The two of us stood there facing each other, and it felt like time was standing still. My eyes welled with tears, and I wanted to reach out and hold Michael, to have him hold me, and to forget about everything else. But there was something else in his eyes besides pain, there was anger and a sense of betrayal.

I knew that if I ran into his arms right now that he might forgive me. He might wrap his arms around me and tell me that everything would be okay and make me promise not to leave again. I knew that if I did that, I would never have the courage to go through with it tomorrow night. So instead, I pulled on every last bit of strength that I had and acted as though I was unaffected, even though I felt like it was killing me inside.

I sniffed one quick time to stop myself from getting ready to cry. “I’m sorry that you felt that way,” I said. “But none of you should have come here.”

The look Michael gave me made me feel as though my heart was being pulled through the small spaces of my ribcage. He looked shocked,…and hurt.

But then his look changed to anger, and he met me where I stood.

“This isn’t just your circus anymore,” Michael said. “We all have a right to be here. Thanks to you, we’re all on the opposing side of Lineage now, and they’re not going to just let us stroll back in as if nothing had happened. What do you think they’ll do to Julian? Or do you not care about him anymore either?”

Ouch. I deserved that.

“You can’t stay here,” I said. “The entire success of this plan depends on it going off unnoticed. There’s no way they won’t see all four of us here. You guys need to leave.”

“Not unless you’re coming with us,” Julian called from the other side of the roof.

“I’m not leaving,” I said.

Michael shrugged his shoulders as he pushed past me. “Well, then neither are we,”

The three guys stood at the edge of the rooftop staring at me, and I knew that there was no way that I was going to be able to talk them out of staying. There was also no way that I was going to let them stay, so I had to think of something else.

“Looks like you’re stuck with us,” Julian said as he sat back down on the roof. The other two followed suit, and I walked over to join them.

At least I’ll have company for tonight.

Since Adam had all the keys (which I still wasn’t sure how he had managed to get), he was able to get into all the cabinets in the aquarium’s catering office and brought up a bunch of food and drinks for us to have. Julian spread out a layer of coats onto the floor of the roof to use as a picnic blanket, and we all sat around eating, drinking, and talking as if we were still in our apartment. It was ridiculous to think about.

We were having such a good time together on the eve of a dangerous assassination plan. I suppose it’s what would have been considered the “calm before the storm” in the movies. I listened to the boys’ recount some of the details from their fight against the Lineage guys and laughed when they described several of the things that shouldn’t have been funny but were. Like Julian telling us how he almost fell into the giant hole he was digging for all the bodies when a squirrel jumped into a tree behind him and scared him shitless.

Somehow, murder and criminal drug activity had bonded us all together.

I watched their faces as they talked, and as the alcohol loosened everyone’s nerves up a bit. My mom would have liked these guys, every single one of them. I wondered what she would tell me now if she was sitting here beside me. I wondered if she would tell me to give up on trying to be some sort of vigilante and just try to be happy with these guys. Most moms would probably do that; they would steer their daughters away from danger and toward happiness.

But my mom was not like most mothers.

Yes, she wanted me to be happy; she always wanted me to be happy. But she also wanted me to be strong. I had always wondered what had happened to her in her own life that made her so strong. People didn't get strength like she had from having an easy life. It wasn’t just my dad’s leaving us or even his death that she got her strength from. That was just where she got most of her anger. Her strength must have come from someplace else, and it made me sad to know that I would never be able to have the chance to ask her about it.

In my heart, though, I knew what my mom would want me to do. She would want me to be strong, strong enough to look in the face of whoever they were seating into a position of power tomorrow night and take him out. She wouldn’t have cared about me avenging her death, but she would have cared about making sure that I never had to live in fear of anyone. She would have loved these three men for how much they wanted to watch out for me, but she would have also told me that I needed to watch out for myself first. It was my mom who picked me back up and sent me back out to school when the other kids teased me and tormented me about my father. It was my mom who sat with me at night and changed the ending to every fairytale that she read to me so that the princess was the one who ended up slaying all the dragons.

And it was my mom who would be there with me tomorrow, whispering in my ear that I could do it, no matter what it was that needed to be done.

“Hey,” Michael said as he nudged my shoulder.

His temperament seemed to be a bit more relaxed now since we all seemed to be in the mode of ignoring everything that had happened and everything that was going to happen tomorrow. “I want to show you something.”

He stood up and reached for my hand. Julian and Adam were deep in the middle of a conversation about fighting skills and whether or not a steak knife to the throat was a feasible way to murder someone. I got up with him and followed Michael over to the greenhouse. I noticed Julian glance over at us when he saw the greenhouse door open, but he seemed much less upset about Michael than he had been back at the apartment.

We sat down in the middle of the greenhouse on the coats that were still clumped into a pile on the ground. The memory of our bodies intertwined came rushing back over me like a pummeling wave that knocked the breath from my chest. I wasn’t sure that I could stay in here very long with him, without wanting to pull him down over me again.

“I have something for you,” he said.

He didn’t look mad anymore, but he also didn’t look like his usual self. He was still hurt and was trying to pretend like he wasn’t. Michael pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to me.

“My mother’s letter!” I said as I unfolded the worn corners. “How did you get it?”

“I went back to Lineage yesterday to try to talk some sense into my mother,” he said.

I peeked over at him. “Did it work?”

He scoffed. “No, not even a little bit. She is every bit the callous bitch that I always thought she was.”

I giggled a little when I heard him call Marta a bitch. I had always thought that she was too.

Then, he continued. “On my way off campus, I stopped into the apartment and got it for you.

“I’m surprised no one else had taken it already,” I said.

He shrugged. “Well, you had it pretty well-hidden. Not everyone would think to look inside a storybook.”

“Then, why did you?” I asked.

“Just luck, I guess.’

I read through the letter again and ran my fingers over the words that had been spoken by my mother and written by Michael. I had memorized each word. She talked about how much she loved me and how much she would miss me. She apologized for having to leave me and reminded me to be strong and kind, and all the things that she had taught me to be. There was nothing in the letter that stood out as being unusual; nothing that seemed like any sort of message.

I frowned. I had hoped that if I’d had a chance to look at it again, that maybe I would see something that I’d missed before. But it was all the same cherished words that I had read over and over again in my mind a thousand times.

“What’s wrong?” Michael asked. “I thought you’d be happy to have your mother’s letter back.”

“I am,” I said. “But I just can’t figure out what message she was trying to leave me with.”

“I don’t think you’re looking close enough,” he said as he touched my hand and moved my finger across the paper. “Hold it up.”

“Huh?”

“Just do it.”

I held the letter up and could barely make out the watermark under the dim light of the night sky. I still don’t see anything aside from the words, the Lineage monogram, and the watermark.

“Oh my god,” I said in a whisper. “The watermark.”

Michael smiled at me as if he were pleased that I’d just solved a riddle. The letterhead belonged to Lineage, the monogramming was from Lineage, but the watermark was the Goldshire crest.

“How can that be?” I asked breathlessly. “The letterhead and the watermark should match. How can Lineage stationery have a Goldshire watermark on it?”