Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 109878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
“Most people don’t have a very good reason to want someone dead. You do.” I watch her face carefully. “And you got what you wanted. Julian’s dead by your hand.”
“Did I?” She disappears back into the bathroom, and I hear more aggressive tooth brushing. “Because from where I’m standing, that wasn’t supposed to happen by accident. It’s not how I pictured it at all.”
Christ, I’m not used to this—giving pep talks to someone who’s upset about how their first kill went down. In my world, people either kill or get killed. There’s no middle ground, no hand-holding through the emotional aftermath. But here I am, trying to figure out how to comfort someone who accomplished exactly what she wanted, just not how she expected.
When she emerges again, her mouth is clean but her entire being is thunderous. She’s working herself into a spiral, and I know from experience that spirals lead nowhere good.
“Walk with me,” I say, stepping back to give her space.
“I don’t want to walk anywhere. I want to hide in this room until everyone forgets I exist.”
“Hiding never solved anything. Trust me, I’ve tried.” I straighten my cuff links, a gesture that’s become automatic when I’m trying to appear calm. “Besides, there’s something I want to show you. Something that might help you understand me better.”
“If it’s another dead body, I’ll probably faint.”
“Something alive for a change. Revolutionary concept, I know.”
Saylor considers this, her fingers worrying the fabric at her waist. “Will you answer questions while we walk? Honest answers, not your usual cryptic bullshit?”
“Depends how uncomfortable the questions make me feel. But I’ll try.”
“Fine.” She grabs a black cardigan from the wardrobe. “But if I start crying or throwing up again, you’re obligated to pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Deal.”
We make our way downstairs, and I can feel the tension radiating from her with each step. She’s building walls again, protecting herself from what she sees as weakness. The Saylor who asked me to teach her killing has retreated behind the Saylor who thinks she’s not strong enough for this world.
Both versions are wrong about what strength actually is. But maybe that’s my fault for throwing her into the deep end without teaching her how to swim first.
As we approach the front entrance, Hans appears around the corner of the house, dragging Julian’s body wrapped in black plastic. Julian Crow, making his final exit from Maison Rouge.
Saylor stops dead, her eyes tracking Hans’s progress across the garden path.
“Do you regret it?”
She’s quiet for a long moment, watching Hans disappear behind a grove of apple trees. “No. But I’m not sure how I feel about it. And I hate that I’m not sure.”
“Uncertainty means you’re not a psychopath. Most people would feel conflicted after their first kill, even when it’s justified.”
“How do you do it?” The question comes out softer than her previous words. “How do you just . . . end someone and then go about your day like nothing happened?”
The honest answer? Years of practice and a conscience that’s been scraped raw by doing what needs to be done. But she doesn’t need to hear that.
“You learn to compartmentalize. Put the violence in a box, lock it away until you need it again.” The morning light filters through trees, casting everything in dappled shadows. “The trick is remembering why you’re doing it. Julian deserved what he got. Your father didn’t.”
“That’s very philosophical for a murder.”
“Killing without philosophy is just butchery. I prefer to think of myself as more selective than that.”
Despite everything, her mouth twitches with what might be amusement. “Selective assassination. That’s definitely going in my vocabulary.”
The path winds between sculptures that weren’t designed to soothe—stone angels with faces twisted in grief, fountains where water pours from stone hearts. Dark as hell, which suits my mood most days.
“These are cheerful,” Saylor observes, pausing beside an angel whose hands are pressed to her face in a gesture of absolute despair.
“What can I say? I’m not really a garden-gnomes-and-happy-little-fountains kind of guy.” I lead her past the fountain.
We move through the manicured sections into older territory, where pines spread their branches overhead and the forest floor is alive with mushrooms pushing up through the damp earth, slugs trailing silver across fallen logs, and moths fluttering between patches of shadow. Stone monuments emerge from the undergrowth like forgotten memories—weathered headstones and mausoleums that tell stories of lives cut short.
“Is this a cemetery?” Saylor asks, running her fingers along a headstone decorated with carved roses.
“Memorial garden. For people who needed to be remembered.” I pause beside a monument topped with a stone raven. “Not all of them are buried here, but they all deserved acknowledgment.”
“People you killed?”
“People who died because of choices I made.” The distinction matters, although I’m not sure I can explain why. “Some were bastards who had it coming. Others were just in the wrong place when everything went to hell.”