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Kyra is no stranger to death – but she’s never seen it quite like this before.
.
She’s seven when her grandfather dies and her life is turned upside down for the first time.
Ten days after her mother gets the call they have packed up and flown to Singapore and then overnight the family business has gained the bonus name of ‘Vashenko’ and she has been given the addition of ‘Chao’ to her own name.
“It’ll help you in the future when you inherit,” is all her mother will say on that matter.
They’ve settled in the Queen Astrid Park residence – a sprawling compound of glass mansions and unnaturally straight grass – and suddenly she’s trying to get used to the fact that it’s hot – no, unbearably humid – that her pale skin burns every time she steps outside, and that she’s not allowed to go to school anymore.
She stops getting to see her father too. In their old home he’d occasionally come back in the evenings, but now he’s always on a business trip or out for a dinner. Sometimes her mother joins him, but more often than not she’s in the ‘entertaining’ part of the house, meeting with people from the company or conducting coffee mornings that look to Kyra to be more about gossip than coffee.
By the time they’d arrived in Singapore they’d missed the funeral – it had happened quickly, her mother explained, because of the heat – and so while the death of her Gung Gung has supposedly delivered the most momentous change of her young life, for her the main thing death has given her seems to be sunburn, a new name and… loneliness.
.
She finds the stray cat creeping around the edge of the swimming pool one evening and tempts it to her with food while no one is looking.
For weeks after she sneaks out every night while her dad works and her mum gossips and plays with the increasingly approachable cat. She calls him Zaychik because with his sleek grey fur and long legs he looks like the hares that she used to see in the woods at home.
After a month, he actually jumps up on the sun lounger to nuzzle her.
After two, he’ll let her pick him up and cuddle him – but only if she supports his back legs. He’s picky that way.
After three, he tentatively follows her inside.
At four months, he’s lost all inhibitions and starts to sleep in her bed at night, his purr more welcoming than the whine of air conditioning ever has been, the softness of his fur brushing her face and lulling her to sleep.
At five months, she thinks she’s found her best friend in the world.
At six, she knows she has.
At seven months, he goes missing.
At eight, she eventually stops looking and finally succumbs to tears.
At nine months, his body is left in their driveway, blood staining that soft, grey fur she loved so much. And while her mother shouts at her ‘not to touch that filthy creature’ and her nanny tries to wrestle Zaychik’s body from her (not particularly hard, she notes – no one seems to want to touch the dead cat but her) she determinedly buries him in the corner of the garden, marking his grave with a little stone in a way she knows will never be enough but is all she can do.
At ten months, her father gives her a pure bred, miniature Samoyed puppy that he declares is an ‘appropriate dog for the heiress of Vashenko-Chao’. The dog is vacuous and silly and she hates is.
She never finds out what happened – or rather, who killed Zay. But she has her suspicions. And so she ushers in another learning delivered by death – hatred and anger.
.
She’s twelve and has never been allowed to go to a real school. Whether it’s because her parents are paranoid for her safety or because they think that ‘normal school’ is beneath them she isn’t sure, but she does know they’ve put a tracking device in her braces and she’s not allowed to leave the heavily gated grounds of their house without her bodyguard, so she’s pretty sure it’s the latter – because surely she’s covered from a safety perspective?
And yet… she’s thinks someone has been following her – over the last few months she’s got the occasional glimpse of a slim figure in black clothing out of the corner of her eye, when shopping with her mum or at one of her dad’s events or even when she’s just been sat in the garden working on her laptop.
She’d been walking back from the clubhouse after her swimming lesson one evening, trailing behind her bodyguard and not quite ready to head back into the gated mansion grounds, when the arm had grabbed her. It’s only for a second before her guard has the figure on his back, but she finds herself staring in disbelief at her upper arm where blood is blossoming from a cut inflicted by the knife the man was carrying.
They stitch her up and send her to her room – someone had found a way to make it her fault in the end – and it isn’t until a few days later that she finds out that the man who attacked her won’t hurt her again. Apparently he has ‘died’.
She feels a cold stab of fear she doesn’t think has anything to do with the attack itself. Though at least the security around her lessens a bit after that.
But death has now taught her to be scared.
.
The first time she sees someone die – no, get murdered – is at Point Blanc when she glimpses the doctor man collapse in the hallways, seemingly stabbed by Greif. Or Stellenbosch? She isn’t sure and doesn’t care.
All she knows is that she has to run.
Sometimes the lesson death gives you is to know when to flee.
.
She’s sixteen and being told her parents have died and all she can hear is a rushing sound in her ears, drowning out everything around her, and she barely listens to what the man in a suit is telling her.
Yes, they have made her life miserable and lonely.
Yes, she was never the kid they’d wanted.
Yes, sometimes she hates them.
But… they are her parents. They are all she has.
No.
They were all she'd had. And they’d… loved her in their own way she supposes.
“Because of me?” she asks the suited man.
The man denies it but she knows better.
And with that, the next lesson of death arrives, slamming into her with a power she’s never felt so strongly before: the need for revenge.
.
She’d felt a chill of dread when Tom said he’d seen Yassen sitting in a car with Alex, seemingly scoping out the villa they were parked outside, but that chill is nothing compared to the wave of hopelessness that rushes over her when, through the window, she sees a shot fired.
Alex? Dead?
Or was he the shooter?
She honestly isn’t sure which one would be worse.
Not entirely sure where’s she’s summoned the bravery from, she creeps around the front of the villa and slips into the buildings itself. It’s stupid, it’s reckless, it’s utterly mad but… she has to know.
It takes her a few minutes to find the right room, counting along the corridor to where she thinks she saw the shot, and then she sees him… The old man from the boat, the same old man they’d glimpsed at that weird place they’d traced Alex to. He’d always had a smile on his face. No more.
Earlier that day she’d asked Tom if he thought there was a chance Alex had joined Scorpia, but a part of her had always had faith that he never, ever would.
So what now?
Was there a chance he’d had nothing to do with the man’s death? That he’d simply been caught up in something horrible, or got in over his head? Alex couldn’t… wouldn’t… murder anyone. Right?
She thought she’d known him. Been friends with him. Shared secrets with him. Trusted him… Loved him.
Had it all been a lie?
And then it arrives, floating in on the cold night air, death’s next lesson: betrayal.
.
She is no stranger to death – many of the pivotal moments in her life seem to have revolved around it – but she’s never seen it quite like this before. And it’s never flooded her with quite so much despair.