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Brianna

B ri felt the shot in her very bones.

Terror clenched its icy fist around her heart as it echoed around the parking lot. There was no time for action on her part, only panic.

Thankfully, everyone else’s reactions were far quicker. Instead of stepping back, Dante ploughed on, taking Vivian by surprise as much as Bri. Another shot filled the air as Dante shoved the gun skywards, right as Tomas kicked her legs out from under her.

“I don’t understand,” Bri whispered, frantically looking over Dante but failing to see any sign of a bullet wound. “Did she miss?”

Roman shook his head. “No. She’s firing blanks.”

“How do you know?” She winced as she watched her mother kicking out against Tomas’s attempt to restrain her, catching him in the thigh.

“If you know what to listen for, you can hear the difference.”

“Can they still hurt him?” Bri worried at her bottom lip, but relief of a different kind bulldozed its way into her chest when she saw Aldous approaching them, using the chaos to creep through the carnage to stand at their side.

Roman shrugged, sending an affectionate wink at Aldous. “At that range? It stings more than it hurts.”

Something told her he spoke from experience. “But how did blanks get into her gun?” It wasn’t like Vivian to avoid fatalities.

“I put them there,” Reina admitted, her lips twisting in revulsion as she glared down at their mother.

Eyes of fury flared back at her. “You scheming cunt,” Vivian spat, redoubling her attempts to get free but failing miserably as Koa threw her back onto the ground. “After everything I’ve done for you. I raised you, fed you, put a roof over your head—”

Devoid of regret, Reina nodded softly. “And made me your second—where I discovered how vile the Syndicate really is.” Bri’s sister gave a sad laugh. “I didn’t want to believe it at first. I thought maybe Figueroa and Martinez were running a human trafficking ring on the side, but the more I looked into it the deeper it went. Gaskell. Chavez. Miller. Epps.” Reina’s bottom lip wobbled, but she kept her composure. “You.”

Bri’s horrified gaze flicked straight over to Roman’s. “Did you know?” she whispered.

He shook his head. “Not before today.”

“You’re the one responsible for all these attacks,” Vivian realised. “You fed my employees to the wolves, one by one.” Leaning against the wheels of an SUV, Vivian’s glare was hotter than the burning inferno at their backs. “This whole time you’ve been working with the Wraiths, right under my nose. The trafficking operation is unsavoury but it is what it is. You’ve managed to be more of a disappointment than Brianna ever was. You destroyed the Syndicate for the sake of your own morals.”

Roman’s hands tightened around her, but Bri let the insult fall off her like water flowing over bedrock. She’d long since stopped caring about what Mom thought of her.

Through bone-deep exhaustion, the implications of Reina’s confession struck out in all directions like broken shards of glass. Mom had been running a human trafficking ring. Bri’s opinion of her mother was low, but even she didn’t think Mom would sink that far.

But then…

Bri had lived under a dark cloud of worry since they’d first been warned about the threat posed by the Wraiths. But if Reina had been working with the Wraiths this whole time, then surely they’d been safe all along.

There was an almost infinitesimal shake to Reina’s head. “You’re pathetic,” her sister whispered, as though the realisation had only just struck her.

Silently, Bri motioned to Roman to let her stand on her own two feet, needing to do so. Aldous’s comforting touch brushed against her from behind, and she let herself lean back against him, knowing there was nowhere she’d rather be than between the men she loved.

“I’m glad she has morals,” Dante interrupted, no longer concealing his mask of hatred as he stared down at Vivian. “She certainly didn’t get them from her mother.”

Tomas let out a brief laugh.

“Something amusing?” Vivian asked, managing to look down her nose at him even when he towered over her.

“I was enjoying the realisation that all of your children despise you,” Tomas said, his voice quietening with every word—but there was a shocked sadness in his eyes. “You don’t even know who I am, do you?”

Vivian’s brow hitched. “Should I?”

Barely concealed hurt loomed large in Tomas’s dark eyes. “Considering the last time you saw me was the day I was born, I guess not.”

The day he was born?

Uncharacteristically stunned, Vivian looked at Dante. “He lived ?”

“You…” Tomas stepped back slightly, his voice less sure of itself. Dante opened his mouth to interrupt, but Tomas stayed him with a hand. “You didn’t even bother to check afterwards? Not once?”

“The doctors said you were too weak to survive, and I had a strong, healthy bab—” Vivian waved towards Bri, although disgust poisoned her vision when it found her. “Or what I thought was a strong, healthy baby to take care of. Although she turned out to be another disappointment.”

No.

Despite her brain firing on all cylinders, Bri was used to Mom’s insults, but Tomas wasn’t. He raised a gun she hadn’t noticed he was carrying, aiming it squarely at Vivian. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

The fact Tomas—of all people—leapt to her defence would have warmed her heart, had the flames of the burning warehouse not heated her to boiling point already.

Vivian showed no fear at the sight of the barrel. She let out a snort of amusement at Tomas’s response, quickly followed by a second when she saw the confusion on Bri’s face. “You haven’t told her?” she asked, looking between Dante and his sons.

“Tell me what?” Bri whispered. Too weak to survive. The day he was born.

All of her children , Tomas had said. Not both. All.

The savage satisfaction that crept onto Mom’s face was a portent of nothing good. “This man isn’t just your brother, Brianna. He’s your—”

A single shot split the night in two.

Lips parting in shock, Bri watched as her mother slumped onto the parking lot, a dark pool spreading onto the grey concrete around her. It was almost mesmerising how it spread, so gradually it was almost imperceptible, smothering everything in its path.

In the corner of her eye, she saw Tomas standing motionless, a gun in his outstretched hand. The stunned gasp she attributed to Reina, followed by her choked whispers to Koa.

Roman went to block her view, bending to murmur something in her ear, but she pushed him aside. “No,” she breathed. “I—I want to watch for a moment. Is that wrong?”

“I don’t think so,” he answered.

There was an uncomfortable sadness weighing her down as she digested her thoughts, but it wasn’t grief—not strictly. Bri couldn’t grieve the loss of the mother who had rejected her at every opportunity. The mother who had caused so much misery in the world, infecting everything she touched.

Bri grieved for the loss of the mother she could have had. A proper mother.

There had never been any real possibility that Vivian would have somehow turned into that mother; Bri wasn’t deceiving herself about that. But now that door had been shut. The unlikely possibility made impossible.

She wasn’t grieving. She wasn’t sad. She was simply disappointed .

“Would you like me to prepare a stake?” Roman eventually murmured in her ear.

“A stake?”

“To ensure she’s really dead,” Roman answered easily.

Bri didn’t think that many people would be able to smile minutes after watching their mother get gunned down, but then Mom wasn’t like other moms. Proper moms. And I am not like most daughters . “No, but thank you for offering.”

It didn’t take long for the Wraiths—including Koa, apparently—to jump into action. Roman joined them, loading the corpses of Syndicate members into truck beds to bury them somewhere else. She wanted to find Reina, but something had frozen her in place. Aldous stayed by her side, but soon she had another visitor.

“Brianna?”

Finally, Bri dragged her attention away from her mother’s body to look into Tomas’s dark eyes. “Is it true?”

He nodded, climbing onto the truck bed she’d made a perch of. “We’re twins. Born two minutes apart.”

“I’m sorry,” Bri whispered. She wasn’t sure what she was apologising for; the fact that she was the one that was kept, or that he was the one who was abandoned.

A large, warm hand slipped into hers. The same hand he’d used to shoot their mother. “I’m sorry I rejected you at first. I thought you would be like her.”

Bri gave him half a smile, tinged with sadness. “I’m glad I disappointed you.”

Tomas squeezed her hand. “Me too.”