Page 99 of Tainted Blood
“I bought myself a present. It’s cost me nearly everything.” Switching off the stereo, he reaches into the pocket of his black jeans and pulls out a small, crimson box. All of a sudden, the silence is more suffocating than the music. “Would you like to see?”
He places the box next to my cocktail. There’s something about the color that chains me up in a cellar again and beats me until I’m begging for mercy.
“Open it.”
“I really don’t want—”
“I asked you to ‘open it’,” he says through gritted teeth.
His pretense drops. The thorns multiply. My hand jerks back from the stem of my cocktail glass and Grey Goose vodka and Cointreau go slopping over the sides.
With trembling fingers, I open the box to find an ornate key resting on a black velvet cushion, with an inscription engraved into the stem.
La Societá Villefort.
A beat later, I’m springing up from the barstool as every memory I’ve fought to repress over the last month rips my clothes off and shoves me toward the entrance of a maze again.
“What the hell, Reece?”
But disbelief is a feeble emotion when the truth is handed to me.
“I trusted you! We all trusted you!”
“Foolish girl,” he sneers. “Never trust an obsession.”
An obsession?
“Where’s Santi?” I whisper.
He tilts his head at me in a way that’s so reminiscent of Monroe Spader that I start trembling.
“Dead.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Or he will be shortly…” He glances at the clock above the bar. “Allergic reaction to the Ukrainian national dish, I believe.”
I stagger backward again, desperate to find purchase as my whole world disintegrates. All the while, Reece sits perched on his barstool, legs outstretched, watching my reaction with dispassion.
How did I never see the chips of ice in his eyes?
How did I never see the lie in his charm?
“Edier?” I rasp.
“Dead, too.” He shrugs. “Borscht can be brutal on the digestion.”
My legs give way, and I slither to the ground. “It was a trap. It’s always been a trap… You let me slip my security all those times on purpose. You let me fall into Bardi’s hands intentionally.”
“That was the plan.”
“But why?” I feel like I’m looking through a kaleidoscope of my life and all the patterns are changing.
“You.”
“Me?” I can’t seem to inhale enough air into my lungs, either.
“You,” he repeats, rising to his feet. “Dear Thalia, the rage I felt when Spader was allowed to have you first…” He stops to suck in his regret through his teeth as I scramble to get further and further away from him. “I watched you as you ran, as you fell, as you killed... This time, you’re going to run the maze for me.”