18. Scarlett

“Well, it could be Ariadne,”I say in slow response to Lyssa’s question. ”Maybe.”

We’re meeting again in another dingy hotel, and I can’t help remembering what happened last time we were in a place like this.

Neither can Lyssa, judging from the way she looks at me when she thinks I won’t notice.

We’re seated opposite each other with a table in between, but I’m pretty sure she has a handgun secured to the underside.

I would.

As it is, I have a new stiletto switchblade hidden in my sleeve, and a garrote in my back pocket. Just in case.

Between us, Lyssa has printed out stills from the video, and I’m forcing myself to look at them, although I keep getting distracted. Across the table, Lyssa’s features are still coolly beautiful in the low light of the room, her smooth brow furrowed as she studies the photographs scattered before us. The muted glow of the laptop screen to the left, where the video is on pause, lends a flickering glow as my brother’s murder plays on a continuous loop.

My eyes go back and forth from the video to Lyssa, trying to figure it out. Is it her? Is she just playing the cruelest of games, and trying to win my trust?

Even if it’s not her, whoever is behind this is toying with me, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that seems designed to lure me further into the forest rather than out. Part of me even wonders if this is all some sadistic test crafted by Grandmother, a fresh torment designed to further corrupt what fragile shreds of innocence still cling to my soul.

Lyssa’s eyes meet mine, those eyes that have witnessed so much death and brutality, and I stare back defiantly. Let her read my face if she wants. There’s an edge to her stare, a predatory sharpness that sends pure animal instincts ricocheting down my spine.

I’m being studied, assessed as potential prey by a powerful apex hunter.

Run. Run.

My heart beats out the command, but I ignore it.

It should terrify me, this brush with the monster. But it seems to awaken something else, something primal and forbidden that makes my belly flutter and my thighs squeeze together. The intoxicating fantasy of witnessing the beast unrestrained, of having that feral intensity focused solely on me in the throes of...

No. Nope. No way, not again.

“Ariadne,” she says thoughtfully. “Who is she?”

“She’s…well, she’s one of us. Of Grandmother’s, I mean. She’s been with Grandmother since her teens. She’s around your age now, I guess. Early thirties.”

Only now does it hit me that—yeah. It really could be Ariadne. Her hair was long the first time I saw her at my brother’s funeral, driving the town car. She’d cut it short not long after, by the time I first came to Grandmother’s house. With her long hair in a ponytail like the woman in the video, add a mask, and…

My hand clutches hard around the photo, crumpling the corner.

Lyssa sees it, but ignores it. “So let’s say it’s her. On Grandmother’s orders, maybe? If Grandmother had her eye on you, wanted you as a recruit, well—” She indicates the video again. “She might have figured out this would be a way to bring you into the flock.”

A bitter laugh escapes me. “Maybe. And to be honest, Ariadne would love nothing more than to hurt me. She hates me, and I don’t really know why.” The words tumble out before I can rein them in: “She hates me maybe even more than she hates you.”

Every time Ariadne mentions Lyssa, I’ve noticed that fierce hatred. I just never really thought about it until now, because the Wolf was supposed to be my trophy.

So it didn’t really matter one way or another what Ariadne felt.

To my surprise, Lyssa’s lips curve into a slow, wry smile. “She hates me? Bitch doesn’t even know me! But I guess Grandmother filled her head with all sorts of tales about the Big Bad Wolf—just like she did with you.”

I shift in my seat again at the sound of her self-appointed moniker, at the hint of dark promise it carries. I try to envision the formidable woman across from me—the infamous Wolf of the Styx Syndicate—undergoing the same tortures I have. Grandmother’s most accomplished student, turned against her.

“How did you get so good so fast? You said you’d only been in Grandmother’s house for a few years?”

Lyssa’s question catches me off guard, its curiosity at odds with the hard-edged tone that has colored most of our dealings up to this point. I blink slowly, but I heard her right.

She thinks I’m good.

“I...trained, from childhood. Not with Grandmother, I mean—” I break off with a sigh. “I was into martial arts.” My gaze strays from Lyssa’s, drifting inward as memories of simpler times rise up. “My brother, Adam, he took classes first. But I insisted on tagging along, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Didn’t give my parents much choice in the matter—or him, poor guy. No twelve year old wants their baby sister tagging along.” A sad, wistful smile tugs at the corners of my mouth as I recall the brash determination of my younger self, so stubbornly fixated on keeping pace with Adam.

I worshipped him. He was my whole world.

Lyssa nods slowly. “But it’s more than that. You’re a natural, Scarlett. The way you move—it takes me years to beat those instincts into Syndicate recruits.”

“Beat?” I ask sharply.

“Not literally.” She looks down at the photographs again. “I don’t want to be like her. Like Grandmother. I try to be more…” She trails off. “It’s a damn shame you chose this path instead of sticking with medicine,” she says at last. “You’re good at what you do, Scarlett, no doubt about it. But I think you’d be even better at healing people than killing them.”

I open my mouth, a reflexive protest rising—but then I snap my lips shut again as I swallow back the torrent of emotion.

She’s right. I know that. I’ve tried so hard to strangle out the knowledge, because it was pointless for my quest. As a doctor, I could have helped so many, could have made a difference...instead of dealing out violence and death.

But that door is closed to me now.

Lyssa regards me for a long, weighted moment, those deep, dark eyes seeming to stare straight through to the parts of me I’ve fought so hard to conceal. When she finally speaks, her voice is low, nearly gentle. “You’re not convinced, are you? That this woman isn’t me.” She gestures at the video again.

I wish she’d stop doing that. I don’t want to watch it again.

“I’m not entirely convinced,” I agree slowly. “It could be Ariadne. Or you could just be bullshitting me to get close to Grandmother. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? To have another shot at her.”

I’m not stupid. And at least she’s transparent enough not to deny it.

“Mm,” she murmurs thoughtfully. “Does that bother you?”

I think about it. “I don’t know,” I tell her truthfully. “I don’t really care. I only want one thing?—”

“Vengeance,” she says. “Yeah. Well, in that case, I have an idea. But you’re not going to like it.” She allows the words to hang between us, drawing out the tension until I make a wordless Well? face. “We need to go back to the scene,” she says at last. “Where your brother was killed.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, but it does nothing to halt the onslaught of memories—the tang thick on the air, the warm wet flooding out of him…

“Why?” I demand.

“There are things we might pick up on that we can’t tell from photos or video.”

I want to argue more, but I can see her point.

My parents no longer own the place—they sold it after Adam’s murder—and I think it’s a dry cleaner or a coin-operated laundry now. But the alley in the back…I can imagine it hasn’t changed at all.

“Well, you’re right about one thing,” I tell her. “I don’t like it. But...we should do it anyway.” I suck in a shuddering breath, shoving down the swell of emotions that threaten to drag me under. “In the meantime, I’ll see what I can shake loose from Ariadne.”

A muscle ticks in Lyssa’s jaw, the only outward sign of whatever inner argument she’s having with herself. Then she gives a minute nod of acceptance, as though she’d expected nothing less.

“Let’s meet tomorrow night, then,” she says. “Late. Like tonight.”

She gathers up the photos and then, after a moment, hands them to me. I take them automatically, though I don’t want them. And then she yanks a holster out from under the table, just like I knew she had hidden there. She says nothing about it. I say nothing about it.

She just heads toward the door, pausing on the threshold, shoulders straight and body angled halfway back toward me. Her head turns slightly, fixing me with a look over one sculpted shoulder. “Get some rest, Scar,” she murmurs, and there’s an undercurrent to the words I can’t quite catch. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

I almost ask her to wait. To stay.

To come to bed with me again.

But then she’s gone. Silence rushes in to fill the vacuum—suffocating and immense, broken only by the pounding of blood in my ears. I sink back on the bed, clutching the photographs against my heart as I think about Adam.

About his friendly smile, and the way he could hug me so tight I thought nothing could ever hurt me when my big brother was around.

Tomorrow, I’ll return to the place where my old life ended, with the very person who might have ended it. Or at least, I’ll revisit the moment that cleared the way for Grandmother’s poison to take root.

But that’s not entirely fair. I chose this path, after all. I turn on my side, curling up, then press the heels of my hands against my eye sockets until stars burst across the blackness.

How many lies and half-truths am I blindly following now? Lyssa says one thing. Grandmother says another. And if it was Ariadne who killed Adam, will I turn my wrath towards her, instead?

How many more people need to die before this rage inside me is satisfied?