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MILENA

What the fuckwere you thinking?

The wind kicks up, like the very air around me is trying to warn me back. Although it's early summer, I find myself hugging my arms around me against a sudden chill, my hands rubbing briskly as I stare up Greymoor Manor, looming over me.

Old. Ivy-covered. Beautiful, in a forgotten sort of way.

Andterrifying.

Haunted mansions tend to be like that.

Okay…notactuallyhaunted. Not in my opinion, at least. I don’t believe in ghosts, or the supernatural, or an afterlife, or really religion at all, despite my mother’s efforts when I was younger.

Do you need to believe in God to believe in ghosts?

I'm not sure.

Instead of dwelling on the question, I suck my bottom lip between my teeth and lift my eyes up to the old mansion.

Gothic columns, iron railings, stone lions half-eaten by ivy and time. Greymoor Manor perches like a looming gargoyle at the top of Carnegie Hill, partly cloaked in shadows. A former Gilded Age wonder, it’s been abandoned since at least the 1980s. Well,not lived in. Abandoned would suggest “forgotten”. But ever since I can remember, there’s been a heavy padlock on the grand front door.

So, not abandoned. Just…closed off.

In middle school, even high school, my friends and I used to dare each other to run past the place. If we were feeling especially reckless—or brave, depending on your point of view—the challenge would escalate to going all the way up to the front door and knocking, which would inevitably conclude with everyone screaming and gigging nervously as we all ran away.

I swallow and ignore the spine-tingling sensation that something iswatching.

Ghosts aren’t real. It’s just a fucking old house no one lives in anymore.

I take a step up the wide, cracked front staircase, heels snapping like muffled gunshots. Somewhere behind me, a car passes. Otherwise, it’s dead silent.

Nothaunted.

This is so fucking stupid.

I’m here because of Alicia. I can’tstandbullies, and yet I seem unable to back down from them.

And Alicia Houghton is a class-A bully.

…That's a nice way of saying “cunty bitch with a perpetual Regina George mean-girl stick shoved up her ass.”

I have no idea how or why she was at the party I just left. Roman—the older brother of Evelina, one of my besties—threw it at their dad’s sprawling townhouse on 59thStreet, right on the Park. As expected, it was crawling with a who’s-who of the young, moneyed, powerful, and mostly Bratva-connected: heirs to various criminal empires, like Evelina and Roman.

Like me.

Evie’s dad runs the Nikitin Bratva. Mine runs the Kalishnik Bratva.

Alicia’s father is a notorious Wall Street shark, which makes him arguably a bigger criminal than either my PapaorEvie’s. She was probably only at the party because she’s friends with Irina Lenkova, whoisBratva-connected.

Alicia and Irina both used to dance with us at the Zakharova up until maybe a year and a half ago, when they both left.

ThankGod.

And of course it would totally be like Alicia to start an eye-rolling game of Truth or Dare at that party, like we’re still in prep school.

I should’ve known she’d pull something like this. Bullies hate being stood up to, and I made acareerof standing up to that bitch when she was still dancing with the Zakharova, mainly because she was relentless with both Evelina and our friend Bianca.