Taming Seraphine

LEROI

I crawl on my belly to the suitcase stuffed with Anton’s remains. If I’m lucky, the assholes behind the door will stop shooting and leave. Based on how they’re concentrating their shots at the lock, I’m guessing they’re trying to access the apartment.

Let them.

I could use this opportunity to shoot back, maybe hit one of them, but leave myself exposed to the second. Instead, I shuffle backward to the dining room table and extract another gun I left taped beneath the chair.

Sending a silent word of thanks to Anton’s body parts for teaching me how to use a gun with both hands, I crouch behind the case and wait for them to break in. Hopefully, they think I’m not shooting back because I’m already dead. I keep my breath slow and even to force my heart rate not to spike.

I need my aim to remain steady.

The next two shots cannot miss.

The first of them enters wearing a mask, his head whipping from side to side. My jaw clenches, and my arms twitch.

Not yet.

As the second one steps into the apartment, I spring up and fire two shots. One intruder falls, another fires back, but I’m already diving behind Anton’s remains. The bullets embed themselves in the case.

I take aim again and catch the second assassin in the throat. She drops her gun and falls to the floor.

Shit. Miko had better have barricaded Seraphine in his apartment, because this is far from over. Any worthwhile assassin wouldn’t enter enemy territory without backup. Killing these two will have repercussions.

I crawl beneath the dining table toward the balcony door, ease it open, and slip out, just as something falls into the middle of the living room with a clunk.

FUCK!

I’m halfway up the stairs when an explosion shakes the walls, sending debris and shards of glass flying. One of the guns slips from my fingers as I clamber up the emergency stairs to the rooftop garden.

For now, the concrete space is empty, but won’t stay like that for long. I jog naked across to the roof, having lost my towel some time between now and the first gunshots. I need to get to my phone in the downstairs apartment and check on Miko and Seraphine.

After an embarrassing dash down the hallway, I get dressed and log into my backup device that’s a clone of the one I hope got destroyed in the explosion. There’s already a message from Miko saying he and Seraphine are heading to an address they found for Gabriel.

It’s a different location from the one Anton had on his phone for Seraphine’s mother, so I decide to split our efforts and head there instead.

Ten minutes later, I’m walking across a front yard and ringing the doorbell of a pastel blue house. The woman who answers is petite and blonde with cornflower blue eyes set within hardened features.

There’s no mistaking the family resemblance.

“Evangeline?” I ask.

Her eyes flash, and she tries to slam the door, but I force it open with my shoulder.

Pushing past her, I step into the house. “I’m here about your daughter.”

She claps both hands over her mouth and makes a noise in the back of her throat, as if struggling to hold back a scream. Her blue eyes widen, their pupils dilating. “Get out of my house. S-Sera isn’t here.”

The normal response to someone asking about a daughter who’s been missing for five years is to ask questions or show concern.

It almost reminds me of the horror I saw in my mother and sister’s eyes when I killed that asshole and then the terror they showed when I tracked them down to where they’d moved. They looked at me like I was a monster. Evangeline stares up at me like I’m her judge and executioner.

I take another step forward, and she backs away and stumbles over a rug.

“But you know where she is, don’t you?” I ask.

“Gabriel!” she screams, her voice panicked.

My eyes narrow. If Gabriel lives here, then Evangeline has to know about the liver transplants. Is she the one holding her son hostage?

Footsteps thunder from upstairs. I turn just in time to find a tall young man charging downstairs with a gun. He glowers at me, his scowl reminding me of a Capello twin.

This isn’t right at all.

Neither is the man pointing his pistol at me from the middle of the stairs. He has the signature green eyes and dark brown curls of the Capello family with a lean, healthy build. He looks nothing like the figure Seraphine pointed at on the basement’s television screen. That version of her brother was emaciated. This one is slender.

“Are you Gabriel Capello?” I ask.

“Who’s asking?”

“A friend of your sister’s.” I reach into my holster and pull out my gun.

Gabriel’s face falls slack. “Sera’s alive?” He lowers the gun and descends the stairs, his chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. “Where is she?”

“Safe,” I reply.

This is all wrong. Gabriel looks eager to know about his sister’s whereabouts, while Evangeline remains guarded. Guarded out of fear and suspicion or guarded because Capello took Seraphine with her consent?

I turn my attention back to Evangeline. “You know what happened to her, don’t you?”

She closes her eyes and shudders.

My pulse hammers at the increasing realization that Seraphine’s mother might be worse than mine. Two women who turned away from their children, but while mine helped me get away with murder, Seraphine’s mother allowed her to be abused and turned into a murderer.

“Mom?” Gabriel’s voice cuts through my anger. “What’s he talking about?”

Evangeline shakes her head. “Your father told me to make a choice. He could put a bullet through my head or I could pay him back for all the money he wasted on us.”

Gabriel grabs the banister, the rest of his body slumping to the stairs. Having heard Seraphine’s story, I’m already one step ahead of him, but I’m curious about how much he knows.

“What did she tell you?” I ask, not moving my gun away from Evangeline.

He swallows, his head bowing. “She said Roman Montesano murdered Sera to hurt Dad.”

“And you believed that?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I-I don’t know. He went to jail for killing another woman, so it made sense.”

“Your father framed Roman,” I reply, my nostrils flaring. “From what your mother says, it looks like Capello gave her an ultimatum. Seraphine’s life or hers.”

Gabriel raises his head and stares at me through glassy eyes.

“Mom?” His voice trembles.

I glare down at the cowering woman. How is she going to talk her way out of this situation? Who is she going to throw to the sacrificial pyre?

“You don’t know what that man did to me.” Her voice thickens, and her face contorts into a rictus of agony. “I had no other choice⁠—”

“But to let your daughter suffer for your infidelity?” I growl. “What Capello and his sons punished her for five years solid.”

My fingers twitch toward her neck. I want to grab her throat and crush her lies, but out of consideration for Seraphine, I don’t.

“You always had a choice. You could have saved your daughter and taken the bullet.”

Gabriel rises off the stair, his green eyes widening, all the color draining from his shocked features. “What’s he talking about, Mom?”

Evangeline backs toward the door, her body shaking. “He’s exaggerating. Your father told me Sera was fine.”

“Fine doing what?” The young man’s gaze bounces from me to his mother. He raises the gun with a trembling hand and screams, “What the fuck happened to my little sister?”

Evangeline opens the front door and bolts.

Gabriel turns to me, his eyes filling with tears. “What happened to Sera?”

“She can tell you herself.” I chase after Evangeline, who’s already made it halfway across the lawn surrounding her cozy little house.

Sunlight shines down on her blonde hair, making it glint like fool’s gold. Evangeline and Capello were a perfect match, two treacherous souls who treated their children like commodities. One became an organ bank. The other, a weapon.

I catch up with her in a few strides and grab her by the waist.

She stiffens and hisses, “Let go of me.”

“Not a chance,” I snarl. “You didn’t just trade your life for your daughter’s. You condemned an angel to five years of hell. Now, you’re going to explain this and how you bargained his liver to save your worthless hide to Gabriel.”

I turn around, my arms still wrapped around her waist, when pain slices through my back. Releasing Evangeline, I stare into the murderous blue eyes of her daughter.

And she’s holding a bloody knife.