Quiet reached out from the other side of the line.
“Still there, buddy?” I coaxed.
His voice was weak with worry. “She told you?”
Closing my eyes for a beat, letting that truth sink in with the profoundness of its meaning.
What I’d unwittingly set in motion.
They had taken her as a child. From the kind of place where there would be no records to mark her birth?
My hands shook with anger.
It finally made sense.
Anya was the replacement.
A girl taken. Abused by her father. Kept prisoner for one reason alone.
To defy me.
All those years ago in Lafayette Cemetery, Glassman had taken my threat to kill his children seriously.
He had taken my revenge away at his own hands.
He had killed his own children, so I couldn’t.
Anya being in danger was my fault, because now that I knew, who knows what he would do to her. “I promise I’ll get her back,” I reassured him, hearing Archie’s sigh of relief. “You’re safe with Mr. Montebello, okay. Can you hand him the phone back?”
A shuffle on the line and then I heard Ridley’s voice. “I’ll take care of him.”
My fingers tightened around my phone.
The tension still thick between us.
“I’m so sorry, Cas. For what I’ve done. I’ll make it right. I’ll keep Archie safe—”
“Bring Archie here. It’s safer. We both know that.” My calm tone eased the strain. “I have better security. Don’t fuck up again.”
“I won’t.”
Hanging up, I paced as though that was key to setting all the pieces together and seeing a way to get her out of this alive.
Making it right was all I had left in this world.
Grabbing my car keys, I stormed out of the house and leaped into my car, following another clue.
I needed to see if I was right.
The drive was a blur. Each second felt like it meant something, that it counted toward the distance between us.
Parking outside the cemetery, I hurried within its towering stone walls and searched for the Glassman tomb, striding past those buried long ago, respectful of the dead as I trudged through the graveyard.
I soon found the gray-white, free-standing mausoleum, “Glassman” carved into the alcove above the stone archway. The wooden door with Stephen’s coat of arms stamped above the entryway with the filth of his last name.
What secrets do you hold within?
What had Anya seen that day that had startled her so badly? Her alcohol-laced rambling was more than relevant now as I headed up the short steps to open the door to the chamber.
Using my shoulder, again, and again, and again, until the way was laid open—and I was standing in the doorway. Either side of where I stepped, there was splintered wood from the broken-down door, which hung off its hinges.
I walked into the shadows of the dead.
There, to my right, lay ten marble gravestones. A lineage of Glassmans set to rest in tombs.
The last one set my flesh to ice.
I tasted bitterness, a poisonous realization that what I was looking at was a marked tombstone with Anya’s name etched on the front in gray rippling marble.
Nausea threatened to spill.
Raging forward with this fight to see it through, I knew what lay within. In a blur, a frenzy, I rested my hands on the stone lid and, with sheer force, shoved and shoved again until the stone moved, grating its resistance and proving futile to my strength.
I peered in.
I was drenched in a cold sweat as my eyes adjusted to the darkness of what served as a grave. Looking up, I broke my glare, trying to make sense of what I was seeing inside.
Around me, dust particles danced and settled and sparkled, set alight by the fading rays peeking through the window.
Nausea welled again. I was close to choking. My gut burned my insides out. My heart squeezed tight with the horror of it.
“Monster.”
My words echoed as I left.
Anya
Leaning on the wall, I dragged my fingernails against painted brick while trying to catch my breath from where I had searched for Archie. I was still waiting to go into my father’s office.
His office door was closed.
One of his men who guarded it told me, “It won’t be much longer.”
Because me coming home after a kidnapping and waiting outside to be greeted by a loving parent was perfectly normal.
They’d even given up pretending.
Maybe Archie was in there with Dad. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t found him in his room. Or the kitchen. Or even the garden.
I’d come back for Archie. For Cassius, too, and every breath I inhaled in this house felt wretched. Swallowing this dread, preparing not to show fear with what I knew about the man on the other side
The door flung open.
There he stood. My father. He filled the doorway with his intimidating presence. “Anya.” He held his arms out.
Feigning I was the good daughter, I stepped toward him and leaned in for a hug. I inhaled that scent of him, the rich cologne and stale cigar smoke causing bile to rise in the back of my throat.