Chapter Fifteen: The Face at the Edge

The howling wind tore across the roof, but the sudden silence inside my head was deafening me. My heart stopped.

The shadows didn't fire immediately. They fanned out in a perfect, coordinated semicircle at the same time, their heavy boots crunching rhythmically on the snow-covered crushed stone. Behind them, the swirling flurry of snow parted just enough to reveal the face of the person who had followed them up from the bloodstained stairwell.

My breath caught in my throat. It wasn’t Victor Laurent. And it wasn’t Arthur Vance.

It was Evelyn.

My knees nearly lost courage. “No…” I whispered.

The older woman looked entirely out of place against the backdrop of the cold winter sky and the armed mercenaries flanking her. She was still wearing her dark wool housekeeper’s coat, but she was no longer standing in a housekeeper posture. Her spine was straight, her hands elegantly clasped in front of her, and her face carried a serene, terrifying calm that completely shattered the image of the gentle lady who used to bring me tea.

"Evelyn?" The name slipped from my lips, barely audible.

“Oh, so this is the Evelyn”? Lena asked, her tone sharp and irritated, as if she were personally offended with the woman’s face. Lena tend to dislike anyone I dislike without asking questions.

Evelyn smiled. It wasn’t a warm smile; It was the kind that belonged in nightmares. It was like as if she was quietly telling Lena, Yes! It’s me.

Silas noticed my expression and his entire frame tensed. He shifted his weight, his broad shoulders completely cutting off her line of sight to me, his handgun locked onto the center of her chest.

"You're a hard woman to kill, Evelyn," Silas said, his voice dropping into a low, murderous time. "I thought you went down with the south foundation."

When he mentioned that sentence. My memory flickered back to the terrifying image of that mansion collapsing and the raw trauma we had just experienced.

Evelyn offered a small, patient smile, the kind she used to give me when I give her an order. "I built the tunnels beneath that foundation, Mr. Vane. I knew exactly which walls would stand and which would fall. “Lower the weapon. If my men wanted you dead, you wouldn't have made it past the third floor."

She said the words with a chilling authority, as if she was the true owner who had built Silas life, and not Silas himself.

"Your men?" Elias scoffed from the side, his own gun shaking slightly as the freezing air bit into his bare hands. "You’re a housekeeper!"

"I was a guardian," Evelyn corrected smoothly, her gaze shifting slightly to look at the brick ledge where I sat clutching my bleeding temple. "Until your father failed his mandate, Silas. And until Victor Laurent grew too greedy to control."

My head was spinning so violently I had to press my palm against the rough brick just to keep from blacking out. "The text..." I choked out, looking past Silas's coat. "You sent the text message. Why?"

"To keep you alive, Vienne," Evelyn said, her voice softening with what looked like genuine affection, though it sent a fresh shiver down my spine. "Victor wants you erased because your existence invalidates his claim to the Caelthorne assets. But I need you whole. I need what is locked inside that beautiful, broken mind of yours."

Lena stared between all of us, completely out of her depth. “Okay,” she said weakly. “Miss Evelyn, could you please let go of my best friend.”She turned toward me, eyes wide with fear. “I warned you about this family, Vienne. Now they all want you dead”.

She was completely ignored. Silas slowly moved in front of me, anchoring his boot deep into the fresh snow.

"She doesn't remember anything," his boot sinking deep into the fresh snow. "And I will shoot you before you let Victor's shadow touch her."

Evelyn’s smile vanished, replaced by a cold, clinical sharpness. "Neither Victor or Arthur Vance is my concern, Mr. Vane. They are currently occupied downstairs with the local rabble that the bounty attracted. But we have exactly two minutes before the stairwell is completely overrun by people who don't care about bloodlines; only the twenty million dollars on her head."

So Victor is also downstairs now. The realization made my stomach churn.

She stepped closer, completely ignoring the fact that Silas’s finger was tightening on the trigger. She reached into her coat and pulled out something that made my heart stop.

It was a small, tarnished silver compact mirror. On the lid was the exact same geometric design as the half-medallion I had found in the mansion's hidden vault. But this was the second half. The first was sitting inside the pocket of my sweatshirt.

“Vienne... look at the pattern.” Evelyn said quietly, her eyes locked onto mine. Remember the nursery rhyme your mother sang when the rain started?"

A violent, stabbing pain exploded behind my eyes, so intense that I let out a choked gasp, my fingers digging into the gravel. Images flashed in rapid, blinding succession—a dark room, a heavy steel door with a digital grid, a woman's voice humming a melody that sounded like a lullaby but felt like a secure code.

Level Four.

"Stop it!" Silas roared. He didn't fire at Evelyn. Instead, he swung his head toward Elias. "Elias, the secondary ledge. The fire escape route for the adjacent building.

"Silas, it's a four-foot gap in a blizzard!" Elias finally yelled back, running toward the eastern edge of the roof. He looked over, his face twisting in horror. "And it's a four-story drop if we slip!"

"Do it!"

Silas scooped me up into his arms in one swift, brutal motion, lifting me against his chest. I instinctively threw my arms around his neck, my bloody fingers staining his collar. He didn't look back at Evelyn. He didn't look at her men. He ran straight toward the ledge where Elias was already helping a shivering, terrified Lena climb over the parapet.

Funny how Evelyn’s didn’t even follow us or ask her men to. They just watched us like we were wasting our time.

"Vienne!" Evelyn’s voice carried over the wind, no longer patient. "If you run with him, you will never know who turned the key that night! You will never know who really killed them!"

The words struck me like a physical blow, but Silas didn't stop. He stepped onto the icy ledge, looking down into the black, yawning chasm between the two buildings. Below us, the street was a chaotic sea of flashing headlights and shouting men, all hunting for the girl worth twenty million dollars.

"Hold on to me," Silas whispered against my ear, his heartbeat thudding wildly against my ribs. "Don't look down, Little Bird."

He crouched, preparing his massive frame to spring across the icy gap with my weight in his arms.

But before his boots could leave the ledge, a heavy, deafening thud echoed from the roof behind us. One of Evelyn's mercenaries didn't shoot at Silas. He fired a heavy-caliber round directly into the brickwork right beneath Silas’s feet.

The ancient mortar disintegrated. The ledge gave way with a sickening crumble.

My stomach dropped into my throat as the world suddenly inverted. The freezing wind rushed past my ears, and the grip of Silas’s arms tightened around me with a desperate, terrifying strength as we both tipped over the edge, falling backward into the dark, empty space between the buildings and chaotic crowd below.

But as the darkness swallowed us, I looked up through the snow.

Lena and Elias were no where to be found.