Page 156 of Villains Series

THE LAST EVENING

FIRST AND WHITE

ONCE again, Marcella had chosen to wear gold.

She’d come a long way since that pivotal night on the National’s roof, shedding not only her husband but the scalloped decadence of that first dress, trading it for the polished sheen of white-gold silk. It molded to her body like liquid metal, rising up around her throat and plunging down between her shoulder blades, pooling in the small of her back.

To my beautiful wife.

In a certain light, the milky fabric seemed a second skin, the soft shimmer brushed onto bare flesh, turning her to gold.

What’s the point of having beautiful things if you don’t put them on display?

Marcella tucked a coil of black hair behind one ear, admiring the liquid way the gold earring fell from the lobe. A bracelet circled one wrist. Her nails, painted to match.

If beauty were a crime.

A net of white-gold beads, like a band of stars, over her hair.

Does she come with a warning label?

Her heels, thin as blades and just as sharp.

My wife, the business major.

The only drops of color the steady blue of her eyes and the vivid, vicious red of her lips.

You don’t want to make a scene.

Her hand drifted to the mirror.

I always thought you were a brazen bitch.

The glass silvered under Marcella’s touch, burning black in spots as if it were film, erosion spreading until it swallowed the gold dress and the blue eyes and the red lips set in a perfect smile.

Jonathan was leaning against the wall, fidgeting with his gun, ejecting and reinserting the magazine the way Marcus used to punch the end of his pen when he was restless.

Click, click. Click, click. Click, click.

“Stop that,”

she ordered, turning toward him.

“How do I look?”

Jonathan gave her a long, considering stare.

“Dangerous.”

Marcella smiled.

“Come zip me up.”

He slid the gun back into its holster.

“Your dress has no zipper.”

She gestured at the heels. He came forward, and knelt, and she lifted one foot onto his waiting knee.

“No matter what happens tonight,”

she said, tipping up his chin.

“Keep your eyes on me.”

* * *

SYDNEY woke up in an empty bathtub.

She was curled on her side, wrapped in a large comforter in the deep white basin, and for a second she had no idea where she was. And then, haltingly, she remembered.

The Kingsley. June. The hotel, and the cup of too-sweet chocolate.

Sydney got to her feet, head pounding from whatever June had put in the drink—and grateful she hadn’t drunk more of it. She stumbled out of the tub and tried the bathroom door, but the handle only turned a couple inches.

Syd knocked, and then pounded. Threw her shoulder into the door and felt the resistance, not of a lock, but an object forced against the other side. Syd turned, surveying the small, windowless room, and saw the note sitting on the sink.

I’ll explain everything when this is over.

Just trust me.

J

She felt herself tremble, not with fear, but anger. Trust? June had drugged her. Locked her in a hotel bathroom. She’d thought that June was different, that she saw Sydney as a friend, a sister, an equal. But for all that talk of trust, of independence, of letting Sydney make her own choices, June had still done this.

Syd had to get out of here.

Had to find Victor, and save Mitch.

She felt for her phone, only to remember she’d left it on the coffee table. But as she dug her hands into her bomber jacket, she felt the small metal tin with Serena’s bones in one pocket, and the cool steel of the gun in the other. June obviously hadn’t thought to frisk her. After everything, she’d treated Sydney like a naive child.

Syd drew out the gun, fingers flexing on the grip as she aimed at the doorknob, then reconsidered, shifted the barrel toward the hinges on the other side.

The shot echoed, deafening, against the tile and marble, hard surfaces reflecting it back at an earsplitting level.

Sydney fired twice more, then threw her weight into the door again, felt the hinges break, the wood swing free.

And she was out.