Blake leads me up to the library. I haven't been here much but it's one of my favourite rooms in the mansion, with the shelves upon shelves of books and a spiral staircase that leads to a second floor of yet more books. While Blake searches for whatever he's looking for, I spin the huge, golden globe ornament in the middle of the room before brushing a hand over the spines of the books, all speckled with dust from decades of abandonment.

Blake calls me over as he pulls out a book from a shelf. It's huge and made with a very pretty material, the deckled edges of the pages painted gold.

"Old-fashioned, I know," Blake says, moving to place it onto a nearby mahogany table. "But Danielle's a sucker for tradition."

"What is it?" I ask, running my fingers over the cover. There's no title, no author, just beautiful, intricate patterns painted onto the leather.

"Have a look."

I smile. "You're being very mysterious."

"Just setting the atmosphere," Blake shrugs.

I shake my head in amusement before opening the book. I still don't understand what it is, but as I flick through the pages, I see hundreds of pictures. The first of them are in black and white, showing groups of gorgeous people smiling for the camera. Then there's photos of individual people, all of them looking like they belong in a modelling magazine, and each of them have a name beside them.

"Who are they?" I ask.

"The thieves before us."

My head swivels to look at him with wide eyes. "How long has this been going on for?"

"Well, our thieves have been around for about a hundred years, but nobody knows when the first group were created."

"Our thieves?" I ask, eyebrows raised. "There's others?"

He smirks at my curiosity, glancing down at the book. "Keep going."

There's a lot more photos, stunning girls around my age dressed in extravagant dresses and hairstyles and men in suits with some wearing top hats. There's so much diversity, too, with all different ethnicities and backgrounds. It's like racism has never been a part of this world, as even in the fifties when racism was so disgustingly bad, I'm seeing all the skin colours there are to see. I smile along with the people in the images and chuckle at how crazy the outfits get when I reach the thieves of the eighties and nineties, all neon clothes and flared denim and crimped hair. They all look so happy, so powerful, and I'm in disbelief that I ended up being a part of this. I keep flipping through until I see a group of all too familiar people.

"Puberty hit you hard," I chuckle, pointing at a smiling Blake in the photograph. He laughs at it from beside me, looking at the photo with a fond smile on his face. I don't think I've seen anything like it.

"I was fifteen then," he tells me. "One of the youngest they've had."

I scan through the smiling faces, seeing a younger Zavier stood beside Danielle, who is as stunning as ever with a youthful face, then beside her is the only person who isn't smiling; an intimidating woman with a stern face. She's beautiful, but her face is etched with lines and her eyes show barely any life.

"That was Danielle's mother," Blake tells me, but I had guessed as much. "She was probably the one person in the world that terrified me."

I nod my head, my smile turning to a frown. "Danielle's told me about her. About what she did and... how she died."

He sighs. "I know. I was one of the lucky people who had to drag her body out of the river."

I glance at him, feeling a little nauseous at the reminder of the story. "Was it really bad?"

"It was horrible," he says sadly, smoothing a hand over the photo. "We all felt lost without her. So lost that Hattie," he points at one of the girls in the photo, "committed suicide, and the rest of them died or left. Danielle thought it was over until she managed to build the group back up."

I inspect Hattie's face. She has a radiant smile and bright eyes and has an incredible style that I wish I could pull off. It's such a shame that it all had to end in such a dark and twisted way.

Glancing over at Blake, I see that his eyes have turned sad and his face is pulled into a scowl. I find myself wanting to reach out to him, comfort him and tell him I'm sorry, but I don't know what to do. Throughout the time I've been here, this is probably the most Blake and I have talked and the most emotion he's shown me in one day. I don't know how to comfort him, or what he'd appreciate. I'm scared of him being closed off again and telling me to get lost, like he has so many times before.

I sigh deeply, looking back at the photo. "Did you love her?"

My breathing halts as I wait for his answer. He nods his head slowly. "More than anything."

Fuck. All of these people have experienced more hurt and heartbreak than anyone deserves.

"She was depressed, anyway," Blake tells me. "She'd been though shit and was kidnapped when she was thirteen, and it was years later when Danielle's mother had saved her from her kidnappers. She tried to fit in here, and I tried to make her feel better, but I think that everything changing was her breaking point. She overdosed and it was my fault."

I feel so sad for him and I struggle to find the right words. "I know you probably believe it was your fault, but I doubt it was."

He grunts. "Whatever."

I flinch. Maybe I shouldn't have said that. He flicks to the next page as if the image physically burns him, and we now enter a different section to the book. These are all now more recent images, pages of different groups of people with different names written at the top. 'The Hunt Thieves', 'The Sandoval Thieves', 'The Winter Thieves'.

It takes a moment for me to process it all, but my heart starts to thud as soon as I work it out. A small gasp leaves my lips. "We're not the only ones."

Blake shakes his head, his bad mood from a minute ago thankfully vanishing as he smirks down at the photos. "We're friends with some, enemies with others, but most we don't even know about. Now, if you tell Danielle I told you any of this then she'll murder me, but it's far too interesting for me not to share."

"It's incredible," I whisper.

I flip through them, inspecting every single image and every single person. Again, they're all stunning in their own individual ways, and suddenly I want to meet all of them and see them all in action. I keep going through, until I stop short at one particular page titled 'The Drakan Thieves'.

I lean closer to the book, staring at one person in particular, and the penny drops. "Shit."

"What is it?"

I point at the woman, waiting for Blake's reaction. When his face is still blank, I explain. "She's the bitch that attacked me in the garden. She's a thief."

Blake laughs humourlessly, shaking his head. "I fucking knew it."

"What?" I ask. "What did you know?"

He nods towards the book. "Look at who's stood next to her."

Fucking hell. "Is that... Sara?"

"Yeah it is," Blake says. He sounds pissed. "They're planning something, I know it."

"Who are they?"

"The Drakan Thieves."

"No shit, Sherlock," I deadpan, pointing to their name above their photo. "I meant..."

Blake rolls his eyes. "I know what you meant." He braces both hands on the table. "Look, the main thing you should take from me telling you all of this, is that the Vasquez thieves and the Drakan thieves have had an ongoing feud for centuries. They're in the East, a few hundred miles away, and they see us as a threat. They always have. And now that we have an army stronger than them, they're afraid. They're planning something. I knew it as soon as you were attacked."

I remind myself to breathe, taking in this information. "But... what would they be planning?"

"I'm not sure," he says, running a hand through his hair. I strain to keep my eyes away from his flexed, tattooed arm. "But now that we have Sara, they're going to do something about it. And that's not going to be pretty."

"Then why don't we just give her back?" I ask. "And why was she and that other woman here in the first place?"

"I don't know, Aurora," he says. I've heard that phrase a few times now. "I've been thinking... maybe... they might be watching us." He jabs his finger at one of the men in the photo. "Simon is the current leader. I think that he's been sending people here to watch us, and they could've been doing it since before you were here."

The thought makes me shiver. If Blake is right, what have they seen? What have they been planning? When has someone been out there, watching my every movement?

"We need to tell Danielle," Blake mutters. "This can't be good."

I take in a shaky breath. "Could they... would they... kill us?"

His eyes lock onto mine. "They could and would kill any of us. We have one of theirs and they already hate our guts, just like we hate theirs. Look, I could be overreacting. Danielle's always telling me that I'm too paranoid. But we might be in danger."

We silently watch one another. My soul opens up and threatens to crush me with fear, and all I can do is stare at him with wide eyes with one thought consuming my head.

We're going to die.

All of us. Once again, I think of everyone here, everyone I've grown to love and fiercely care for, dead with our bodies blasted open with bullet holes. We're all so young. We all have so much to live for. Yet, we could all be dead by morning.

Suddenly Blake's eyes turn concerned. "Hey, are you okay?" he asks me.

I shake my head. "I don't-"

"Your nose is bleeding," he says. Lifting up my hand, I pull my fingers away to see the red, glistening liquid.

"Shit."

"Come on," he says, angling his head towards the door. "We'll clean it up."

After Blake has put the book back, we make our way to a bathroom. We're just about to enter when Zavier walks past with his hands in his pockets.

"Aurora? Are you okay?" he asks, eyebrows drawn together.

I nod, not able to talk with the blood spilling down my face and staining my white top. Thankfully, Blake tells him I'm fine, before the two of enter the bathroom and he locks the door behind him.

"I'll bet you anything he thinks that I did that to you," Blake scoffs as he grabs a flannel and runs it under the tap.

"Don't worry," I say, my voice sounding nasally as he passes me the rag. "I'll tell him it was."

"You're hilarious."

I chuckle, pressing the flannel to my nose, before I shake my head. "Adam said this would probably happen, after that bitch clocked me in the face with a tree."

Blake observes himself in the mirror. "Yeah, well, I hope her arm's fallen off by now."

I pull the flannel away from my face to give him an odd look.

"What?" he asks when he notices.

"Who are you and what have you done with Blake Mendoza?"

He snorts, gripping the edges of the sink. "Well, Aurora Redwood, maybe I'm not just the asshole you thought I was."

"You're still an asshole," I smirk, still trying to clean up the blood. "You're an asshole who tells me I don't belong here and yells at me for not killing a guy and insults my hair and blows cigarette smoke into my mouth and who scares the hell out of me by saying that we're all going to die soon."

Blake looks at me blankly, before he's smirking back at me. "You didn't find the smoke thing hot?"

"No Blake," I deadpan, even though there's a small part of my brain saying 'yes, Blake'.

He makes a face. "That's a shame," he says. "And don't blame me for 'scaring the hell out of you'. We're all going to die anyway, you might want to get used to that thought."

I frown, looking down at the blood stained flannel in my hands now that the nosebleed has finally stopped. "I just didn't think I'd die so soon. I thought that coming here was a better chance of survival, not a better chance of dying."

He takes the flannel from my hands, not even disgusted by all the blood, and tosses it into the sink before moving away from the sink to step closer to me, forcing me to look up at him. "I don't want you to freak out about it. Yes, you might die, but you also might live. And if you live every second thinking you're going to die, that's just no way to live, right?"

I smile, my eyes following the patterns of his tattoos. "Did you get that from an Instagram caption?" I say quietly.

He laughs along with me, his head dropping closer to mine as he does so. "No. It's the thought process that keeps me here. You might want to try it."

"I'll keep that in mind," I say.