A single tear cascades down Jane’s cheek, but she doesn’t lift a hand to wipe it away.
“There must be some mistake… This doesn’t make any sense…” She shakes her head from side to side, almost as if she can physically remove the errant thought that popped into it.
“Raymond, explain!” Ryker barks.
Raymond points a finger at the phone—which is now face down on the couch, in the seat Victoria vacated.
“That’s Aria,” he growls. He barely sounds human—like a mesh between a guttural beast and a man. “That’s her!”
The Divine One?
That’sEllie’s mom?
The mastermind behind this entire shit show we’ve found ourselves thrust into?
Intense anger crashes over me, chased by confusion and disbelief.
Why does Jane have a picture of her on her phone?
What the fuck is going on?
More tears continue to run down Jane’s face. The girl sniffles and uses the back of her hand to wipe at them.
“Jane.” Ryker speaks slowly, succinctly, a razor-sharp threat lacing each and every word. “How the fuck do you know Aria?”
Jane lifts her tear-stained gaze to first Ryker, then Raymond, and finally me.
Her voice barely a whisper, she confesses, “Aria… Aria is my older sister.”
28
ELLIE
Fischer is pacing in the living room when we return to the bungalow. He halts immediately when he catches sight of us, and whatever he sees on our faces causes his mouth to open and eyes to bulge.
“What the fuck happened?” He flicks his eyes over me, as if assessing me for injuries, before leveling them on the three men surrounding me.
Correction—two men.
Dominic has already stormed away, his hands fisted, a tremor reverberating through his body.
My heart breaks for my golden god all over again.
Electricity shoots through me—crackling and pungent—when Aria enters the home behind me. I don’t even have to look over my shoulder to know it’s her. She carries a…presence. Even when I don’t see her, I can sense her, slick and dark, the way a shadow pools under a closed door.
It always begins the same way—a pressure, subtle at first, like a thin film settling over my skin. Then comes the feeling of beingcoated, as though the air itself has turned viscous. My thoughts seem to move slower, wading through something I can’t name, something that clings to me even after I try to shake it off. The temperature in the room never changes, but the atmosphere thickens. Corners seem deeper. Colors dim. A quiet warning stirs at the base of my spine, an instinct older than language, whispering, “You are not alone. You are the prey to a predator.”
Aria’s presence has an oiliness to it, an unnatural slickness that makes me feel as if I might slip if I don’t brace myself. It isn’t loud. It isn’t dramatic. But somehow, it’s worse than all of that—calm, controlled, almost intimate, staggering with its familiarity. A malevolent awareness brushes against my thoughts with the confidence of something that doesn’t need to be seen to be in control.
That’s what Aria feels like whenever she’s in the room.
I can’t ever escape her.
I swallow around the knot in my throat as I hear rather than see Aria glide away—no doubt returning to her own room. She seems oddly unperturbed that she murdered two people in front of their brother and son.
Just a normal, everyday occurrence for the psycho bitch.
I’m belatedly aware that Beckett has begun filling Fischer in on what transpired at the POP party. My brother’s face drains of color with each and every word, until he’s as white as the sheet billowing behind him. He staggers back and barely manages to collapse on the sofa as his legs give out.