It wasn’t until she said it aloud that she realized how stressed her friend must be. Guilt surged through her. Their fight aside, she had just told Jules about the attempts on her life, and when she didn’t return to the pawnshop tonight, he would surely assume the worst.
“I can get a message to him,” Kane said, infuriatingly blasé.
“How?”
“Some of the younger guys are always running around on Ward’s behalf, and they listen to me. I’ll track one down when Fletch returns.”
“Okay,” Zaria said. “Thank you.”
But she couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice, and Kane let his arms fall to his sides, continuing to watch her far too closely for comfort. She was about to snap at him to stop staring but held her tongue. She’d already snapped at him too many times tonight, which was a fool’s maneuver considering she needed him to trust her. However,Zaria reasoned, he would undoubtedly know something was amiss if her demeanor toward him shifted with no explanation. She could see that now-familiar vulnerability in his face—maybe, if she could get him to open up like he had the other night, he might continue lowering his guard around her.
That was something she needed.Notsomething she wanted.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Kane said, pushing away from the doorframe. In his white button-down, lit only by the moonlight filtering in through the narrow window, he looked more like a memory than a real flesh-and-blood person.
“Wait.” Zaria leapt to her feet as if to physically stop him, heart beating faster for no discernible reason. She felt the need to keep him talking, to crush this unbearable tension between them. “I… Fletcher said you’re Ward’s favorite. Why is that?”
The question appeared to knock Kane off-kilter. He recoiled, a scowl taking hold of his delicate features. “Because I’m the best he’s got. What does it matter to you?”
“I’m only curious. We should probably start trusting each other a little more, shouldn’t we?”
Kane’s expression turned cold. Unfathomable. Then he seemed to get hold of himself, his shoulders lifting as he gave a single hard, silent laugh. “Seems I’d have a better chance of bringing you the moon than I do getting you to trust me.”
“It doesn’t seem as though you trust me much either,” Zaria pointed out. “If you did, you’d tell me the truth.”
“I’m trusting you to help me pull this off, aren’t I? And you’re trusting me to make sure we don’t fail.”
“I also trusted you when you told me that church was safe.”
Kane tilted his head, mouth tightening. His hair wasn’t quite as slick as usual: A lock had escaped to brush his temple, and somethingabout it made him look younger. “That was before I knew just how invested someone was in ensuring your untimely death.”
She fought to conceal her flinch. “Forget it.”
“You want trust?” He stepped fully into the room, approaching her until they were a mere handbreadth apart. Agitation seemed to radiate from his body. “I’m Ward’s favorite because when he killed my parents, he made himself my father.”
Silence stretched between them. The air was suddenly too heavy, too hard to breathe.
When Zaria spoke again, the words scraped the back of her throat. “What do you mean?”
“I was a child,” Kane said very quietly. “So I let him. Pretty fucked-up, isn’t it? I dream of killing him, you know, but I’m not sure I could ever truly go through with it. So sometimes, when I watch other people die, I imagine they wear his face.” He leaned back, mouth a frozen, twisted grin. “Do you feel trusted now, Zaria?”
She didn’t know what to say. She feared him this way, with that smile like a blade—sharp edged and dangerous. He’d been made into a terror of a boy, Kane Durante had, his past so slick with blood he now wore it like a victory shroud.
And then, completely unbidden, Zaria’s head was full of Cecile’s voice. What the woman had said to her in the belly of the crypt.
Then I saw them, lying on the floor of his office. A man. A woman. And—and a little boy.
A whole family slaughtered, Cecile had thought, but a wave of clarity swept through Zaria as the two stories fit together.
The little boy hadn’t been dead, had he? He stood before her now, dark lashes casting crescent shadows on his cheekbones in the dim light. How was it that he managed to look at everything like a god surveying his kingdom?
A vengeful god. A crumbling kingdom.
“You don’t have to be what Ward made you,” Zaria said hoarsely. She had no idea how long she’d let the silence between them persist. She almost resented Kane for this—these feelings she didn’t want—and yet she ought to have known all along that his story was a tragedy.
He turned unsmiling, unblinking, a shadow settling between his brows. “Ah, Miss Mendoza. It’s far too late for that.”
And though he walked out the door then, shutting it behind him, Zaria stood in his empty room feeling as if he’d never truly left.
