Novel-novel oleh ifex

Celeste pov My hands don't stop shaking until I'm back in my room with the door locked.She heard me. I know she heard me, I saw it on her face before she even said a word, that same look she used to get as a kid when she caught me lying about something small and stupid and decided to file it away instead of saying anything — Ivy's never been a girl who confronts you in the moment. She's a girl who remembers.That should scare me more than it does. I've spent twenty years counting on Ivy not noticing things. It's the one skill I've always been better at than her — noticing, and making sure nobody notices me noticing.I call Tobias back the second I've got the door locked."You said you'd call back," he says, before I can get a word out, and there's an edge in his voice I don't like, thin and fast, the voice of a man who's been standing somewhere with a phone in his hand for twenty minutes working himself into a state. "What happened?""Nothing happened. My sister walked in on the end

I don't sleep.I lie in bed running Celeste's voice over and over in my head — Route 9 data, before the audit, if Marcus finds out — until the words stop sounding like English and start sounding like a lock I don't have the shape of the key for yet. By four in the morning I've decided I'm done waiting for the shape to come to me.I drive to Route 9 myself.It's stupid. I know it's stupid while I'm doing it, the same way you know a lot of things are stupid in the exact moment you're doing them anyway. But I remember what these four warehouses become in four months — the last open corridor east of the river, the difference between a city that eats and a city that doesn't — and I can't make myself wait for daylight to find out what Celeste needed pulled from a file before anyone with real authority looked at it.The district's exactly as empty as I remember it being for a decade. Chain-link fencing gone soft with rust, sodium lights buzzing over cracked asphalt, not another car in sight.

Damian Vale calls me before I've even made it back to the house.I don't recognize the number, but I recognize the voice the second he speaks, low and unhurried, like he's got all the time in the world and wants me to notice that I don't."Doubling my offer was a mistake," he says, no hello, nothing."Is that a threat or a compliment?""An observation. You don't know what those parcels are worth. You just knew I wanted them, and that was enough for you."I stop walking, right there on the sidewalk outside the title office, because he's not wrong and I hate that he's not wrong. "Maybe I know exactly what they're worth.""Then tell me what they're worth.""No."A pause. Somewhere behind him I can hear traffic, a city being ordinary. "Fair enough," he says, and there's something almost like approval in it, which annoys me more than if he'd laughed at me outright. "Here's my counter, Ms. Sterling. I split the parcels with you. Two and two. You take the two on the east side, I take the two

The list has four things on it by the time I've finished the coffee.One. Move money somewhere Celeste can't touch and my father can't "manage" for me. Two. Buy the Route 9 warehouse district before anyone else understands why it matters. Three. Find out exactly when the first case gets reported, because I know it happens but I don't know the date down to the day, and a day is going to matter more than anyone alive right now understands. Four. Stay close enough to Julian and Celeste that I see it coming before it happens again, instead of finding out through a pane of glass.I get dressed. I go downstairs. I walk into my father's study without knocking, which I never do, and he looks up from his desk like I've grown a second head."I want to talk about the trust," I say."Good morning to you too." He sets down his pen. Richard Sterling has the kind of face that's spent thirty years deciding what other people are allowed to see on it, and right now what he's allowing is mild, indulgent

The gate won't open.I've been pulling on the iron bars for what feels like an hour, but it's probably been thirty seconds. My dress is soaked through at the hem, mud and something darker climbing up the white satin like it's trying to swallow it. Behind me, the street is on fire in three places."Julian!" My voice tears on the way out. "Julian, open the gate!"Through the glass doors of the estate, I can see them. Warm light behind them, like nothing in the world has gone wrong. Julian in his father's old wedding suit, the one that was supposed to be mine to unbutton tonight. And Celeste, my sister in every way that matters except blood, standing where I should be standing, wearing white.She sees me first. I watch her see me. She doesn't move."Celeste!" I slam both palms against the bars. "Let me in, they're coming, let me in—"She says something to Julian. I can't hear it through the glass, but I know the shape of her mouth well enough after twenty years to read the words. Not yet