Freya Arsov sits on top of a world of diamonds and sports cars. Her father is a billionaire, head of a world-renown company, her mother, an esteemed lawyer. She attends the most prestigious boarding school in England. She has four amazing best frien...
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THE PHRASE FALLING IN LOVE WAS A FUNNY ONE. Matthew had always wondered about it.
What was so nice about falling that we associate it with love?
But somehow,falling in love made perfect sense. It was the air flying from your lungs, the plummet into something unknown, the sense that this was something much bigger than your measly, mortal life.
And that was okay. It was okay to fall so long as someone was holding your hand as you did. Falling in love was nice.
But as he walked across the silent grounds of Arrowsmith, the wintergreen trees and grass and murky grey sky painting him a picture of reckoning, Matthew was not holding Freya's hand. No, in his palm he clutched a phone and listened to the Devil on the other end.
"I knew you were smart," purred Kirova. "Keep walking now."
Matthew had gone to the restroom for a single moment. Then, the door had swung open and a flash of red hair told him Helena Chapman was in the male's restroom, a smirk on her lips, a phone in her hand. Wordlessly, the girl had handed it to him and in a flurry of blood-red skirts, she was gone.
Matthew didn't need to be a genius to figure out who was on the other end.
"Hello, Matthew," Kirova's voice had rung. "If you want to keep your pretty little sister alive, you'll do what I say."
This was the second time Kirova had threatened his family, had used them to get him to bend to his will. But Matthew had no other choice.
"Where's my sister?" Matthew asked into the phone, voice gruff as he stood now in the middle of the field, the golden glow of the ball distant.
"Do you want to talk to her?" Kirova's amused lilt filtered through the phone.
Matthew held his breath as a beep resounded. Then, a shaky, "Matthew?"
"Lana," he said, breathless."Lana, where are you?"
A click. Kirova's voice overtook where his sister's scared breath of his name had been. Atalanta was not someone who typically sounded scared, she was a fortress of a human being but something had scared her. Kirova had scared her.
"What have you done to her?" growled Matthew, hand so tight around the phone that he feared it might snap in two.
"Nothing," replied the man on the other end. "Yet."
Matthew's rage poured from him in volcanic waves. He saw Kirova shooting that man in the middle of the day. He saw him smiling at Freya across Jacob Bale's dance floor. He saw him sliding a knife across Anakin's throat. Red coloured his vision.
"Where's Anakin, you piece of shit?" Matthew had told Raina he believed Anakin was alive but now, hearing Kirova, hearing Atalanta, Matthew didn't know what to believe. All he knew was that he was falling— tumbling right into Kirova's trap.
