Page 140 of Kill for a Kiss

I thrash once, twice. Feels like I’m fighting underwater. My limbs drag, Kys still in my veins. The puppets haul me through the halls. Walls blur past. Chandeliers flicker like dying stars.

The room comes into view before they shove me inside. Mirrors. Floor to ceiling. My reflection repeats endlessly. Fractured, pale, strung tight with fury.

In the center, a chair.Elle. Tied down. Mask gone. Head dropped like she’s barely holding on.

Panic rips through me so fast it leaves my hands shaking. I lunge for her, but hands slam into my shoulders, shoving me down into the opposite chair. The one facing a chessboard.

But I can’t look away from Elle. Her chest rises, shallow and slow. Her wrists are bound to the arms of the chair. Her skin looks too pale under the clinical light. The beams blur, whirling into a dizzying spin. I’m seeing things. Kys is driving me crazy.

I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. I need the pain. I need the focus.

Clo steps out from the mirrors like she’s been waiting her whole life for this. Black silk swirls at her ankles. Her crimson mask sits in her hair like a crown. She smiles eerily, tilting her head like a woman welcoming guests to a party she knows only ends in one way. Slaughter.

“Welcome back, dokkaebi,” she says.

I say nothing. My fists clench into tight knots. I have to wait. Have to pick the right second to move. Elle’s still breathing. That’s what matters.

Clo drags her fingers across the chessboard where she places her mask. “You always had a keen eye, Sterling. So I’m certain you’re aware what these chess pieces are made of, aren’t you?”

I don’t answer. I don’t even blink.

She plucks up a queen. “Bone,” she says. “Real bone. From the men you buried in my vineyard.” Her fingers turn it slowly. “You were always so thorough, Sterling. So careful with your secrets, so much like your father. But nothing stays buried forever.”

I go still, seeing hundreds of reflections spin around this room of mirrors. I see me, Elle, and Clo at all angles. Makes my head spin worse with Kys in my system.

Her sick smile widens. “And you’d be amazed at what good decay does to wine. Kys soaks better in soil rich withdeadlysecrets. The harvest this year’s exquisite, all thanks to you and all the men you’ve buried in our family estate.”

My stomach turns. The worst word she’s said so far isfamily. We’ve never been that. I scowl, but she keeps smiling.

She lifts the dark knight next. Balances it like a weight in her palm. “Damon. Always charging in. Loyal to death.”

She sets it down. Picks up a pale pawn. Pretends to study it. I have to close my eyes to stop my head from spinning out of control.

“Stan,” I hear her say. “My sweet baby boy. Always willing to be one step away from being sacrificed for someone else’s glory.”

She slams the piece down, making me snap my enraged eyes open. I watch her reach for the rook.

“And you,” she says, smile vanishing. “My rook. Built to guard, to corner, and to clean the board when no one else could. But you fell in love with the wrong girl and let the whole game fall apart.”

She plucks the white king with her other hand, twisting it.

“Your father, Kai,” she says with a sigh, “I truly thought I found love in him. I gave him my everything. Still, his greed wanted more. Do you know what it took to finally make all this power mine? I had to send your father right back to the Knights. He’s not mine anymore, but everything else is.”

With a sudden sweep of her hand, the pieces fall off the board.They clatter, echoing an ache in my teeth. Bone shards scatter across the floor. The rook she held slides to drop at Elle’s feet.

Clo straightens. “But now, you see, all these useless Song-Smith men,” she spits, “are completely cleared from my board.”

She circles the table.

“You really are your father’s son.”

The words hit like a cutting smack.

“Same silver hair,” she says, stepping closer. “Though yours started to pale much earlier. Stress, maybe? Or maybe you were always meant to wear your weakness on the outside.”

She brushes a hand through my hair mockingly. My entire body screams to snap her wrist clean. But I know her guards would take me down. I’d lose my chance at saving Elle.

“Same gray eyes too,” Clo keeps going. “Though, you had your mother’s stare. So kind, so caring, soNaomi. But I beat that out of you, didn’t I, dear?”