of my own heart in my ears.
Behind his back, Antony meets my eyes. Realization dawns on him. His jaw sets as he reads the note again.
He turns and smashes his hand into the tiles.
Noah second-hand winces as shards of tile fly from the wall. I guess Brentwood’s decorator hadn’t used the best glue.
“What’s going on?” Gabriel asks. Noah doesn’t say anything, but he stares at me with those coal-black eyes and I know he sees I’m hiding something.
Antony wipes his bloodied knuckles on the hem of his shirt. He’s back in control now. “We know who did this. It’s Brutus. He must’ve found out about the appointment I made with Brentwood. And this note confirms he knows Claudia’s real identity.”
I’m grateful Antony doesn’t tell the rest of the story. “What do we do now?”
“We get the fuck out of dodge before anyone sees us here and reports it to the police. We don’t have time to wait around for Dio’s clean-up team – we’d have to explain what we were doing here in the first place. Better they believe Brentwood’s disappeared.” Antony pulls something from his pocket and tosses it to Gabriel. “Pretty Boy, put those on and dig around in his closet. We’ll need three pairs of shoes and a pillowcase to stash ours inside.”
Gabe pulls on the latex gloves and locates three pairs of shiny Brionis, which he lines up on the carpet. We take turns to slide off our blood-soaked shoes and step into the clean ones. I drop my spike heels into the pillowcase. “I liked these shoes.”
“Are we leaving him here?” Noah jerks his head in the direction of the bathroom. But Antony’s already on the phone to Tiberius.
We wait in the house until Tiberius arrives with the supplies we need. Antony goes downstairs to guide him through the booby traps. They appear in the doorway, their arms loaded with vats of chemicals and a large kettle.
“You might want to get out of here.” Antony plugs the kettle into the power outlet beside the sink and starts boiling. “This will smell delightful.”
I sit down on the corner of Brentwood’s bed. I don’t care about the smell. I’m numb to the world – the only thing that pierces my haze are those words repeating over and over in my head. Baby girl baby girl baby girl…
Gabriel wraps me in his arms, pulling me back against the Egyptian linens while Antony and Tiberius get to work.
Noah helps Antony, pouring the boiling kettle over Brentwood’s body as Antony mixes the chemicals and uses the plunger to move the slurry forming in the bathtub down the drain. I’m too lost in my pain to pay too much attention, but the fact Noah is so calm and so willing to throw himself into this is… perturbing. He doesn’t throw up once, even as Antony asks him to hold Brentwood’s limbs while he chops him into pieces so the chemicals will work faster. Gabriel won’t even look inside the bathroom, but the smell has him heaving into the pillowcase at least three times.
Gabriel holds me, stroking my hair. He whispers song lyrics into my ears, filling my chest with warmth. But he can’t kiss away that cold as I clutch that ribbon between my fingers.
All these years, and the man who hurt me finally has a name.
Brutus.
The accursed man.
The betrayer.
He killed my parents.
He broke my spirit.
He will die.
14
Claudia
It takes nearly five hours for the last of Brentwood’s remains to flush down the bathtub. Gabriel and I spent most of that time cradled together on the bed, clinging to each other as though every slurp and swirl of the drain washed away the lies that cloaked us.
I’ll never be able to scrub the smell out of my skin, nor forget the sludge at the bottom of the bathtub as the potassium hydroxide transformed Brentwood’s considerable bulk into a human slurry. Antony picks out the remaining bones that hadn’t dissolved and threw them in the pillowcase while Noah and Tiberius use bleach to scrub the blood off every surface, until the bathroom shone like new. Tiberius even repairs the broken tiles.
After it’s done, Antony drops us back at Malloy Manor, but he won’t come inside. “I still have work to do,” he says as he starts to wind his window up.
“Wait.” I grab the window. “Is it safe for us to go to school tomorrow?”
“Fuck knows, but what’s the alternative? Like it or not, you’re Mackenzie Malloy now. You need to act as