He shrugs and wipes it away. “I kind of banged his little sister…”
I sigh. “Thank you.”
Archer shifts backward and blocks his face. “You’re not going to hit me, too, are you?”
“No.”
He relaxes. “Then, you’re welcome.”
I look him up and down. “Are you okay?” I ask. “Do you need a tampon or something?”
“No.” He smiles. “I think I’ll manage.”
“How’s the head?”
“Hardly felt it, love. And it worked, obviously… until I tossed a gangster in a boot. That stood out a bit.”
My smile fades. I take a slow, deep breath before finally letting myself look at Elijah in the backseat. I move around to the other side of the car, feeling the weight on my shoulders as it doubles with each step I take.
I open the back door and slide inside, sitting down on the seat next to my twin’s body. I expect him to open his eyes and scold me for waking him, but he just lies there. Still and cold.
I raise him up and place his head on my lap. “I’m so sorry, Eli,” I whisper.
I’ve been shot. Stabbed. Burned. Thrown out of windows.
None of it hurt as much as this.
I run my fingers through his shaggy hair. He never did get that haircut. He never got a second date with that nurse. He never had the chance to live the normal life he always should have had if it weren’t for me.
“Lilah.”
I glance up at Archer standing by the door.
“What do you need?” he asks.
“Tell me the truth. For the next five seconds, I’ll believe any word you say.” I bite my quivering lips as tears fall down my cheeks. “Was this my fault?”
Archer furrows his brow and takes a knee beside us. “No,” he says. “This wasn’t your fault, love.”
I nod once. I pull Elijah closer. I rest my forehead against his as Archer lays a strong hand on my back.
Chapter 24
Archer
Dante emerges from the house about an hour later with swollen, red eyes and the brunette by his side.
They move around the house to the dock and he pulls the small rowboat ashore. He drags it through the tall grass and sets it down near the driveway. I think to offer my assistance, but I stay with Lilah instead until she pulls herself out of the car and wipes her eyes.
“Do you have a knife?” she asks me.
I rush into my trailer and fetch one from the drawer for her. She uses it to trim a lock of Elijah’s hair. After tying it together with another strand, she puts the lock in her pocket and gives the knife back to me.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice breaking.
Gravel crunches behind me as Dante draws near. He silently kneels where I was before and Lilah’s head falls to his shoulder. I take several steps back. If they speak to each other, I don’t hear it, nor would I want to be an intruder on the moment. I never had a family. I’ve never been close enough to anyone to even have one. I can only imagine what they must be feeling right now.
“I’m Lucy.”
I turn, suddenly noticing the brunette standing beside me with an extended hand. I take it and give her a soft shake, careful not to disturb the bandage around her wrist.
“Archer,” I say.
Her eyes look just as red and swollen as Dante’s. It must be a powerful feeling to be the woman a man like Dante Hart breaks down for.
As she releases my hand, her gaze lingers on her wrapped wrist and tears swell in her eyes. She forces them down and stands a little taller as Dante and Lilah rise. They carry Elijah across the driveway to the boat waiting there and rest him inside with his arms folded across his chest.
They decide to burn him.
I don’t hear them discuss it. It’s silently understood between Dante and Lilah, although I assume they’ve all spoken to each other about what their wishes would be at one point or another. There’s no eulogy. No kind words spoken. Lucy circles the house once and gathers a handful of fresh flowers to lay around him. Dante fills the bottom of the boat with gasoline from a can he found in the shed by the lake.
Lilah lights the match. I’ve had my eye on Lilah Hart for weeks now, following and watching as she does her job — and does it well — but I’ve honestly never seen her any stronger than this moment.
As the flames rise, I stand beside her and take her hand. She squeezes my fingers. I feel a shake in her muscles, but she powers through it without tears.
Eventually, Dante breaks from Lucy’s embrace and turns to us. His eyes fall to our hands for a moment before he looks up again and nods.
“Let’s get to work,” he says.
* * *
Hell hath no fury, as they say.
Though, I’m not sure these broken Harts are what they had in mind.
I stand with my back to the wall in their living room. It’s a cozy house, not unlike what I always imagined a happy childhood would look like. Lilah sits in an armchair beside me while Dante and Lucy take the couch by the wall. I see bits of everyone’s personalities scattered about the house. Family photos. Old magazines. Yoga mats and ammo boxes.
“I want to kill them,” Lilah says, hugging her knees. “All of them.”
Dante shakes his head. “I get that, I do, but—”
“But nothing, Dante. We can’t just sit here.”
“Why not?”
She gestures at me. “If Archer can figure out where we are, they can, too. It’s only a matter of time.”
His stare flicks at me with annoyance. This man already has plenty of reason to despise me and I wish Lilah would stop reminding him of every single one of them, but…
“She’s right,” I say. “Myra made mention of something happening next week. She didn’t say what, but the Boss wants to make sure you’re all dead before then. They’ll be turning over every last stone until they find you.”
Lilah nods. “We hit the road and keep moving.”
“And how long will that last?” Dante asks.
“For as long as it has to,” she says. “Dante, I’m sorry. I know you wanted to settle down here, but you can’t. Not yet. Not until we take out the Boss.”
He scoffs quietly. “Lilah, we don’t even know who the Boss is.”
Lucy frowns. “None of you met your own boss?”
“She was more of a phantom than anything else,” he explains. “Myra spoke for her.”
I bite my cheek. “I may know where to start looking.” Again, he squints at me. “Myra slipped up back at the hotel. She said her mother didn’t trust her instincts about me and that I wasn’t fit enough for their new team.”
Lilah furrows her brow. “Her mother?”
“Shit…” Dante’s shoulders sag.
“What?”
He takes a breath. “One night, about three or four years ago, Mercer caught me checking out Myra.”
Lucy leans forward. “Oh, really?”
“Four years ago,” he repeats, smiling at her.
She crosses her arms. “Uh-huh.”
“Anyway, he offered to arrange a swap. A night with Myra for me, for a night with Lilah for him.”
Lilah recoils. “Ew.”
“I told him to piss off, obviously,” Dante continues, “and I never thought much else about it until now.”
I nod. “Your sister for his.”
He nods back.
“Myra is Mercer’s sister?” Lilah asks.
“If that’s true, then Mercer…” Dante says, “was the Boss’ son.”
Lilah plants her feet on the floor and turns to look at me. “Did Myra say what this new team was for?”
“No,” I answer. “Just that she needed a hunter.”
She turns back around and stares at the floor.
Dante studies her flinching eyes. “What you got, Lilah?”
She licks her lips. “If Mercer really was heir to the Boss’ throne, then she would have been more than a little unhappy when he went missing.”
He nods. “
And she’d go nuclear if the prime suspect exposed the whole damn organization, too.”
“She’s going after Fox,” Lilah says.
“Then, they’ve already found him,” he adds. “They wouldn’t have set a plan in motion otherwise.”
“That’s why you’re such a high priority right now, Dante. They think you’ll warn him, and he’ll disappear again. If there’s anyone better at hiding than you, it’s him.”
Lucy bounces. “And that’s why they needed a hunter!” She gives a sheepish smile. “Sorry, just wanted to contribute.”
Dante lays a proud hand on her knee. “We need to find out everything we can about the Boss.”
I push off the wall. “Shouldn’t be too difficult to trace with a family tree. And I know a hacker who owes me a favor.”
“Use it,” Lilah says. “Then, we’ll knock right on her fucking door.”
“Lilah…” Dante tilts his head.
“What? I don’t know about you, big brother, but I want to cut the head off this snake.”
“So do I, but think about what that means,” he says. “You’re talking about waging war against Snake Eyes.”
“Yes, I am.”
“That’s not possible.”
“The Lutrovas did it.”
He laughs. “The Lutrovas are the most powerful Russian mob family in the world. We don’t have their resources.”
“I can’t use that excuse,” she says. “Not after what she did to Elijah. We have to try.”
His eyes stray toward Lucy. I understand the instinct to covet and protect what’s yours, but Lilah has a point. I don’t like the idea of war, I never have, but I’ll follow her into battle if I have to.
Finally, Dante sighs. “We’ll need a team.”
“We have one.”
“Yeah.” He scoffs. “Two assassins, a bounty hunter, and a ballerina.”
Lucy pouts. “Hey…”
“You’re training, Luce, but you’re too green. Something like this is going to take a little more skill.” He stares at Lilah. “We’ll need a sniper.”
Lilah’s face falls. “No.”
“If you want to wage war, he has experience with that.” He keeps calm. “Fox is our best bet.”
“For what? Getting stabbed in the back? Even if we knew where to find him — which we don’t — what makes you think he’d even agree to help us?”
I raise a hand. “I know where he is.”
She twists in her chair. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I’m a bounty hunter,” I say with a wink. “A good one.”
She screws up her face. “Eh…”
“I caught you, didn’t I?”
Her head falls to hide the smile.
Dante rubs the bridge of his nose. “Fox is Code Black, just like us,” he says, staying on topic. “Strength in numbers is the best strategy.”
Lilah bleeds skepticism. “I doubt he’ll be eager to play nice considering what we did to his friends…”
He shrugs. “We have to try.”
She squints with annoyance as he throws her words back at her. “Fine,” she says, shifting focus to me. “Where is Fox?”
“Los Angeles,” I answer.
“The house in the Hills was really his?”
“Yep.”
She grits her teeth. “Dammit…”
Dante stands up. “Then, that’s where we’re going.”
“When?” Lucy asks.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“I’m going with you,” she adds.
Dante smiles. “And if I thought for a second I could talk you out of it, I would have already tried.”
Lilah nods. “We should have Grams and Gramps moved first. I don’t like the idea of them being there alone with Myra wandering around.”
The smile fades from his face. “Neither do I.”
“What should we tell them?” she asks. Her voice is small, like a weak child, and my heart breaks for her.
Dante shifts on his feet, looking no stronger than she sounds. “Nothing,” he says, flexing his jaw. “We’ll say he got called to volunteer overseas for a few months. They don’t need to know otherwise.”
Lilah blinks hard and exhales toward the floor. “We always knew something like this would happen. Eventually, one of us wouldn’t come back.”
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “It was supposed to be me.”
He turns to leave. Lucy rises from her chair to follow him out, nodding politely as she passes us by.
I step behind Lilah’s chair and lay my hands on her shoulders. “You still in there, love?” I ask, massaging her neck.
Lilah turns her head up. “I think so…” She forces a smile. “So, Boxcar owes you a favor?”
“He does.”
Her eyes tilt with curiosity. “Why?”
I wince. “Oddly enough, I promised to look the other way and not hunt down Fox Fitzpatrick…”
She laughs. “Whoops.”
I pinch her chin. “You let me worry about Sparky. He’ll help. His wife might not like it, but… he can be reasoned with.”
Lilah’s right eye twitches with the mention of Caleb Fawn. “Hrmm…”
I smirk. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep them all out of reach of baseball bats.”
Her jaw drops as Dante returns to the room.
“Come on,” he says, walking straight through toward the front door. “We need to find something heavy.”
Lilah swallows her retort and stands up to follow him outside. I stay close but when we reach the door, she turns to look at me.
“You can stay here if you want,” she says. “You don’t have to watch.”
“Watch what?”
She looks out the front door at the black sedan.
Chapter 25
Lilah
I pull Enzo toward the dock by a chain attached to handcuffs on his wrists.
He stumbles on the uneven terrain, constantly twisting his neck around to watch as Dante, Lucy, and Archer follow us down to the water’s edge. When we reach the end of the dock, I keep a tight grip on the chain and drop him to his knees.
Enzo cries out as he crashes against the wood, but he quickly falls silent the moment Dante sets the cement block down in front of him.
“What’s this?” he asks, his voice shaking.
“It’s your atonement, Enzo,” I say, wrapping the chain around the block. “Got any last words?”
Enzo twitches wildly, looking back and forth from our faces to the deep lake behind him. “Now, hold on a minute. We can work something out here.”
“Pass.” I lock the chain in place and take a step back.
“Oh… you Hart bastards,” he seethes. “Every one of ya a bunch of hypocrites. What makes your sins any better than mine, eh? Or Marty’s?”
I look at Dante and he stares back at me. The answer to that is absolutely nothing. Either one of us could be in the same position as Enzo right now and the cosmic scales wouldn’t budge an inch.
Doesn’t change a goddamn thing.
Enzo huffs a little louder. “You kill my brother, I kill yours. We’re even. Let me go!”
“Are we?” Dante growls. “Are we even, Enzo?”
“Hey…” He points his chained hands. “You did more to us than we did to you. Yeah, Marty fucked up your girl, but you got your revenge and I got mine. It’s done.” His panic grows. “You don’t want to do this. Killing me will get back to my little brother and you really don’t want that.”
“Giovani?” Dante recalls.
Enzo nods repeatedly. “Trust me. He already ain’t happy about what you did to Marty. You kill me, too? Let’s just say running to the ends of the earth won’t be far enough.”
Dante considers it for a moment. “Good.”
“You think I’m bad? Or my father? Gio’s a goddamn psychopath.”
I shrug. “Sounds like we’ll be doing the world a favor, then.”
Enzo turns away from us a
nd pleads to Archer instead. “Hey—hey, come on! What happened to I don’t kill, eh? You capture, right?! Do something!”
Archer doesn’t blink. “For you, mate… I’ll make an exception.”
I raise my foot to Enzo’s chest. “Say goodbye, Enzo.”
“Wait, you fucking bitch—”
I kick hard and he falls backward off the dock. Dante bends over to pick up the cement block but he pauses to stare at Enzo as he flaps around in the water like a damn fish. Curses fly from his mouth, barely audible as he struggles to keep his head above water.
We look each other, neither of us showing a hint of hesitation at what we’re about to do, but there’s a tingle on the back of my neck I can’t ignore.
I feel Archer’s eyes on me, but I resist the urge to turn to him. He already knows who I am and what I do, but he’s never seen it like this. If I look at him now, there might be horror or disgust on his face. I don’t want him to see me that way, like the monster Enzo said I was.
Dante drops the block into the lake. It splashes water onto the dock as it shoots straight down into the muddy abyss.
Enzo lets out one last scream of agony before the chain goes taut and the weight pulls him down with it.
Bubbles rush to the surface from below. I watch every single one as they pop. Ripples spread outward to the far ends of the lake until the water finally stills again.
Lucy steps forward and takes Dante’s hand, entwining their fingers in a show of love and support. This isn’t the first Zappia we’ve killed to keep us safe and it may not be the last. There’s no doubt in the world that Lucy Vaughn won’t be standing beside us for the next one, too.
Archer Allen, however…
I force myself to turn around. He stands just over my shoulder, his handsome face blank and cold. Even his blue eyes, usually as bright as stars, seem a little darker.
“We should talk,” I say.
Archer says nothing. He follows me down the dock and through the tall grass all the way back to the house.
Chapter 26
Lilah
I push open the door to my old bedroom and Archer chuckles as we step inside.
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