes mine, and I don't have to worry about breathing anymore.