Page 2 of Gravehouse

The lock opened.

He lowered the head carefully. It rolled an inch before the cheek settled against the floor.

The phone showed a stack of notifications: missed calls, messages, a banking alert.

None carried the name he needed.

Back on his heels, he opened the messages. His thumb moved through conversations while the cigar burned behind him.

Most were useless.

Reason to believe failure. She has been infected. Nonna made sure of it.

Le Boucher opened that exchange.

Ah. So this is how we got to this point.

His jaw tightened. The cigar smoke no longer covered the odor rising from the rug. He stood and carried the phone to the desk, where the reading lamp threw a narrow pool of yellow across the ledger and pistol.

We will call in Le Boucher. He will handle it.

Arrogant bastard.

Killing him this early had made everything ahead harder. Le Boucher didn’t care. He had patience, and in time she would come apart the way everyone comes apart.

Under his knife.

CHAPTER

ONE

ASHER

ONE YEAR AGO

My odds wereshit from the start. Either my name or the slopes were gonna take me out eventually. But her?

Fuck.

I try to lift my head, but it weighs a thousand pounds, pulling at the muscles in my neck.

I manage to hold my chin up for a second before my strength fails and it hits my chest. Not that I want to look around this hellhole, since I’m certain I know where the fuck I am.

Everything is so white it burns, and since I’m already fucked up, I try to minimize the damage by shutting my eyes.

The smell is what I can’t ignore. Death has a specific scent, especially when you do it right.

Venom.

No matter how much bleach you use to hide it, it’s everywhere.

Leather cuffs bite into my wrists, and every few seconds the tendons in my arms pull, threatening to pop.

My body sways from chains bolted to the ceiling, the bitch keeping me strung up like fresh kill in a slaughterhouse.

Which…accurate.

Blood slips down my right side, a reminder of how I ended up here, and I wish I could tell her that the hole she shot through me isn’t even on my pain radar compared to the one she left in my fucking heart.