Prologue

She was in a deep sleep when he called her.

The phone buzzed annoyingly by her ear, and the girl picked up the device and scowled at the brightly glowing screen. It was her brother's name that was on the caller ID, and she wanted to groan. It was nearly four o'clock in the morning-if her idiot of a brother was out this early in the morning hours, she wasn't going to cover for him, no matter how wasted he was. Dante was known for partying, though his image at home was the perfect son, president of Mu Alpha Theta, the National Honor Society, and number two ranked in his class. Dante was complicated, to say the least. He was a free sprit locked in a confining body, so between his bouts of community service and charity work, Dante liked to do keg stands and play beer pong.

She answered the phone with an exasperated sigh, hoping that her brother wasn't going to ask her to help him up the stairs. But her exasperation soon turned into panic when she heard the ragged breathing on the other end of the line. "Gia?" Dante's voice rasped.

Gia sat bolt-upright in her bed, heart starting to pound hard. Dante sounded so scared-she hadn't heard him sound that way since they were kids. He was in trouble. "What's wrong?" she whispered, her voice hoarse from sleep.

There was no response for a second, just the sound of Dante's heavy, muffled breathing. "Dante!" she exclaimed sharply, throwing her legs over the side of the bed. "What's wrong?"

"Gigi...Gia. I-I'm really sorry. Was wrong..." he choked. "I was wrong. I was wrong. And now I have t-to...to pay for it."

"What are you talking about?" Gia's voice climbed an octave, and she stumbled to her feet. She slipped on a pair of ratty tennis shoes in the next second. Her long, dark hair was clinging to her neck with cold sweat, and her heart was pounding hard. What was going on? The way Dante was talking... "Where-where are you? I can help you get home, Dante. I can help you-"

"Too late, little sister." Dante's words were quiet now, almost eerily calm. A lot different than he had sounded a minute before. Gia clutched the phone tightly in her hand. "No one can help me now." Gia inhaled deeply, and then, suddenly, she heard the sound of sirens blaring from the other end of the line. She pulled the phone away from her ear in surprise, but the sound of the sirens didn't fade. Gia whirled around and stared out her open window. The white gossamer curtains (ugly things that her mother had insisted on buying for her) fluttered in the breeze. She yanked them out of the way and leaned outside a bit. Those were police sirens. She could hear the cruisers coming down the street opposite to her own, right next to the...

Gia's eyes widened, and she jerked around and ran for her door, flinging it open with abandon. She was down the stairs and out the front door before she could even tell if her parents were awake. Gia didn't care if she got in trouble. She was always perfect. The perfect student, the perfect sister, the perfect daughter. If Dante was in danger, it was her job to find him, to protect him. Because she knew that no one else would.

Her arms tight at her sides, legs pumping hard as she gathered speed, Gia ran down the street as fast as she possibly could, breath coming out in visible puffs in the cold November air. In all her fourteen years, Gia had never ran so hard, so fast. She was at the end of the street in a matter of moments, shivering in her gym shorts, baggie T-shirt and worn tennis shoes. Two police cruisers had just pulled up to the run-down park across the street, sirens blaring. The glow of the blue and red lights illuminated Gia's face as she ran closer, fear coursing through her like the blood that ran through her veins.

The cold bit against her skin, smarting, and she fought back a violent shiver as she caught sight of a figure knelt on the frost-covered ground by the dilapidated merry-go-round. Gia jerked to a complete stop. She knew the boy-broad-shouldered, lean-muscled, curling black hair and olive-toned skin...Dante. Gia took another step forward, trembling violently in the cold. But as she drew closer to her brother, Gia's breath left her lungs in one gasp. Dante was crouched over someone, and the figure...the figure wasn't moving. Gia stared at the girl lying motionless on the grass, her legs twisted at an odd, unnatural angle. She was beautiful-with pale skin and full lips, a wild mane of dark caramel ringlets, and amber eyes that gazed unblinkingly up at the sky.

The girl was dressed in a strapless leather dress that hugged her curves with its cream-colored material. A pair of stiletto boots were on her feet, one of them halfway off. Gia nearly retched when she caught sight of the bullet hole in the girl's chest and the blood spilling from the wound. Dante tilted his head toward the cop cars, his face emotionless in the dim light. He shifted a few inches, and then Gia caught sight of it-a shiny black revolver in his white-knuckled hand. Her father had made her memorize weapons when she was young. 'So you know what you're up against,' he had gruffly told her. 'Know thy enemy, Gianna.' But that gun in her brother's hand-she couldn't connect it with him. She couldn't connect her brother with the dead girl beside him. Dante wasn't a...killer. Dante was a jock. Dante was on the honor roll at school. Dante was loved by everyone. Dante wasn't violent-he only liked to argue, really. He couldn't have done this, especially on the playground, of all the places.

The place where they used to have competitions to see how far someone could jump off the swings, and their older sister Gemma would sniff at their immaturity and flounce all the way home to tell their parents. Not in this place of good memories and feelings. Because even though Dante's finger was still on the trigger, Gia couldn't believe that her brother was a monster. That he was a cold-blooded killer who murdered innocent girls in the park at four in the morning.

Dante turned and looked at her. His jaw was set, and the stoic look on his face did not fade. But his eyes-Gia saw everything in his deep brown eyes. All the anguish and pain and regret and anger, bubbling to the surface. Dante was unrecognizable in that moment, and it scared her.

She was screaming his name, running toward him, but Dante was being thrown to the ground by officers and placed in handcuffs. Someone caught her by the waist and held onto her as she thrashed, yelling hoarsely for her big brother. She told them that this was all a mistake, that Dante hadn't done this. He couldn't have done this. The officers tried to console her as she screamed and cried, as they jerked Dante to his feet roughly and then began to examine the body of the dead girl. The gun was carefully picked up with latex gloves to preserve the evidence, and still, Gia screamed. Her dark hair, falling at her shoulder blades, was in a wild disarray around her face, and she imagined that her eyes were wild, too.

She was wild. She had been so good for so long. The perfect child, just like her older sister. Dante had been the rebel in the times that it counted. She was just the quiet one who never spoke her mind, the robot girl who obeyed her parents' orders with a tiny plastic smile and desolate eyes. But now that exterior shattered. She gave a gutteral shriek and lunged forward, almost breaking free of the deputy's arms, but not quite. He caught her wrist last second. Gia panted heavily and met Dante's eyes just before the police officers shoved him into the back seat of one of the cruisers. He mouthed something, just one word, but Gia could read his lips clearly. Lip reading had been a game between the two of them when they were small. Just one word, and then Dante was out of her line of vision completely.

But that one word undid it all.

Me.

He had mouthed me to Gia, a confession spanning across the cold space in between them. Gia went numb after that, falling slack in the officer's arms. Her head lolled back, and she stared up at the starry sky and the full moon above her. Dante had just admitted to it. Her brother, her hero, the one that made her believe that she didn't need to be perfect to mean something-he was gone. A killer with the blood of an innocent girl on his hands had taken his place. She couldn't think about why he would do such a thing. All she could focus on was the fury growing inside of her, burning hot in her chest.

It swelled as she was grilled by the police who were demanding to know why she had been at the scene of the crime. It grew when her parents scolded her for leaving the house alone, for disobeying their strict rules. They seemed more disgusted than upset by Dante's actions. Gia should have known that they wouldn't mourn the loss of him. The Greenberg children were investments that had to go right, and if they didn't-well, Dante was a prime example of that. Her parents had no sympathy; Dante had just turned eighteen two weeks before, and he would tried as an adult. Dante was a failure, a mistake. At least, that's what Gia's parents believed.

Gia's fury only grew at the mention of her brother. He was supposed to protect her. She and Gemma had never been close-there was too much of a difference in age and personality for that. Dante had been her savior, her solid ground. Now it felt like the whole earth was quaking under her feet. So the fire in her chest grew and grew, consuming her, until the day after The Incident, when Gia saw herself in her bathroom mirror. She was dressed for school in a perfectly ironed pair of jeans and a crisp blouse with her long dark hair spilling in a perfect sheet down her back. Just a glance in the mirror and everything came undone.

She was tired of perfection because nothing in her life was perfect. Gia was shaking, clutching her blouse, and then she let out a scream and began to bang her fists against the glass of her mirror, cracking the glass. She pounded until her knuckles were raw and bleeding. With each hit, she reclaimed a little bit of herself and got rid of all the things she didn't want: Her parents telling her average wasn't good enough, that she needed to be excellence; Gemma's face when Gia had admitted that she didn't understand her parents, that she felt like they were undoing her; Dante's mouthed words the night before...all the fakeness and deceit and insecurity-she pounded it away. There was no one there to hear her cry and scream; her parents were at work and she was alone, as she normally was. But she had never felt so alone in all of her life as she did just then.

The fire in her was still smoldering, and she needed one final release. Gia pulled her bloody hands back from the mirror and ripped open the medicine cabinet, throwing brushes and hair ties out of the way in her desperate search. Gia finally grasped the scissors tightly in her hand, still trembling violently, tears pouring down her cheeks. She lifted a piece of her long hair in front of her and cut it short, just under her ears. And then her hand moved in a frenzy, cutting jagged chunks from her hair, making it short and layered and edgy and dangerous looking.

Because Gia Greenberg was done being the perfect daughter, smiling brightly and emptily for all to see.

Dante's betrayal had shattered her illusion of perfection.

She gathered all of the hair she had cut off and threw it in the toilet, watching it swirl and then disappear.

Her steel gray eyes locked on the broken, warped mirror, and the reflection that stared back was jagged and frightening and bloody. The new Gia was someone unrecognizable. Just the way she wanted it.

And she was never going back to the way she had been before.