“What happened to you out there? Before the barn.” She turns away, but I force her to look back at me. “Tell me.”

She gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head, and at that moment, she looks so young and so fucking vulnerable it’s almost startling.

“I should have been the one to kill him. It was my responsibility to protect you. And I should have pulled the trigger.” What’s one more soul? Because that’s why I’m angry. That and this strange connection we now have. Me and this girl. The blood of my enemy. And what I should do is hate her. I should use her body, take my fill of her, and hate her.

But it’s not hate I feel. Not even fucking close.

We’re connected. We are the same in some cruel way fate has of fucking with us and driving us to the brink. And that knowledge is what has me lifting her arms from around my neck. Has me stepping back and, with all the strength I have in me, walking away.

6

BASTIAN

My brother’s shoulder bumps mine when I walk into the bedroom as he stalks out, shirtless, the clothes he’s still wearing soaked through. His forehead is creased, eyes cast straight ahead. Unseeing. Or unwilling to see.

He disappears down the hall and I hear the shower switch off. I walk into Vittoria’s bedroom to the bathroom where a naked, still handcuffed Vittoria stumbles, disoriented from the shower. She leaves a pool of water as she crosses the room to pick up a folded towel from the stack. As she stands facing away from me, I’m not sure she realizes I’m there. Staring straight ahead, she’s unmoving as water drips down her back.

I wait until she turns toward me. She doesn’t startle, so maybe she did know I was here. Her eyes lock on mine, but I can’t read her. No, it’s not that I can’t read her. It’s that what I see is her own confusion. I watch her, not seeing this naked girl before me but the one in that barn. The one who snatched my gun from me and fired half a dozen bullet holes into that man. He deserved to die. Absolutely. But for her to have done it? And for me to have watched her face as she did it? Her eyes? It was a strange, dark thing. A thing I’m not sure I understand.

My brother’s words echo.

“She belongs to us now. And we look after what is ours.”

“What happened?” I ask her.