CHAPTER 1

THE BUILDING FELL 

It was a terrible sight. Suzanne felt her heart constricting in her chest as she watched everything her family had built, every single thing fall to pieces. She held back her tears. They wanted this; this was the only way to get what they wanted. She was in the car with her parents watching from a distance. They saw when the media drove past and set up their cameras, ready to capture the event and broadcast it in the news later that evening.

"Our job here is done," Henry Mackenzie said. "We will only wait for him to take the bait."

"And if he doesn't?" Suzanne asked.

"He has to. Don't give any room to negativity, Suzanne. He must take the bait."

Suzanne bit her lip shut. It was a little extreme, this plan of theirs, and she wasn't even sure it would work. Her mother was crying in the front seat and Suzanne reached for her ear pods. They would not make the decision to break something and then cry about it later.

"I'm not sure he's going to take the bait," she said again. "He won't unless we go to him."

Henry considered this option. He watched his daughter through the rearview mirror before starting the car. When he drove out drastically, Suzanne grabbed the back of his seat.

"Dad! What are you doing?!"

"I'm going to him. If he doesn't come for me, then I will go for him. Fuck the bait."

Ruth sniffed; her tears were replaced with horror. "What do you mean "we'll go for him"? We haven't seen him since she died!"

Henry briefly glanced at his wife. "So? What does it matter? He's been the one avoiding us anyways, and he killed her!"

Suzanne's heart constricted with pain again. Her parents rarely talked about her dead sister, unless they were talking about their revenge plot. Suzanne had found it hard to talk about her to them, but she was everywhere. She was in the bedroom, in the living room, in the kitchen. Literally everywhere she turned Diane was looking down at her.

The car ride was silent. That was the after effect of bringing Diane up; the terrible silence that comes afterwards. Suzanne ached to fill the silence up with something.

"What if he refuses to meet us?" she asked.

Her father glanced at her through his mirror. "Why do you always have to be negative about everything, Suzy?"

"I'm not being negative," she protested. "I'm just saying, what if he refuses to see us?"

"And why would he do that?"

"He has every right to. He knows that we know that he killed my sister!" The last tone came out a bit harsh.

Ruth's voice broke out in a small sob. Suzanne groaned when she looked at her mother; here they go again with the deep brief that came with Diane's name being mentioned. Suzanne turned and saw that her father was watching her.

"You will do well to watch your tone," he said to her. "Andrei Runt has no reason to turn us away."

Suzanne settled back into her seat and said nothing. Her father drove like a maniac, eager to get to the less buzzing part of the city that Andrei Runt lived in. She frowned when she remembered him. The man that killed Diane, that went into hiding the minute he was done with the act. Her family had never gotten over it, and so they had been looking for reasons to get back at him. For a year, they planned, re-strategize, and planned again. Finally they had arrived at the one plan nobody would ignore: destroying his own company.

"We're here," Henry said as he stopped the car.

They all took their time as they got down from the car. Andrei Runt lived in an old fashioned mansion that gave off the nineties vibes. Suzanne imagined that he had killed her sister in this place; this nice, old, welcoming house. Why did he send their body to them afterwards? Why didn't he just dump her somewhere so they don't know who killed her?

Suzanne shook the thought from her head. It was good that he sent them her body personally; at least they knew who did it. It was pretty obvious; the way he avoided them afterwards, even when her father publicly announced that Andrei had killed Diane. He never moved an inch, never granted them an audience, so why would he do so now?

Suzanne boiled in anger. "I don't think we should go in," she said. "I don't want to see his face."

Henry ignored her. He was about to ring the bell on the gate when it promptly opened. It surprised them for a second, until Suzanne saw the camera positioned at the gate. She scoffed. Of course, what else did she expect from a man who had so much money that he thought he was invincible?

"He's watching us," she said to her father.

"That's a good thing then. He saw us coming."

They left the car outside and went inside his house. There were flower gardens on both sides of the house. The mansion stood in the middle, huge and towering. For a moment Suzanne imagined that they were entering a different world. A world that would seduce them and kill them off when they weren't looking. There was no one in sight as they continued onward. She expected that the man would have a lot of staff waiting on him. When they got to the door, it opened on its own.

"For a house as old as this, it sure does have a lot of technology," Ruth commented.

"He's wealthy. He can afford it." Suzanne said to her mother.

They got into the house, a bit skeptical that things were going too smoothly for their liking. Just as they started to feel uncomfortable, they saw Andrei Runt.

He was a tall man. He was standing at the stairs, and when he saw them, he moved forward with a faint smile on his lips.

"I have been expecting you," he said.