The Killer’s Vow by Aria R. Blue
Simon
Blyat. She stops breathing again.
“Vera,” I say, reminding her.
She takes a breath, but it’s more of a gasp.
“What do you mean you don’t know Luigi?” Vera asks Nico, her voice shaking with the question.
I don’t like that her eyes are fixed on another man.
The three of them seem comfortable around each other. In the way that people who have been friends for a long time are.
Well, this is unexpected.
“I mean, I know men named Luigi”—Nico shrugs—“but I don’t have a cousin with that name.”
“But Inessa told me that he was a Monte,” Vera says, her wide eyes turning to me. Something flickers in their depths. “You. You knew this all along.”
“It was only a hunch,” I say. “The night of that party, I saw your sister getting cozy with a man in a red mask. I couldn’t see all of his face, but I remembered his eyes. After Inessa went missing, I searched for him in the Monte database. I couldn’t find him, so I assumed he was lying about who he was.”
“There is no database for the Montes,” Nico says.
“There is if you look in the right place,” I say.
Vera is scrutinizing me. “How do you know all this?”
“Hmm?” I play innocent.
“Before today, I never told you that the man Inessa ran away with was a Monte.”
Three pairs of eyes land on me.
“I’ve done my research, tigritsa moya.” Also, I might have some stalker tendencies.
Vera blinks.
Everything I built with her in the car dissipates.
Distrust is back in her eyes. We’re right back where we started.
“It was just a suspicion,” I say. “It was one of the reasons I brought you here to meet Nico in person.”
“What does this mean?” she asks, looking back at the Italians. “Why would someone lie to her about being a Monte?”
“The bigger question is,” Nico says. “Did she even leave of her own free will?”
Vera sucks in a sharp breath.
I place my palm over her back, letting her know I’m here for her.
She twists her body, rejecting my touch.
Lion snarls and bares his teeth at Nico.
Luna watches the wolf hybrid but doesn’t try to pet it.
“Dogs don’t like me,” Nico says finally, glancing up at Vera apologetically.
“Right, okay,” she says, taking Lion to a bedroom with a nice view so he can look at the world outside the sliding glass doors.
When she reemerges, her hands are trembling.
“Vera, I don’t know your sister, but if she is anything like you, she’s doing perfectly fine right now,” I say.
“How can you possibly know that?” she asks.
“I know your father’s security system inside and out. It’s mostly designed to keep outsiders from getting in, not the other way around. If your sister was able to escape, it was only because she wanted to.”
“Security isn’t always foolproof,” Luna says, glancing at the floor.
“I know she wanted to escape,” Vera says. “She left a note behind.”
“What did it say?” Luna asks, her posture deathly still.
Vera recites the quote from Star Wars. “And then she said that she didn’t want to suffer anymore. She asked me not to look for her because she doesn’t want to be found.”
“How do you know the note was by her?” Luna presses.
Vera’s quiet for a moment. “I hadn’t even considered that possibility. But she left it in a place only the two of us know about.”
“You’re positive that the handwriting was hers?” Luna grills.
“Do you have the note with you right now?” Nico asks.
I rake my hands through my hair in frustration.
I know these people are only trying to help Vera, but can’t they see that she’s already scared?
“Um, no,” Vera says. “It wasn’t exactly a handwritten note.”
“Then?” Luna asks, confused.
Vera blinks, suddenly looking like she’s tired to the bone. “We used to do this thing where we left each other goofy messages and silly jokes on the shower door. Her bedroom was bigger, but my bathroom was nicer, so she used to use mine sometimes.”
“You’re saying the message was written with fingers on a shower door?” Luna asks incredulously.
Vera nods. “I know it’s her because nobody else at the house knows of it. It was our thing.”
Luna takes a deep breath. “What if your sister told someone about it?”
“About the messages on the door?” Vera asks, confused. “In what situation would she tell someone about that?”
“Anything is possible, Vera,” Luna says. “You have to keep every possibility open.”
I shoot Luna a warning look—one that says, ‘You’re not helping.’
Luna turns her palms up. “I really hope I’m wrong about this, but we can’t strike out entire possibilities just because we don’t like them.”
Vera turns to me. “What do you think?”
I want to tell her the words that will put her heart at ease.
Her brain is already working overtime, and I don’t want to stress her out.
But she’s asking me for the truth.
And that’s what she deserves to hear.
“I think we need to gather more evidence,” I say. “If your sister ran away without telling you about it—“
“Wait,” Vera says, blinking rapidly. “She did tell me.”
“In person?” Nico asks.
Vera nods. “Yeah, I completely deleted this from my brain, but before she disappeared, she was trying to share something with me. She got frustrated because I was asking the wrong questions or something. I know she was trying to tell me more, but I just never gave her a chance. So I think it’s highly unlikely she was kidnapped.”
Nico walks to the front-facing windows and folds his arms behind his back.
He gazes at the mermaid sculpture outside as he speaks. “So the question remains—did she leave alone, or did she leave with a man who lied about who he was?”
Vera’s chin wobbles when she hears that.
Strangely, I’m attuned to everything about her. Whenever I’m around her, I find that everything else dims, and she’s the only star in my sky.
Tentatively, I reach for her hand.
It’s cold and sweaty but warms as soon as I squeeze it.
“Do you still trust my plans?” I ask gently, wanting her to trust me again.
She gazes up at me. “As long as it doesn’t involve jumping from trees. I’m not a squirrel, Simon.”
I smile. “Okay. No jumping from trees. Do you want to plan with me now? We can all put our heads together and come up with a plan to find Inessa.”
“What if she’s hurt or something?” she breathes.
Her hand turns clammy again. It’s the same hand that fed me even when I told her I wasn’t that hungry.
“Worrying isn’t helping your sister in any way,” I say. “But you know what will?”
“Actually doing something?” she asks.
“Bingo.”
She takes a deep breath and exhales all the restlessness away.
The light returns to her eyes.
This is what she needs—to have some control back in her life. I took her away from everything that made her feel safe and comfortable.
She needs some power to play with.
“Okay,” she says. “Where do we start?”