Page 146 of His Trick

As Hardings, we were programmed for control from the beginning. It’s about time Alexandra Harding paid the piper.

I let my mind wander outside, somewhere in the rain, and continued to spiral. Shiloh was already drunk and unsteady. He had received Xanthy’s message and had begun the descent I had been planning for months. Every heartbeat and second of fear was mine to guide.

I would wait.

Wait to watch him choose once and for all.

Snuff out your fucking light or feel the darkness.

Rain smacked against the windshield like fists, hammering my skull with every fucking heartbeat.

Where is she?

My hands gripped the wheel so tight it hurt, my knuckles turning white while I couldn’t stop shaking. Vodka burned in my stomach and throat, buzzing like bees in my veins. It mixed with fear until I felt like I might explode from the inside out.

Xanthy’s last words haunted me on the phone.

“Shiloh…please…please just listen. I need you to go back to where it began. Please…for me.”

Her voice had sounded cracked and fragile, and it kept looping in my head like a broken record. There had been a loud crack and then nothing but silence. Nothing. Just a dead signal.

I slammed my palm against the wheel.

“Goddammit, Xanthy,” I screamed, my voice raw, carried off with the storm. “Goddammit!”

The mansion loomed ahead, dark windows and jagged shadows, while the rain streaked the drive into slick, treacherous lines of eerie gray. My tires hissed against the wet asphalt as I skidded to a stop, my engine screaming like my mind. My stomach twisted. Panic clawed up my throat. No cars were here.

Fuck!

She was supposed to be here.

Supposed to tell me it was okay.

Supposed to make me remember why the fuck I chose her over…

I stumbled out of the car, the thick rain soaking my jacket, and plastering my hair to my forehead. My fingers were fucking numb, and my teeth chattered.

I tried the front door.

Locked.

“Of course it’s fucking locked,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Of course.”

I rattled the handle and listened to the deadbolt resist. Nothing. I pounded with my fists, desperate, as the adrenaline sliced through the vodka fog in my mind. “Xanthy, open the door. Please, damn it.”

The sky swallowed my voice, but nothing answered.

I stumbled backward, my heart hammering while I tried to catch a breath.

Fuck it.

I dug around until I felt a sizable rock and hurled it into the glass window of the door. No alarms blared when it made impact…the security system must not have been armed.

“Xanthy?”

Inside, the hallways stretched before me, dark and distorted. Every sound, whether the creak of the floorboards or the thumping of rain in the gutters outside…it all felt like a scream in my ears.

Then I saw it.