Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“Madelena!”
I scream and scream, my throat hoarse with the effort. And she just keeps walking toward them, entranced, the never-ending string of beads in her hand like that in my brother’s. The Commander’s son. My half-brother.
No one sees her though. No one turns when she passes. I breathe a sigh of relief.
But then there’s someone else. Another figure enters the scene. The man who is falling. Who has fallen. His head is caved in. His body is mangled. But he walks toward her around the other side of the catwalk.
“Madelena!” I call again and again but my voice is ripped from me, wind stealing it away, smashing it against those rocks as it does the ocean. I fight against the invisible bonds holding me in place. The words detailing the stabbing of Alexia swim before my eyes, blinding me momentarily. Thiago’s eyes take on that look they did before we did the worst of what we did. Before we hurt the innocents and left mangled bodies behind like the one he’s walking in now.
In time, we each get what we deserve.
“Madelena!”
But they keep doing what they’re doing.
The two praying.
The one staring into darkness with her bleeding lips.
My brother a child.
And then not.
And then looking up at me, a man, seeing me where I stand above the world. As Thiago reaches Madelena and Madelena reaches Thiago and the beads fall, fall, fall, and Caius tucks his hand into his pocket and cocks his head to the side the way the Commander always did and the easy smile turns into a grin that stretches from ear to ear, inhuman teeth gleaming before the sound of their screams. Before Madelena and Thiago are gone. Both tumbling over the edge, both reaching frantic arms, eyes wide with terror as they disappear into that abyss.
I gasp for breath as my eyelids fly open. Sweat drenches me, soaks the blankets, the sheets. I stare up at the ceiling, confused. Moonlight filters in, a cloud casting shadows along the wall. A murmur beside me has me turn to find Madelena asleep beside me, her sweet face relaxed, soft. Innocent. So innocent.
My throat closes.
I slide quietly out of the bed, and when I see the rosary I smashed against the wall, I turn away from it.
The floorboards creak as I pad barefoot across the room. I put on the clothes I’d packed, a pair of jeans, a sweater, and boots. Downstairs, I take the heavy coat Father Michael left for me. It was his. He gave it to me the night he found me out in the water, wading in chest-deep. Seeking out my own death. Stalking it. Daring it.
The antique grandfather clock tolls the half-hour mark. It’s four-thirty in the morning. I bundle myself in the old coat, the scent on it familiar, old, a strange comfort. I pull the door open and step out into the brisk night, closing it behind me and taking the familiar way around the house over the dune and to the beach.
Only a few clouds are in the sky tonight. From here, I can see a thousand stars. It’s so fucking beautiful it almost hurts. Even the cold, the constant wind, the vast ocean are too much. I begin my walk along the miles-long beach. I need to think. To clear my head and think.
Who contacted me from Thiago’s messaging app? Could it have been him warning me? Trying to clue me in? Could he have survived the fall? Why not come for revenge, then, against the man who pushed him? I am sure it was a man. Thiago is far too big, too strong for a woman to overpower him. Not to mention he is a trained fighter, an enforcer.
Unless he was caught by surprise.
If, like Madelena says, he had rescued her from falling over, he’d have been surprised by an attack before he was ready. The catwalk high on the lighthouse is the perfect place to ambush a man like him.
Why was he there? Was Camilla telling the truth about the call she overheard? Did someone arrange to meet him? About what? It had to have been something clandestine for it to take place then and there.
Madelena interrupted their meeting, but did her presence help the wrong man?
If I assume Thiago survived and lured me to that motel room to leave me those clues, why would he do that? He thought he still owed me. I know Thiago well enough to know that he always pays his debts, good or bad. Was this him repaying that debt? Making things even-Steven like he used to say?
Assuming that, did he know that Caius was the Commander’s son all along?
That he and I were linked through this shared half-brother? Why tell me? What purpose does it serve? And the beads. They’re the same as the one I found on the catwalk. He might have ripped them off the wrist of the man who pushed him.