ALVARA

xiv

KAISER ―

I PACE AROUND MY ROOM, UNDECIDING.

The paper feels like a brand pressing into my skin at my side. Finally, when I cannot take it, I wrench it out from my pocket and throw it on the desk, the only piece of furniture in my austere room.

I reread it for the umpteenth time, though it only consists of three lines:

Kaiser,

Meet me at Rock Bottom, midnight. Destroy this.

Arcadia

And nothing else.

I ball up the paper and chuck it against the wall, ignoring a twinge of pain, courtesy of my back. I can't help but wonder if she chose the location specifically, just to spite me. Rock Bottom was the place I'd killed my first target, and I haven't been able to go to the club since. On the outside, it was a great place to go clubbing with your friends. In reality, it was a hotspot for seedy dealings and undercover crooks, pawns of the mafia syndicates but never truly aligned with a specific one.

I resume pacing the room. What the hell did that damned woman want from me? And how did she know such... intimate details about everyone? The anniversary of Hugo's brother's death? Remington and Elison's situationship? These weren't things that could be found out from a spy. They were trivial facts, observed after years and years of close contact. Besides, how did that paper even get there?

A thread of suspicion worms through me. Had it been Aleksander? He'd been awfully chummy with Arcadia, who wouldn't leave him alone at the gathering. There'd been plenty of opportunities for her to pass the note to him, and for him to offhandedly drop it on the vanity table. Besides, he'd grown up with us and he knew about Hugo's brother as well as Remi and Elison's relationship. Had it been him?

But hadn't Akilah been there, too, removing her makeup? The note had specifically been addressed to me; there was no way she hadn't seen it. She'd been introduced to us after Hugo brought her to the mansion one night; but what did she have to gain, betraying Hugo, the man who had taken her under his wing? If anything, she was probably the most loyal to him after Remi.

I glance out the window - it was already dark. Remington was still with Elison and her father in the infirmary, which was on the other side of the mansion. Aleksander was with his mother at her place, Akilah was probably sleeping, and Parker was... Parker. I didn't know where she was, but as long as she didn't follow me...

I peer into my walk-in closet, an extravagant room almost as big as my library, filled with clothes Remi bought me over the years. I brush a hand along a pair of transparent plastic pants that I'd been forced to wear at Elison's sixteenth birthday. It was a hot summer day, in his mother's backyard. I still remember the look on Remington's face when Aleksander pushed her into the pool.

I grimace as I debate what to wear to a nightclub. I'm at the point in my life where killing someone is easier than deciding what to wear. I thumb a nice shirt Remi got me, but decide against it. If things end badly, she'll probably get angrier over the damaged Prada top rather than me nearly losing my life.

I squint at a black bulletproof hoodie and matching combat pants, then at a plated vest. Too conspicuous.

"Going somewhere?"