Sweat poured down Dillon’s body as he ran through the streets near the East River, the cold biting his wet skin.

He hadn’t heard from Kat and didn’t know if he would. But he’d thought about her. He couldn’t stop.

More than a few times, he’d picked up his phone, thinking maybe if he called her, maybe she’d answer. Maybe she’d apologize. Maybe he would too. Maybe there was a way back, some way to fix things.

It was hard to imagine fixing something when you didn’t know how it had broken in the first place.

But for the time being, he was too wounded, too hurt, too busy licking his wounds. Too busy trying to make himself stop thinking about her. Stop thinking about that night when everything had been right and good.

But that night was gone, taking the hope of anything more with it.

His arms pumped faster as he took off down a hill, the river at the bottom, the city beyond. He hated what he was, who he was, hated that he was so full of pride and pain. He wondered just how much of that was genetic and how much was from getting boxed in the ears for eight years after his mother died. Before he took Owen from that place so they could start fresh together, safe for the first time since they’d been left alone with the devil himself.

Moira had protected them. She had been the only thing that could. And when she died, someone had to fill her place. It was Dillon or Owen. And if it had been Owen, Owen would be dead.

If Jimmy’d had his way, that would have been the first and last choice. But Dillon wouldn’t let that happen.

It had been simple, really. All Dillon had to do was learn which button to press, which note to sing, and the attention would be on him and off his brother. Owen was too young and gentle-natured to fight. But Dillon had his father in him. That was certain.

Eight years of pain. Eight years of survival. Eight years until it was finally over.

* * *

It was two weeks before his eighteenth birthday, two weeks until he could finally get a place of his own and get Owen away, the culmination of years of wishing and hoping and saving.

They’d be free of Jimmy.

Dillon pulled into the driveway of the sad, sinking home where he’d lived his life and stepped out of his car. He’d been working two jobs all summer to save enough to move out. He would have had more, but it had taken him a year to save up enough to buy a car and another six months to fix up the vintage GTO enough so it was drivable. In the end, he regretted being so selfish as to do that before saving to move, but he couldn’t get an apartment until he was eighteen, so he’d mapped out the time and put in the work, and they were almost there.

Soon enough, Jimmy would be a distant memory. They’d survived for eight years. A few more months would be nothing.

He tromped up the cracked drive and walkway lined with weeds, pulling open the screen door, stepping inside. But the second he crossed the threshold, he knew.

He couldn’t say how he knew. Maybe it was years of anticipating the shift in the air that signaled a fight. It could have been that his ears listened for the moments when the sounds folded in on itself and disappeared, sucking the noise from a room. But in any case, the hairs rose on his neck, his nostrils flaring, adrenaline pumping at the trigger he didn’t recognize but knew so fully, so wholly.

He charged through the house, calling his brother’s name.

“In here,” Owen called from the bathroom.

When Dillon stepped into the doorframe and saw Owen, it took everything he had not to roar, to smash the mirror, to find his father and separate his head from his body.

Owen was gangly at thirteen, dabbing at his bleeding face with a towel. His nose had been popped, his lips and chin covered in gore, his cheek and eye purple and heading for black, swollen nearly closed. There were bruises on his arms too, and Dillon was willing to bet that his ribs and back had them too.

“What the fuck did he do to you?” It was a low and rumbling growl, his hands tingling, his composure slipping.

He ducked his head, angling to hide part of his face. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.” The words were muffled, the word fine coming out closer to fide.

But Dillon stepped into him and grabbed his face, turning it to inspect. His nose was broken, the blood on the bottom half of his face the darkest of reds. Dillon’s vision dimmed in the same shade.

The screen door closed with a slap, and Owen’s undamaged eye went wide.

Dillon spun around and blew into the kitchen where Jimmy stood, setting a bottle of liquor on the counter.

He glanced over his shoulder with one brow up, his tone taunting and cruel. “Don’t look so angry, Dillon.”

“Fuck you, Da.”

Jimmy turned, head cocked and smile savage. “Poor wee Owen got a little taste, and you think you’ll be the one to do something about it, hmm?” His smile twisted. “Every time you stick up for that bastard, it makes me sick. He’s not even your true brother.”

Dillon’s teeth were clenched so tight, he could barely speak. “He’s more my brother than you ever were my father.”

He stalked to his son, shoulders square. “You don’t know shite, Dillon. You think you know how the world works, but you don’t know shite.” His lips pulled back, his nose inches from Dillon’s. “Your ma didn’t either.”

Dillon didn’t fall over the edge. He jumped with all his strength, nostrils flaring, aching through heart and hand as the room dimmed, curling around the edges of his vision.

All he could see was Jimmy’s weathered face. The face of the man who had murdered his mother. The man who had stolen his life.

A swing and a pop — Jimmy’s nose crunched under his fist, blood spilling down his shirt. Jimmy was unfazed, jaw set and fist swinging. But Dillon ducked easily, rebounding with a shot to Jimmy’s ribs.

Her face in his mind — he cracked Jimmy in the jaw. Her blood on his hands — he connected with his father’s eye. Owen, small and gentle, rejected by the only father he’d ever known — Jimmy hit the ground.

And Dillon descended.

He’d never know what had happened during the time he lost, though he reached for it, sought it in the depths of his mind. But there was nothing, only the blank space between that moment and the second he heard his brother’s voice.

It was his name, his name through a fog, small hands on his shoulders, pulling him out of the dark.

Dillon looked down at his hands, turning them over, trying to make sense of the crimson blood glazing them like gloves, wondering for a moment if it was his blood or someone else’s. He realized he was sitting on his father’s chest and looked into the man’s inhuman face, what was left of it, as he floated somewhere else, separate and detached. And then he turned to his brother, whose face was wrenched in horror.

Jimmy coughed weakly beneath him, and Dillon stood, stumbling as he backed away.

Owen dragged his brother to the sink and washed his hands as Dillon watched from somewhere very far away, thinking that this was the spot his father had washed his mother’s blood down the drain. And then he was shepherded into their room where Owen sat him on his bed, the same bed the brothers had shared that night, so many nights, afraid and alone and unsure they’d live to see another sunrise.

“Dillon,” he said firmly as he tossed clothes into a duffel bag, “we need to pack. We can’t wait. Do you understand? Do you have a place where we can go?”

Go? Leave. They had to leave. He fumbled around in his thoughts, Brian’s face surfacing through the murky madness of his mind. Brian was older and had an apartment already; they’d known each other a long time, and he knew about Jimmy. He’d put them up.

“Brian.” The word was sawdust against his tongue.

Owen nodded and kept shoving things into that bag — a picture of their mother, clothes, not much else. They’d never had much. But Dillon couldn’t move, and Owen quit trying, packing a bag for his brother too.

It was minutes or hours — he wasn’t sure — but by the time they’d gotten him out of his bloody clothes and packed his car, he found himself. Only a piece of himself, but it was enough.

Before they walked out of that house for the last time, Dillon stopped in the kitchen and stood over his father, watching the slow, wheezing breaths of the broken man on the kitchen floor.

Dillon swallowed, his voice raw and cracked and absolutely deadly. “If you come after us, I’ll kill you.”

Jimmy turned his head toward the sound, the movement so slight, it was almost imperceptible.

“Do you understand me?” he asked with calm summoned from somewhere unknown as he knelt down. “Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you now and save us both the trouble.”

Jimmy held his eyes for a long moment, the only defiance he could offer, though he knew the truth of his son’s words.

So he nodded once.

And when Dillon walked away, he didn’t look back.

* * *

Kat was racing again.

It wasn’t something she was proud of. In fact, she was disgusted and disappointed. She’d get them caught.

But she had to. Just once. Once would be enough.

It would be enough to erase the pain and loneliness. It would be enough to fill her with purpose instead of resentment. It would set her right, make her forget about Eric, about Kiki, about Dillon. It would shake the defeat that followed her, pressed itself against her, pinned her down.

The second she pulled up to the light for the race, she felt better. There was one place she could always win, and it was at the finish line.

She gripped the wheel, gripped her gearshift. The pedals under her feet and the rumble of her car all around her brought her back to center, back to the ground, back to herself.

When the light turned green, she was released, flying down the street, her hand shifting gears in perfect time to her foot on the clutch, the hum of her engine felt all the way to her heart.

She won by a margin large enough to be indisputable and pulled up to the meet spot, the Brooklyn Bridge looming and East River licking at the banks, stuffing her Sig in the back of her jeans out of habit.

When she stepped out, the cool air skated off the water and across her face. She felt relaxed for the first time since she’d left Dillon’s the day before.

Charlie, the promoter, walked up with a smile on his face and pulled an envelope out of his coat pocket. “Another one bites the dust.” He turned his back to the small crowd and glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, listen, watch out for this guy. He thinks his balls are huge. I say it’s just his mouth is all, but you can never be sure.”

She smiled at him and looked over at Mr. Big Balls. “Thanks, Charlie. I’ll keep an eye out.”

The man in question slammed his fists on his dash before stepping out of the car. “She fucking cheated,” he said as he hurried over, punctuating the sentence with the jab of his finger.

Kat hung a hand on her hip. “You checked my car out yourself.”

“There’s no way you just beat me! It makes no fucking sense unless you cheated, lied, something.”

“Well, there must be a way because here we are. But you seem awfully sure of yourself. Something you’re not telling us?”

He sputtered, face red. “The fuck are you accusing me of?”

She couldn’t even be smug. He was lying. He’d done something; that was suddenly very clear.

So instead she said nothing, narrowing her eyes as she slipped into her car and popped the hood, opening it to check her engine.

“What the fuck is this?” he blathered. “I don’t have to put up with this shit.”

“Hang on to him, Charlie,” she said.

A couple of guys grabbed him, and he jerked and thrashed against them.

Kat held a little flashlight in her mouth as she scanned for something amiss. Everything looked fine, except …

She reached for a hose that looked off, pulling it to see it had been disconnected.

And then she laughed, holding the end of it up in display.

“You pulled the wrong one, dipshit.”

But Charlie wasn’t laughing, and neither was Big Balls.

“You done fucked that up, Roy. Should have let it go, and now you’ve gotten yourself banned. We race fair, and I don’t deal with liars or snitches.”

“Come on, Charlie,” Roy wailed, neck flushed and straining. “I’ve known you ten years, and you’re gonna take this little bitch’s word over mine? I didn’t fucking do that!”

Charlie stepped into his space. “I told you, I don’t deal with liars, and I know them when I see them. They’ve got a certain way about them. Wouldn’t you agree, Kat?”

“Something in the eyes,” she added helpfully.

“This gonna be a problem, Roy?”

But Roy seemed to know he was through, shaking the guys off and standing on his own. “Not for you. But for you, I got no promises. This shit ain’t over.”

She said nothing, just watched him with steely eyes. She wasn’t afraid of the big, bad wolf.

His nostrils flared — the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. For a second, she thought his eyes were glowing, but then he blinked, and they were normal again.

“I said it’s not over, and I mean it.”

He turned and walked away, and the ranks closed around her, congratulating her, offering her stories about Roy and how full of shit he was. It was strange. Everyone usually disappeared like smoke, but they’d rallied around her until Roy was gone.

That alone had her more worried than anything.

When the excitement died down, she walked around her car, stopping when she heard her name.

Her surprise when she turned around sent off an SOS in her mind.

It was Louie, who was either no one of consequence or a linchpin who would bring her whole plan down, depending on where you were standing. Which, for Kat, was right in the middle.

The old bookie from Vegas donned a Cuban guayabera shirt that hugged his paunch a little too tight. He squinted at her in disbelief, running a hand through his silver hair.

She strutted over to him, trying to play it cool, though her heart thumped painfully against her ribs, her thoughts speeding and tangling together. “Hey, Louie. What the hell are you doing all the way out here?”

“I could ask you the same thing, Kitty Kat.”

She smiled at him, her teeth grinding together behind her lips at the use of her nickname. For a while, she’d tried to get everyone to stop, but it only seemed to encourage them.

Kat shoved her hands in her pockets and dropped her shoulders. “Just looking for a change of scenery.”

“I wondered why I hadn’t seen you around. I saw your car and thought, Nah, it couldn’t be Kat. But here you are.” He jingled his change in his pocket. “I’m here on a little vacation. Heading back to Vegas in a couple of days.”

“What else are you betting on? Just races?”

“No, had some high-stakes poker tourneys to go to and a few fights. There’s a kid out here everybody’s talking about. People are coming from all over to see him fight. They call him Diamond Dillon, you heard of him? He’s got a tattoo of a diamondback wound round his arm, and when he punches, it looks like it’s hungry for dinner.” Louie shadowboxed and made hissing noises through his teeth.

Her heart hitched. “Yeah, I think I’ve heard of him. Guess I’m not surprised you’d know him too. Every bookie loves a sure thing.”

“That we do, rare as it is. Throw money in, and the sure thing’s never so sure. Everybody’s got a price. But that kid can’t lose. And he’d better not — at least not until I’m back in Vegas,” he said on a chuckle.

The conversation lulled, and she thought to ask him to keep seeing her on the low. But then again, she didn’t want to tip him off. If she acted off and he mentioned it to anyone, it could get back to Eric. But if she said nothing, he would definitely mention it to someone, especially if people were wondering where she’d been.

She had to speak up. So she did. “Listen, do me a favor, will you?”

“Yeah, sure, kid.”

“Don’t mention you saw me. Sometimes a girl needs a fresh start, you know?”

He seemed to respect that, smiling amiably. “Yeah, sure. I get it.”

She smiled back, breathing a little easier. “It’s good seeing you.”

“You too, Kitty Kat. I’ll see you around.”

Kat walked back to her car and started her engine with trembling hands, wishing the night — which had started off normal enough — hadn’t taken such a weird turn. Everything felt off again, the effects of the race gone with a whisper, a threat, her name from the lips of someone who could push the first domino.

But there was nothing to be done. Nothing but wait.

She drove away, soul-worn and dejected, deciding halfway home that she needed a drink. So she turned corners too tight and drove a little too fast until she turned into the alley behind MacLennan’s.

The bar wasn’t busy, but it wasn’t dead. Jerry, the owner, stood behind the bar with his stocky arms propped on its surface, smiling at her from behind his shaggy gray beard. He ran a hand through his longish silver hair as he walked to where she sat near the end of the bar.

“Hey, Kat. What are you doin’ in here on your night off?”

“I could really use a drink.”

He raised a gray eyebrow. “Well, all right then. What’s your pleasure?”

“Shot of tequila.”

“I see you mean business.” Jerry grabbed a bottle of Herradura and poured a shot.

She kicked it back as he reached for a lime, his fingers falling back to the bar.

“Want to talk about it?”

Wouldn’t it be nice, she wondered, to talk to someone? To tell someone the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. To admit it all — from Eric to Dillon to that moment and everywhere in between. To lighten the burden just by knowing she wasn’t alone in carrying the knowledge.

But it was hers alone. For the time at least. She wished for the end and dreaded it, knowing it wouldn’t be easy.

Endings never were.

“It’ll be all right. Thanks, Jerry.” She slid the shot glass across the bar along with a twenty.

He waved her off. “It’s on me.” With a wink, he left her alone, moving down the bar to take orders.

Kat sat for a moment, staring at the rows of liquor in front of the mirrored wall, surprised when she caught her reflection. Dark half-moons nestled against dull eyes, and her skin was washed out like rice paper.

She looked exhausted.

It was all too much, the isolation. It was as if the secret were eating her up from the inside, chewing through her soul. Maybe there’d be nothing left by the time it was over. Maybe it wouldn’t be over until she was dead.

She pushed away from the bar, not at all ready to get home to her sister. But she’d been gone long enough.

Jerry waved at her as she walked away. “See ya, kid.”

Kat smiled and stuffed her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, pushing the door open with her back. The temperature had dropped in the short time she was in the bar, and as she walked toward the alley, her eyes widened, mouth opening slowly in wonderment.

Fat, heavy snowflakes fell, spread out at first, but within seconds, they were so thick, the sound whirred in her ears as they rushed down.

In seconds, they dusted the pavement, covering it almost completely.

Snow was a thing of myth and fable where she had grown up in Las Vegas. She’d seen it a few times but nothing like this.

She stood, mesmerized, on the sidewalk, face tilted up for a moment, and then she opened her hand and watched the flakes as they shrank in the warmth they found there.

Kat giggled, all of a sudden five years old again with no worries, no cares, no troubles. And the only thing she wanted in the whole world was to share the moment with her sister.

She trotted around the building and into the alley, her boots crunching the fallen snow as she made her way down the narrow passage to her car. But as she slipped her key into the lock and turned, a hand covered her mouth and pulled her into his chest.

There was no time to scream, and she wouldn’t have dared. Not with his knife pressed to the soft hollow under her jaw.

“I told you it wasn’t over.”

Roy.

“Let’s start with the money.”

Her nostrils flared, his hand damp against her lips, her heart jackhammering as one hand reached for her pocket where she’d put the cash as the other moved for her gun, still in the band of her jeans. He was too stupid to focus on anything but the money.

His mistake.

She pulled the gun, angling her hips away from him to give herself room to turn the nose up and press it into his belly, her wrist screaming in protest.

He’d nicked her, either from her movement or from his surprise. A drop of blood rolled down her neck. She didn’t feel the cut at all.

Not that it mattered.

It wasn’t until she unlocked the safety that his hands disappeared.

Kat pivoted to face him, gun trained on his right eye. “You stupid motherfucker. You picked the wrong girl to fuck with.”

His hands were up in surrender, and he backed away, the snow falling around them like a tipped over snow globe. Every step he took back, she matched, keeping the distance between them at status quo.

“Stay away. Do one smart thing in your life and stay away. Because if you don’t, I will fuck you up beyond all recognition.” She kept his pace still. “If I ever hear you tried to fuck somebody out of what they’d rightfully won from you, I’ll hunt you down.” He stumbled as he backed away. She didn’t stop. “And just in case you’re as stupid as I think you are, you should know you that my father is Tanaka Katsu.”

His eyes went wide.

“Good. I see you’ve heard of him. So I won’t bother explaining what he would do to you if you lost your fucking senses again.” She lowered her gun. “Now get the fuck out of here.”

And Roy cut and ran, slipping on the snowy pavement in his haste, leaving handprints in the snow.

Kat set the safety and climbed into her car, gun in her lap. She caught sight of her reflection in the rearview — a slice of black hair spotted with snowflakes, pupils so big she could barely see the color of her irises, cheeks red from the cold and adrenaline.

With trembling hands, she slid her key into the ignition and drove to her apartment like hell itself was on her heels, the snow all but forgotten.

By the time she got to the apartment, she was calmer, only by a degree. The apartment was dark and quiet, and she made her way inside, hanging her key on the hook and shrugging off her jacket. She hung it on a chair, though not before she retrieved the envelope. She thumbed the bills inside. It was enough to take care of them for a month or more.

That race hadn’t been worth the trouble.

“I thought you weren’t racing?”

Kat jumped, finding Kiki leaning on the bar in the dark. “Jesus, you scared me.”

“What’s with the cash?” she asked quietly.

Kat stuffed the envelope into her back pocket, not at all in the mood to talk. “Not now.”

“You make an awfully big deal about Eric, even to the point that you blow off a guy you obviously care about, and then you go race and open yourself — and me, since you seem to be so worried about me — up to getting found out. Just a little contradictory, that’s all.”

“I said, don’t,” Kat warned. “Just drop it.”

But Kiki just crossed her arms.

“Need to get something off your chest?” Kat snapped.

Still no response.

So she took a deep breath and let it out, storming to the dining room table, mouth twisted in a scowl. She sat at the head, crossing her arms right back at her sister with her lips drawn in a scowl and switchblades for eyes.

“Go ahead and unload then since it’s all about you.”

Kiki marched over to stand in front of her. “God, you are such a pain in the ass, you know that? You act like you’re so fucking tough. You act like I’m a burden.”

Kat opened her mouth to protest, but Kiki put a hand out.

“You told me to unload. Don’t interrupt me.”

Kat closed her mouth, lips flat.

“You love to say you’re worried about Eric, but you’ve got everybody back home watching him. Thirty people would call you if he left town. You say you’re worried about Dad, but he doesn’t know shit because, if he did, we would know. We would all know. I saw you with Dillon, I know you care about him. So, tell me. Why? Why did you blow him off? And don’t you dare tell me you’re not into him, because we all know that’s a fucking lie.”

Kat laughed, the sound dry and hot as the desert in August. “You still think this is about Dillon.” With a still-trembling hand, she scrubbed her face.

Kiki’s face quirked in frustration and confusion. “Well, what the fuck else would we be talking about?”

“Eric.”

“But he’s not that stupid. God, I don’t know why you’re such a psycho about this. He hit me. We left. It’s over.”

“It’s not over,” Kat shot. “It’s not fucking over because Eric is not through. You want to know why I left Dillon’s? Why I told him I couldn’t do this? When I woke, my phone had blown up with messages that he was asking around, acting crazy. You’re naive if you think he’s given up. He’s just biding his time. And if he shows up when I’m with Dillon? Where are you? Who’s taking care of you? Who will save you from Eric? Because if he finds you with Owen, he will kill you both.”

Kiki sank into a chair with her hands on her lips. “Oh my God.”

“You’ve been so worried about Eric’s life, but what about Owen’s? Because just by being with him, you’re putting him in danger too. This isn’t about Dillon, for fuck’s sake. It’s about you.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, her eyes shining with tears. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Kat shook her head, deflated and stretched out and exhausted. “Because I wanted to see if there was merit to any of it. I didn’t want to worry you if there wasn’t just cause.”

“Was there? Just cause?”

Kat nodded. “There was enough.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked softly. In that moment, she looked very small.

“I don’t know.” The words were empty, hollow.

Kiki watched her hands resting on the table through a long minute. “What if I told Dad?”

Kat stared at her, unmoving. “That would change everything.”

“Owen would be safe,” she said, still not meeting Kat’s eyes. “You wouldn’t have to worry.”

“Don’t do this for me.”

“Not just for you. For all of us. Even me. I’ll call Dad. I’ll tell him everything.” Kiki’s eyes brimmed with tears, and when she blinked, they fell without touching her cheeks. “This is all my fault. I thought … I really thought …” Her breath shuddered.

Kat moved to her side and knelt, resting her hand over her sister’s. “It’s not your fault. It’s Eric’s fault. And it’s going to be over soon. Dad will take care of it. Just think of it like Eric’s going to go away. Poof.”

“I’m not six, Kat. I know what’s going to happen to him, and I know it has to happen. I just don’t want to know how or when. I just want it to be over.”

They sat in silence for a moment, long enough for a sliver of hope and relief to creep in.

It was going to end, really end. No more lies. No more hiding. She could race. She could talk to her father and tell him everything she’d been through.

She could be with Dillon after all. If he’d take her back.

“When do you think you’ll call Dad?” Kat asked, breaking the silence.

“I don’t know. Soon. I don’t want to risk much more time, but I just … I need a minute.” She paused. “So you didn’t leave Dillon’s because you don’t want to be with him?”

Kat let out a breath. “No. I would have stayed as long as he let me. I was just scared but not of him. For you.”

“You have to tell him. You’ve got to tell him why. You’ve got to try.”

“I want to,” Kat said, feeling the depth of the words in her heart. “But why do you care so much?”

“I don’t really know. It just feels like you’re supposed to. Doesn’t it?”

Kat nodded. “If he even wants to speak to me after how I treated him. It was a real bitch move.”

“At least you know it was a bitch move.”

“I’m nothing if not honest.”

“Right. And moody and contrary,” Kiki added.

Kat laughed, though it dwindled out quickly, and she threaded her fingers in Kiki’s. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry it’s come to this. I’m sorry I couldn’t spare you and that it happened at all. I’m just … I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. For not listening to you, for not trusting you. I’ll make it right. I promise.”

And Kat could say no more, holding her sister instead, touched by hope she worried might be placed too soon.

The ceiling looked the same as it had twenty minutes before, and Ares was just as annoyed as the moment he’d turned his eyes up to stare at it.

The medallion flipped over and over with the motion of his fingers.

Flip.

His thumb against the ridges of golden scales.

Flip.

The mouth of one snake eating the other.

Flip.

The trinket never warmed, no matter how long he held it.

Flip.

Ebony and ivory, an infinite circle, twisting and knotted in a dance of death, traced over and over again by his fingers.

Nothing was in his control — not the game, not Dita, not his heart, not his choices. He was a slave to the demands of others.

This was not something he found himself able to endure gracefully.

Flip.

He’d thought he was so clever to fire Eric up, as temporary as it had to be, a way to use him, diluted. Not that it couldn’t still work, but if Kat came around, if she apologized, he didn’t think Dillon would refuse her. And with Kiki in her ear, she was bound to.

Flip.

He’d thought he derailed her again with Roy, a shot at taking her down, maybe even out. But Roy was even dumber than Ares had realized. He’d literally brought a knife to a gunfight.

Hera’s play had been just as weak and ineffective. And as his options dwindled, one remained — Eric.

Flip.

He’d win the competition, but he’d lose Dita. If he won her in the end, losing the competition wouldn’t matter.

Flip.

He could throw the competition, but she’d know it was a lie, a farce.

Ares closed his fist over the medallion, out of options.

There was another factor not in his control in the game of Dita’s heart — Adonis.

Adonis had been absent, but that had never proven to be a permanent state through their spats over the centuries. And if that dead fucking human found a way to ruin Ares’s plans from beyond the grave, he would never let it go.

Of all the things to be in his way, a ghost was the most infuriating. That the ghost had been interfering for thousands of years had pushed the limits of what he could withstand.

From the moment Adonis had entered manhood, Ares had to share her. She’d begun slipping through his fingers the very second she set her eyes on him. She’d watched the man obsessively, meeting him in secret, fighting through Hades for him, even feuding with her best friend, her closest ally, over his love and favor.

Madness. It had driven him to madness. Because he was not a god who cared to share. Especially when it came to her.

As she’d carried on her affair, Ares had watched, waited, planning and plotting, all while keeping his rage on a leash. He had been aware at least that the situation required caution.

And then, she’d laid her trap for Ares and her threat along with it. He would lose her forever should he lay a finger on the human.

There had been nothing to do but agree to her terms. He’d had fewer options then than he had even now.

Never could he have thought that a fight with Apollo would open the door to rid him of Adonis once and for all. And so he had.

Or so he’d thought he had.

The day Persephone had blessed Dita with a doorway to Elysium, Ares could no longer abide, could no longer tolerate his rage. So he had ridden the wings of his wrath to Earth, whispering into the ears of men, driving them mad. An entire village — from the eldest man to the smallest child — had held knife or stick or rock or used their bare hands to kill until no heartbeat remained. And Ares had relished in their blood, watched their lives drain away.

He imagined Adonis, imagined killing him over and over, remembered the hot blood against his skin and the feel of his heartbeat as it faded. But he could never rid himself of the mortal man whom Aphrodite had chosen over him. Ares. The God of War.

And he would never let it go. He would never let her go. Not for all eternity.

“You keep telling me nothing’s wrong, but you’re lying in the middle of my rug like a crazy person.” Perry took another bite of a gigantic brownie and chewed with a hint of worry on her brow.

Dita sighed, eyes on the ceiling, which was such a pristine shade of white, she couldn’t seem to distinguish the edge of the surface. “I’ve come to realize that my love life is so fucked up that even I don’t know how to fix it. And I’m the Goddess of Love.”

Perry snorted a laugh.

Dita’s eyes never left the ceiling. “It’s not funny.”

“Forest for the trees and all that. It’s always harder to figure out your own mess than it is to sort everyone else’s out.” She took another bite.

“Nothing’s what I thought it was.” Her voice was flat, empty.

“Ares?”

“Adonis. But probably Ares, too.”

“Did you see Adonis?” she asked gently.

“Not in the flesh, but I fear I’ve seen his soul. And there’s no place for me there. His heart only has room for himself.”

Perry said nothing for a moment. “What will you do?”

“I don’t believe there’s much I can do. And so I mourn. And then I will think on how to move forward.”

“And what of Ares? Have you decided if you want to know the truth?”

Dita’s eyes were still up, hair fanned around her. “It’s like flipping a coin. It might be that he’s telling the truth, and it could be that he’s lying. I won’t believe any denials that leave his lips because he is a snake, false and cunning, and I’ve been caught by him for so long that I don’t know I am being eaten alive.”

“It makes me think of the story in the news a while back about a woman who had a pet python that slept in bed with her.”

Dita almost smiled. “So this is a smart woman we’re talking about?”

Perry laughed, dusting crumbs off the front of her muscle shirt featuring a giant sugar skull wearing hipster glasses. “So her snake started acting weird. He stopped eating and would stretch out really long next to her and flatten out while she slept. And when she took it to the vet, they told her they had to euthanize it.”

Dita looked over at Perry, her brow quirked.

Perry leaned forward. “It was stretching out to figure out how long she was so it could eat her.”

Dita groaned. “That’s horrifying. And I guess what she earned by going to bed with a snake. I could take a tip from her.”

Cerberus trotted up, tongues lolling. She scratched behind the ears of the hellhounds three heads one by one.

“Have you ever considered asking Apollo what happened?” Perry set the brownie in her lap, forgetting Bisoux was at her feet. He hopped into her lap, panting, but she moved it just in time.

“We haven’t exactly been on speaking terms over the last three thousand years or so.”

“Seems like you’re close enough now though, don’t you think?”

Dita frowned just a little at the burst of possibilities. “Yes, it’s just …”

“You don’t really want to know.”

“No, I don’t. But I need to know.”

“Well, I’ll say this only once, and then I’ll leave it alone. Not knowing is driving you crazy, and if you can find out the truth — either way — it’ll end. Maybe Ares is telling the truth. Maybe you could try to be with him again, if that’s what you want.”

Hope and dread spread in hot tendrils through her chest. It must have been on her face too, because Perry pressed the opening.

“Just ask Apollo. Maybe nothing will change. Maybe everything will. But don’t be afraid of the truth because you need answers. You just do. It’s your nature.”

“You’re right,” Dita conceded as she sat up.

Alarm colored Perry’s face. “Wait, you’re not going now, are you?”

“No time like the present, right?”

Perry eyed her.

“If I don’t go now, I might never.” She stood and reached for her dog, who barked in protest of being taken away from the brownie.

“All right. I’m here.”

And Dita smiled with fear in her heart. “I know.”

Apollo turned to the sound of his elevator dinging, surprised to find Dita walking in with a warm smile on her lips and her little dog in the crook of her arm.

“Dita, how are you?”

Her smile faltered for a millisecond. “I’m all right,” she said as she sat next to him on the couch, folding her legs under her.

She pet her dog, looking a little nervous, which was unusual and disconcerting.

“You okay?”

“I don’t really know. But I need to ask you something, and I’m not even sure you’ll be able to answer me.”

Apollo slowly sat back, alert and apprehensive. Because he had a feeling he knew her question, a question he really couldn’t answer. It was beyond his power.

“Okay. Shoot.”

Bisoux trotted to Apollo and licked his hand. But Apollo watched Dita twist the hem of her sweater, peering at him through thick lashes with worried eyes.

“We’ve never talked about Adonis. Argued a lot but never just talked.”

He nodded, his heart beating a warning.

“I was there as well as you were, and in the moment, I believed you. I believed you’d killed him. But as the years wore on, the more I thought about it, the less it made sense.”

Apollo sat very, very still and waited for her to continue.

“You told me you did it, and Ares said he didn’t. I held onto your admission because I had to; I needed someone to blame. Adonis needed someone to blame. But I never asked you. All these years and centuries, and I never asked you. So I want to know. Did you?”

He swallowed, though the hard knot in his throat remained. “You’ll have to be specific, Dita.”

“Did you kill Adonis?”

But he could say nothing. His mouth wouldn’t open, not with the admission of truth waiting just behind his lips. Because he wanted to tell her, felt compelled to. She had given him Daphne, overlooking a feud that had been centuries old.

But the oath forbade it. The magic was the most powerful bond two gods could make, its command beyond all of them.

It must have been his eyes, some look on his face that told her he was sorry, that he’d been part of a charade, a game, a lie he’d been trapped into by Ares. Because she knew. He could see it in her eyes and hear it in her trembling words.

“Is there something you’re not allowed to say?”

He took a breath, an aching breath, his lips locked together and eyes begging her to understand.

And she did. She understood all too well.

“I knew it.” The words were a curse and a promise. “It wasn’t you.”

He reached for her hand, covering it with his own, and she squeezed the tips of his fingers hooked in her palm.

“It’s all right. I’ll find out another way.”

Dita scooped up her dog, offering him comfort in a smile as small and sad as he’d seen on her lips, and then she turned to leave.

She would find a way; she always did.

And on that day, all Hades would pay.