Chapter 24

• The drive back to the Costa estate felt like it would never end. The air inside the car was thick and heavy, pressing against Clara’s chest until she could hardly breathe. She sat stiffly in the passenger seat, her body tense, her hands gripping her knees. She stared out the window, watching the dark trees blur past under the night sky, trying to push the image of the dead man out of her mind. His lifeless body, crumpled on the floor, the dark pool of blood spreading around his feet—it wouldn’t leave her. No matter how hard she tried, it stayed there, burned into her memory like a scar.
• But that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part wasn’t the blood or the gunshot or the cold, empty click of the gun when she’d pulled the trigger. No, it was something else—something she couldn’t quite name. It wasn’t fear, though she’d felt plenty of that. It wasn’t horror, even though the sight of the man falling had made her stomach twist. It was something darker, something that crept up from deep inside her and refused to go away.
• She had pulled the trigger. She’d aimed the gun at a living person and squeezed, expecting the bang, expecting the end. And for one tiny moment—just a split second before she realized the gun was empty—she hadn’t felt guilt. She hadn’t felt sorry or ashamed or anything she thought she *should* feel. Instead, there had been a strange, quiet calm. A flicker of something almost like power. That scared her more than the blood, more than Dante’s twisted games, more than anything else she’d faced tonight.