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PROLOGUE
Eden
Fresh, raw grief snakes its way across my clammy skin. Hooks of incomparable sadness imbed into me like a psychopathic stalker who won’t let go. I’m marked. From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, despair bleeds into every crevice.
Dee is dead.
I feel it in my soul, accompanied by a darkness that threatens to take me under alongside her. She’s everywhere, yet nowhere, and I don’t know how much longer I can weather the storm raging inside me.
The wind picks up, tracking a stray strand of hair across my cheek. Crisp, autumn leaves rustle with the sudden burst, tumbling across faded green cemetery grass to nestle against a white casket. Of course it had to be white. Dee was nothing if not the light of our family. She was the happy, reserved one. If I had a penny for every time someone said our names should have been reversed, I’d have more money than my father. Delilah was far removed from the tempting, treacherous biblical figure that also bore her name. And I’m the opposite of Eden. I’m a goddamn heathen. If anything, I deserve to be in that casket. Not her.
Agony rips through me at the thought. The palpable, all-consuming pain tears me up inside. Grief is a spiked wrecking ball being wielded haphazardly and without warning. It comes on with tornado vengeance, ripping through everything it sees.
No one is a spectator to my true feelings, though. On the outside, I’m the picture of placidity. Especially now.Especiallyhere. Funerals are for letting grief out, but I don’t have that luxury. My life is a game, and my sister’s death upped the ante.
All the major players are here, surrounding me in a semicircle. Old asshats with more money than God. Young fucks who grew up spoiled and coddled. Any one of them had the means to put my sister where she is. They’re all privileged, living as if they’re the only beings that matter. I despised my upbringing before, but I haven’t hated my life more than the moment I took my first breath after learning Dee was gone.
Drowned.
Suffocated by murky river water.
Or if you ask me, the classification of “tragic accident” is extreme bullshit.
My sister doesn’t go in the water unless she’s forced. I’ll never be convinced otherwise. If she was in that river, someone put her there.
It’s everything I thought could happen in this fucked up world, only the reality is much, much worse.
To my right, my mother stands abruptly. I blink away the haze I buried myself under and watch as she takes a step forward in her black pantsuit, spinning the stem of a blood-red rose between her fingers. The priest has stopped talking. I’d tuned him out after he droned on about knowing Delilah is at peace in the afterlife. I disagree. The sunny sister I know, though pleasant in every way, doesn’t go down without a fight. She’s probably in death’s cage somewhere, rattling the cell bars with carefully controlled anger.
“Edie…” a fractured voice whispers.
I turn toward the voice. Past my mother’s now empty chair sits my father. As distinguished as our Astor background is, he’s currently the living opposite. He spends his days crying into a bottle of brandy and his nights wailing into the ceaseless dark. The tear tracks down his face have etched new wrinkles in their wake like the glaciers carved the earth’s landscape a million years ago. I’d always expected Dee was his favorite, but now it’s been confirmed.
“Edie, honey,” he chokes out. “Your flower.”
Wordlessly, I stare down at the black rose gripped in my fist. My father chose white, signifying his precious angel. My mother red because she’s nothing if not traditional. I chose black for the void now in my soul. Black for my sister’s life unlived.
Black for my vengeance.
My mother presses a used handkerchief to her nose on the way back to her seat. She doesn’t look at me when we pass, and I straighten my shoulders to show everyone here that there are some Astors who haven’t lost their ever-loving mind to sadness. I need to be my family’s sentinel; our show of strength. Because someone here, watching me place this midnight flower on this beautiful white casket, murdered my sister. Someone here is probably looking at us with relief, believing their crime will go unnoticed, unrectified…unchallenged.
They’re wrong.
You don’t just kill an Astor and get away with it. You don’t kill my sister and have everything swept underneath a trough of tears and condolences.
For a moment, I lay my black-gloved hand on the shining white surface of Delilah’s final resting place. I close my eyes to the sun streaming down, heating my ever-frigid body just slightly. It’s a different warmth than the West Coast. This one is laced by a chill I’ll never be rid of.
I bite my lip until I taste the metallic tint of blood then make the silent oath that’s been swirling inside me.It’s okay, Dee. I know I never stepped up when you were alive, but I’m here now. I promise you they won’t get away with this. Youwillbe able to rest in peace when I’m done. I swear it.
A tingle starts in my toes. The wind picks up again, tracking another strand of hair over my lips as the buzzing sensation follows the curve of my calves, up my legs and hips, and settles in my heart. It’s an awareness, a lighthouse beacon of strength that steals my breath.
Dee is egging me on, that’s what this sensation says to me. She’ll push my feet forward one step at a time. She wants this as much as I do.
Turning, I stare into the crowd. I memorize as many faces as I can, taking in their tight lips and solemn gazes. Most won’t meet my eyes. I catalog their looks, their demeanors. I store them away for future use because I’m going to need a whole hell of a lot of help detangling the web surrounding my sister and her death. And I know just where to start.
Off along the far edges of the somber grouping is a line of men that are mostly my father’s age or older, all sporting shiny cufflinks and matte black walking canes. The handles of those canes bear the Knights of Arcadia crest, their owners flashing it like a badge of honor. The Knights are unlike any men I have ever met. They’re wealthy. They’re prestigious. And have more to lose than any other.
That makes them dangerous.