Chapter 4

Then he threw me onto the floor like I was nothing.

As if that wasn't enough, he had someone fetch a whip and lay into Grandfather's corpse.

I dragged myself toward the memorial hall.

Tears and blood streamed down my face in the same salt-iron wash.

Then—agony exploded through my palm.

Vivienne had driven her stiletto heel straight down onto my arm. A few grinding twists and my forearm was a pulp of blood and flesh.

When she saw I still refused to beg, her smile twisted and she drove her heel through the back of my hand.

"You trash. Take a good look. It's time to pay for what you've done."

She grabbed me by the hair and forced me to look at the hall.

The Harringtons' century-old memorial hall was unrecognizable. Every member of the family was dead. The bodies had been stacked up like trophies.

Grandfather's body had been beaten beyond recognition, and in the end the fire had swallowed him entirely.

Vivienne drank in my pain. She laughed, high and bright.

Then she pulled a dagger and came at my stomach.

I caught her wrist and held her off. Every tendon in my body was standing up.

Another hand closed over the blade. Vivienne's face drained white. "Damien—this bitch killed our child! She has to pay with her life!"

The blade had already cut through my skin.

The words came out of me before I could stop them. "Damien—let my baby live."

The dagger shook.

Damien looked at my stomach, disbelieving.

He ripped the knife out of Vivienne's hand. I had barely exhaled when he drove the blade into my belly himself.

His eyes were red with blood. They glittered with something close to tears.

"Adeline. What makes you think I would ever let that bastard live?"

Something inside me went slack.

Then Vivienne screamed—a bullet had caught her in the shoulder.

Arthur broke through with his men and got me into the family chapel in the confusion.

When the chapel had been rebuilt, an escape tunnel had been cut under its floor. It was our last line of retreat.

At the chapel door, Arthur looked back once. Then he took my hand the way he had when I was small, and squeezed it.

"Miss. You are everything the Harringtons have left."

"Go north. Find the Sterlings. They are the only ones who truly stand beside you."

He pushed me into the tunnel and braced himself across the doorway.

Through the tears, I knelt and knocked my forehead against the floor three times to his back.

When Damien reached the door, what he saw was Arthur alone, blocking his way.

"Send Adeline out. I'll let you keep your body whole."

Damien's whole face was cold fury.

A dozen guns were trained on Arthur, and yet, somehow, Arthur laughed.

His gaze drifted to Vivienne.

"What a pity. I should have recognized you earlier."

Then he looked at Damien, and his eyes softened with something that might have been pity.

"I feel sorry for you. There's one thing you will probably never find out."

"Shut up! Stop stalling for time!"

Vivienne snatched a gun from one of the men, but her aim was off. The bullet only caught Arthur in the leg.

Damien didn't catch the flash of panic that crossed her face.

He was staring straight at Arthur. "I've waited ten years for tonight. I know every corner of this family. If you think you can save your life with a trick like this, you can go straight to hell."

The second Damien raised his gun, Arthur burst out laughing.

He pulled a tiny remote from his sleeve.

Looking Damien dead in the eye, he laughed until the tears came. Then he said one sentence. One sentence that stopped everyone in the room cold.

"What a waste of Blackwood blood. If the old man could see what a fool of a grandson he raised—the one who wiped out the family that saved him—he'd never rest in his grave."

Every word out of Arthur's mouth came with blood.

The second Damien's face changed, Arthur slammed his thumb down on the remote.

An explosion split the air.

The charges rigged inside the chapel went up all at once. The shockwave threw everyone in front of the door backward.

A long moment later, Damien dragged himself up off the floor, one hand clamped to his chest, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth.

Staring at what was left of the chapel, his pupils shook hard.

"Adeline!"

Pure reflex. He threw himself toward the fire.

His men tackled him together and held him down. "Boss, don't go in. There could be more traps."

Damien stared into the blaze, and something inside him felt as if it had been scooped out and thrown away.

"Damien! Ah! My face!"

It was Vivienne's scream that snapped him out of it.

She was covering her burned face with both hands, howling like she was being torn in half.

"Boss, we can't wait. If her burns get worse we'll lose her."

Damien's eyes flicked back to the chapel, torn.

At last, jaw locked, he picked Vivienne up and walked away from the smoking ruin.

"Dead or alive, I want her body or her pulse."

"Use every resource we have. Find Adeline."