I stood frozen. My heart tightened, as if punched.
They were talking about her death.
I knew it in my bones before they even said it.
Matvey said, his voice softer now, “She didn’t die of stress or natural causes. Her heart failure was induced.”
There was a pause, as if something in me had just completely shattered, because as much as I knew she hadn’t just died, something in me hoped it wouldn’t be true that she was murdered.
It was unbearable knowing my sister was lying six feet underground while her killer was having the time of his life..
I braced myself against the wall.
“You think it was someone on the inside?” Damien asked after a pause.
“Yes.”
My gut dropped.
I glared in the empty space ahead of me as if it would reshape itself. As if I could change what I’d just overheard.
But I couldn’t.
They weren’t making guesses or assumptions; they knew what happened to my sister.
Someone had killed Yulia.
Someone in this world.
My ears pounded. The blood in my veins beat too fast, too hard. The silk of my dress was too tight now. And inside me, developing under the force of my madness, was life.
Yulia’s niece or nephew.
Matvey’s son.
My hands trembled, my legs almost giving out from the weight of what I just heard.
My fingers curled inward, searching for something to hold onto, but the wall I had clung to was now out of reach, as if the ground beneath my feet had shifted.
Yulia had been murdered.
And they knew.
Matvey knew.
My breath was caught in my throat as I backed away from the heavy curtain, each step sounding like it echoed on the floor.I turned to the nearest window, desperate for air, and my eyes rested on the scene beyond the glass. The garden. The patio.
The group of men.
Damian, glass in hand.
Rurik, still among the others.
Isaak—the smooth, nice one, the specter who just happened to know too much. He must’ve known, too, the night he sat beside me at dinner. Maybe that was the message he was trying to pass, and I just didn’t listen enough.
All of them knew.
Gathering like this was just another party, like one of theirs had not been taken. Like they did not just so happen to be monsters in suits and smiles.
