And that, in and of itself, proved she wasn’t a Glassman.
Not stained with his blood running through her veins because she was nothing like them. She was kind, and patient, and forgiving, not bitter and cruel. Even after everything I’d done to her, she found a place in her heart for me.
Leaving me—she had done that to protect me.
It was all I had to hold on to so that I didn’t spiral into madness.
Ridley gave away her motive to return. Glassman had threatened he’d kill me if she didn’t go back.
So she went back.
She hated her father, always had, and her returning to that house was a testament to her bravery. To the beauty of her soul.
Retracing my steps that I knew so well, I headed back into the house and strolled into my office.
As soon as I entered the room, my phone rang. Fishing it out of my pocket, I glanced at the screen, hoping it was Anya.
It was Ridley again. What the fuck did this bastard want?
“Why are you calling me,” I growled into the phone.
“Don’t hang up,” he responded. “I’m sorry about before, but this isn’t about—”
“Like I give a fuck about apologies. We’ve been over this—”
“Listen to me. This isn’t about us. Archie is here.”
“Anya’s brother? Is he hurt?” Why weren’t they together?
Over the line I could hear him walking to another part of his office, probably for privacy. “He’s shaking. He’s desperate to talk with you.”
“Fuck. Let me speak with him.” I listened as the phone was handed over to Archie. “Hey, buddy, you okay?” I asked him.
“H-hello.” Archie sounded painfully young.
My fingers scrubbed at my brow, trying to forget the fact I had once threatened his life.
“Archie. What’s going on?”
“Mr. Montebello tells me I can trust you. He says you’re the only one who can help my sister. I saw Anya arrive home. But I was already out of the house. I ran away. I can’t go back. He’ll kill me.” His voice sounded strained.
Even Glassman’s own children hated that man. The terror in his tone was palpable.
“You can trust me, Archie. Is she still at home?”
“Yes. You have to get her out—”
“I’m working on it. Everything is going to be okay, Archie. He wouldn’t hurt her, right? He’s your dad.”
“That’s just it. He doesn’t love her. She’s in so much danger. Get her out of that house. You don’t understand. She found out the truth at the cemetery . . .”
His words resonated, taking me back to something Anya had unwillingly shared with me in her drunken rant.
Something about secrets. . .
Something about finding their family mausoleum and what she had discovered within.
How had I not seen it?
Like lightning striking, it hit me. It all came together. Every piece of the puzzle I had missed. Every comment Anya had ever made. In her drunken state, she’d unwittingly shared her memory of a Russian winter while with me at Café Du Monde.
She’d been born abroad.
The Glassman family had only ever lived in NOLA.
“Archie,” I said, keeping my tone even. “You’re both adopted?”
Quiet reached out from the other side of the line.
“Still there, buddy?” I coaxed.
His voice was weak with worry. “She told you?”
Closing my eyes for a beat, letting that truth sink in with the profoundness of its meaning.
What I’d unwittingly set in motion.
They had taken her as a child. From the kind of place where there would be no records to mark her birth?
My hands shook with anger.
It finally made sense.
Anya was the replacement.
A girl taken. Abused by her father. Kept prisoner for one reason alone.
To defy me.
All those years ago in Lafayette Cemetery, Glassman had taken my threat to kill his children seriously.
He had taken my revenge away at his own hands.
He had killed his own children, so I couldn’t.
Anya being in danger was my fault, because now that I knew, who knows what he would do to her. “I promise I’ll get her back,” I reassured him, hearing Archie’s sigh of relief. “You’re safe with Mr. Montebello, okay. Can you hand him the phone back?”
A shuffle on the line and then I heard Ridley’s voice. “I’ll take care of him.”
My fingers tightened around my phone.
The tension still thick between us.
“I’m so sorry, Cas. For what I’ve done. I’ll make it right. I’ll keep Archie safe—”
“Bring Archie here. It’s safer. We both know that.” My calm tone eased the strain. “I have better security. Don’t fuck up again.”
“I won’t.”
Hanging up, I paced as though that was key to setting all the pieces together and seeing a way to get her out of this alive.
Making it right was all I had left in this world.
Grabbing my car keys, I stormed out of the house and leaped into my car, following another clue.
I needed to see if I was right.
The drive was a blur. Each second felt like it meant something, that it counted toward the distance between us.
Parking outside the cemetery, I hurried within its towering stone walls and searched for the Glassman tomb, striding past those buried long ago, respectful of the dead as I trudged through the graveyard.
I soon found the gray-white, free-standing mausoleum, “Glassman” carved into the alcove above the stone archway. The wooden door with Stephen’s coat of arms stamped above the entryway with the filth of his last name.
What secrets do you hold within?
What had Anya seen that day that had startled her so badly? Her alcohol-laced rambling was more than relevant now as I headed up the short steps to open the door to the chamber.
Using my shoulder, again, and again, and again, until the way was laid open—and I was standing in the doorway. Either side of where I stepped, there was splintered wood from the broken-down door, which hung off its hinges.
I walked into the shadows of the dead.
There, to my right, lay ten marble gravestones. A lineage of Glassmans set to rest in tombs.
The last one set my flesh to ice.
I tasted bitterness, a poisonous realization that what I was looking at was a marked tombstone with Anya’s name etched on the front in gray rippling marble.
Nausea threatened to spill.
Raging forward with this fight to see it through, I knew what lay within. In a blur, a frenzy, I rested my hands on the stone lid and, with sheer force, shoved and shoved again until the stone moved, grating its resistance and proving futile to my strength.
I peered in.
I was drenched in a cold sweat as my eyes adjusted to the darkness of what served as a grave. Looking up, I broke my glare, trying to make sense of what I was seeing inside.
Around me, dust particles danced and settled and sparkled, set alight by the fading rays peeking through the window.
Nausea welled again. I was close to choking. My gut burned my insides out. My heart squeezed tight with the horror of it.
“Monster.”
My words echoed as I left.
Anya