Page 86 of The Crimson Lily

A spark of relief flickers in my heart. I am reunited with the part Maksim left with me. Maksim’s present to me, a token of his affection.

“Please tell me where I am,” I plead, my voice busy with not crying.

“Where do you think you are?” William riddles.

I scan my surroundings, noticing the nuns pacing around me and the crosses on the wall. The hallway behind takes a right. The corridor in front of me opens into a larger room, then continues and bends to the left. Through the windows scattered across the walls, I can see green grass and pine trees. I take a few steps toward the opening and realize I’m looking through the entrance of a chapel.

“Is this some kind of cloister?” I ask.

William chuckles with satisfaction. “Good guess, Lili.”

“We’re not in Rome,” I infer from the quantity of forest that encircles us.

My big cousin nods with the same smile he wore in his teens. He leads me to the chapel, an empty rectangular room of aligned benches, with a ceiling made of the same wood as the beams in my room. At the end of the chapel is an altar overseen by a flower-shaped window made of blue stained glass. William eventually takes me to the door left of the altar, into the cloister’s inner ward.

We walk underneath the galleries that encase the garden. There’s a platform of everlasting grass with a small well reshaped into a fountain of gray stones at the center. Irregularbushes are scattered at the base of the archways. This garden looks like a piece of spring frozen in time.

“Have you recovered your memory?” William wonders with an intrigued frown.

I don’t look at him but simply gaze ahead. “Not entirely.”

“You could try asking me things,” he offers.

Excuse me? What kind of sick, gracious move is that? “May I remind you that you’re the one who took my memory away, William?” I scoff.

“And I’m sorry about that.” He seems sincere. It’s disgusting. “But you were uncontrollable. You wanted out, and you went to the Bratva for help. The lords wanted you dead. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

I halt my march and let the anger rise. “So, you’re going to make me believe you didn’t want me dead yourself?”

“Why do you think you’re still alive?” he quizzes.

“Because you missed?” I mock.

“Part of me couldn’t kill you, little cousin. I guess that part was stronger than my sense of duty.”

I throw skeptical knives at him with my eyes. “Yeah, right,” I jerk. “Where is the Kinzhal Strastey?”

William glances at me with a smile. “You want to see it?”

Darn right, I want to see it. I give him a single nod masking my eagerness. That freaking dagger that brought me here to this forsaken place, I want to see it, to sentence it.

“All in due time,” William says, calm and serene. “Do you remember Wassenaar?” He changes the subject.

I shrug. “Some of it.”

“What do you remember about your parents?” he queries.

“Nothing,” I mumble.

“Then I can most certainly help, Lili,” William proclaims. “Your mother was Alanna de Loit, and she was my aunt, my father’s little sister.”

I want to askWhat’s my real name?but I settle with a barely audible hum instead.

“She married a New York City cop,” he discloses. “That was her first transgression. Detective Johnathan Miles was his name.”

Liliana Miles. That has a nice ring to it.

“Your mother wanted out of the Syndicate long before you were born, Lili. I guess you have your mother’s blood.”