All Chapters of Deja vu: Blood Memory : Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

The last thing I remembered was the heat.A jagged, searing white light was tearing through my chest, the smell of burnt silk, and the taste of my own life leaking onto the cold pavement of the Nairobi docks. I remembered Lorenzo’s face—not the stoic, terrifying Mafia heir the world feared, but a man coming apart at the seams. I remembered his scream. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard.Then, there was nothing. No tunnel. No white light. Just a click. Like a tape being rewound by a giant, invisible hand.I opened my eyes.The ceiling was a flat, sterile grey. The air didn't smell like the salty breeze of the Indian Ocean anymore; it smelled of ozone and expensive disinfectant. My heart—the one that had been shattered by a .45 caliber hollow-point—was beating. It wasn't the frantic, fluttering pulse of the girl who had been in love with Lorenzo.It was a steady, heavy thrum. Thump. Thump. Thump. Efficient. Mechanical.I sat up. My movements were fluid, devoid of the usual mornin

The nightmare didn't come while I was sleeping. It waited until I was awake, sharp and jagged as a broken mirror.Lorenzo had stayed in the living room, the clink of ice against glass the only rhythm in the suffocating silence of the penthouse. I sat on the edge of the oversized silk bed, my fingers trailing over the vanity table. It was covered in expensive trinkets—bottles of perfume that smelled like jasmine, gold-plated brushes, and a heavy, antique silver letter opener shaped like a dagger.My hand hovered over the letter opener.The moment my skin touched the cold metal, the world tilted.The sterile scent of the penthouse vanished. Suddenly, I wasn't in Nairobi. I was in a room draped in heavy red velvet. The air was thick with the smell of guttering candles and old blood.“Do it, Katerina,” a voice hissed in my ear. It wasn't Lorenzo’s voice. It was deeper, colder, accented with a Russian lilt I’d never heard before.I looked down at my hands. They weren't mine. They were scar

The red laser dot danced across my chest, a silent promise of a hollow-point bullet. I didn’t flinch. I had seen that dot in a dozen different centuries, on a hundred different versions of this same night.But I had never seen Alessia look at me the way she was looking at me now.She wasn’t terrified. She wasn't the sweet girl from the Pipeline neighborhood who used to hum old Swahili songs while she cooked for me. She was standing in the shadows of our shattered penthouse, her eyes reflecting the cold blue light of the city, looking like a goddess of war."Down, Lorenzo," she said again. It wasn't a plea. It was a command.I ignored her, my finger tightening on the trigger of my Beretta. I leaned into the laser, my heart thrumming with a sudden, violent memory of my own.I am in a forest. It is cold—colder than Nairobi could ever be. I am wearing leather armor. I am holding a sword that weighs more than a man’s life. I am looking at a woman with Alessia’s face. She is wearing a crown