“Marcella,” said Marcus, drawing her face toward his. Her gaze toward his. And then she saw it—or maybe she just wanted to see it—

there, beyond the flat, dark blue. A glimpse of the Marcus she’d met, young and hungry and utterly in love with her. The Marcus who wanted her, needed her.

His mouth hovered a breath from hers as he spoke.

“Where I go, you go,” he said. “We’re in this together. Step for step.”

Marcella wanted to believe him, needed to believe him, because she wasn’t willing to let go, wasn’t going to lose him, everything she’d built.

They never seem to realize.

We’re the power behind the throne.

Marcella leaned forward and kissed him long, and slow, and deep.

“Show me,” she said, leading him inside.

VI

FOUR WEEKS AGO

VII

MERIT SUBURBS

MARCUS Andover Riggins had always been a man of routines.

An espresso in the morning, a bourbon before bed. Every Monday after breakfast, he got a massage, and every Wednesday at lunch, he swam laps, and every Friday night, rain or shine, from dusk until dawn, he played poker. Four or five members of Tony Hutch’s crew all got together weekly at Sam McGuire’s place, since Sam was single—or at least, he wasn’t married. He had a rotation of sorts, a new girl every week, but none of them stuck.

Sam’s was a nice place—they were all nice places—but he had a bad habit of leaving the back door unlocked instead of giving any of his short-term girls a key. Marcella had warned him a dozen times— someone could walk right in. But Sam would just smile, and say that no man would walk in on one of Tony Hutch’s crew.

Perhaps, but Marcella Riggins was no man.

She let herself inside.

The back door gave onto the kitchen, where Marcella found a girl doubled over, ass in the air and head in the freezer, as she rummaged for ice. She wobbled in too-high heels, bangles clanging against the freezer, but the first thing Marcella noticed was the girl’s dress. Dark blue silk, with a short rippling skirt—the same one that had hung for more than a year in Marcella’s own closet at the Heights.

The girl straightened, and turned, her mouth forming a perfect pink

circle.

Bethany.

Bethany, who had twice as many tits as thoughts.

Bethany, who asked about Marcus every time they met.

Bethany, who looked like a cheap knockoff of Marcella in those diamond earrings, that stolen dress, which wasn’t stolen, of course, because the apartment in town had also been kept for her.

Bethany’s eyes went wide. “Marcella?”

“Did you always know,” she’d asked Marcus once, undoing the buttons on a blood-stained shirt, “that you had what it took to end a life?”