My voice is as cold as ice when I tell him: “Julian is dead.”
His face freezes. “What was that?”
“He tried to kill me. Failed. But when Dallas went after him… he got the job done right.”
Tony blinks. “The new King avenged you?” Dumb fuck, his face breaks out in a wide grin. “That’s amazing, hon. What happened? You two get back together after Julian?—”
“Tried to kill me, yes. I guess we did.”
“Then you have an in with the top of the Other. Yes! Do you know what that means? You can tell him how I’ve been loyal to the Owed all along. You can ask him to elevate me.”
He hasgotto be kidding. Delusional doesn’t even cover it. He just admitted that he knew I was ‘dead’ and didn’t bat an eye, then he had the nerve to tell me that he killed my motherandDallas’s and he thinks I’m just going to look right past that?
“No. What?No. I want nothing to do with you.”
His ruddy face turns even redder as he balls his hands into fists. “I’m your father.”
I look him dead in the eye. “See, that’s the thing about falling four stories from a hotel window. Sometimes you die. Sometimes you get lucky and your body hits an awning before the ground. You can’t breathe real good for a while so they intubate you. Then, when you’re conscious again, they tell youthat you have something called dissociative amnesia. Know what that means? Trauma-induced memory loss. Couldn’t remember a damn thing, Tony.” I bare my teeth at him. “And I guess I still don’t remember having a father.”
That’s the last thing I say to him. After a moment where he stares at me in complete surprise, his mouth starts working again. He wants my forgiveness, he’ssorry, he wants me to understand, he wants me to swear that I won’t tell Dallas that he’s the one who gave Reese Collins her fatal push. I just sit there, wondering when he’ll stop, wondering if I should call out for Connor, when, suddenly, the door eases open again.
Connor walks in. His normally easygoing expression is gone, replaced by a grim mask and a darkness in his deep blue eyes that makes me shiver. When he sees that he’s caught mine, he puts his finger to his lip.
I jerk my head just enough that it might be considered a nod.
He tosses something up in the air, catching it easily in the palm of his scarred hand as he moves around the edge of the room, keeping out of Tony’s line of vision. I can’t ell what it is that Connor is playing with until he catches it one last time, then does something to eject a three-inch blade from it.
A pocketknife, just like the one Dallas has.
Tony never saw it coming. Launching at the man who should’ve been my father, Connor covers his mouth and his nose with his hand, jerking his head back enough that he can place the sharpened edge of his knife to Tony’s throat.
His hand flashes, and Tony’s body bucks, blood spilling from the gash in his throat.
Connor doesn’t release him until Tony’s done with his death throes. Me? I watch in morbid fascination, waiting for some sort of remorse at seeing Tony Wright murdered.
Pity. It doesn’t come.
Finally, Connor lets the body slump on the couch, wiping his hand on the back of his slacks.
“Sorry ‘bout that, but I couldn’t risk him screaming. My wife is sleeping. We don’t want to wake Haven up.” He shivers. “You don’t want to see her if someone wakes her up from one of her naps.”
I blink, not sure how to react. One second, he was a cold assassin, killing Tony as easily as picking his nails with his pocketknife. The next? He’s back to being a total ‘wife’ guy, worried about disturbing Haven’s sleep.
Finally, I get out a strangled, “Youkilledhim.”
“And he killed my bro’s mother. He’s lucky I was the one who heard him say it. I gave him a quick death. If Dallas got his hands on him first? It wouldn’t have been pretty.”
Wait a second?—
“How… how do you know that?”
He glances around the room, and without saying it, I know that it’s bugged. Video or camera, I don’t know, but he must’ve heard everything that passed in here while he was gone. And not just when Tony was in here, either. Before, with Haven, and I think back to how she grabbed a notepad when she first told me about the Order of the Owed.
Maybe she wasn’t just selectively mute. Maybe she was careful what she lets her husband overhear…
“Um. Is Haven aware that you…”
“I’m very protective of my wife,” is all he says. “My friends, too.”
