Running from hell isnʼt easy. Especially when thereʼs someone dragging you back down into it.
Belligerent, brash and always in shades of black, Freya is hardly a lady. Hidden away by her father, sheʼs lived a normal life despite being born into the...
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WHEN I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD, my father warned me to stay away from his office. But I’d never been very obedient — and as a child, my curiosity far outgrew discipline. So naturally, I learned ways to find the truth behind the dark oak doors. Where the creaks in the wooden floors lied. How to steady my breath. Quiet my mind. Sharpen my ears and calm the rapid beat of my heart.
Just across the office, there was a slat between the furniture, wide enough for a single small person to be concealed, shrouded by darkness. I was still five, with enough space to move around in the slat, when I saw something that would haunt me from that day forward.
Pop.
A heavy thud echoed behind the closed door, hostage to the rapid pounding of my heart. The oak doors were opened to reveal a crumpled heap on the floor — a man — crimson blood pooling around his head and soaking into the plush Persian carpets.
They replaced the carpets the next day.
Later, I curled up into my sister, on her bed, her hand softly weaving through my fox-brown hair as she wove it in a single French braid.
“Did you know,” I mumbled, “that there was a dead man in Papa’s office?”
Ana’s hands stilled. I felt her shake her head slowly, and turned to find her soft green eyes wide. But as quick as her shock came, it was gone. Her hands started lacing through my hair again. And all she said was, “Mama warned you to stop watching scary movies, Freya.”
I didn’t stop. Watching scary movies or listening in on my father’s meetings.
“One of our informants has been missing for a month.” One of Papa’s men spoke. From my hiding spot, I kept my breathing silent. “Lennon Blanca.”
“Lucky?” Papa said. He was quiet for a long time, then. I don’t know if he was angry. I wouldn’t even consider that he was scared. I’d never seen him scared. “He won’t speak.”
The informant was silent.
“I trained that boy myself,” Papa insisted. “He won’t speak.”
I heard things. Terrible, horrible things. But by far, the most fascinating of his stories was of a sixteen-year-old boy with his own men. The first time I heard of him, Papa’s voice was tinged with something unrecognisable. Something like dread. “You say Salvatore no longer runs Costa operations?”
“The boy has been running it since he turned sixteen,” Sergei, my father’s most trusted advisor followed, stoically. “He was still a child when he was Made — eleven. He’s stronger than his father. Smarter.”
“I heard he can sniff out fear,” Dimitri, another one of Papa’s men, said. “Like a real hellhound.”
I relayed this story to Ana, too, but she only said, “People can’t smell fear, Frey.”
