No taking them back now, though. They were out in the world, prepared to determine her fate.
Unfortunately, fate was a raging C U Next Tuesday who’d made it her mission to continually fuck with Cora year after year. She saw the answer in his eyes long before the soul-damning word escaped his lips.
“Yes,” Saiden whispered, the single word so quiet that the very factshe heard him was confirmation enough.
Something erupted inside her like a volcano, demanding to be released. It dug its claws into her throat and coated her lungs in acid. Higher and higher it rose, ready to be unleashed on the monster in front of her.Murderer, it screamed.Killer. It climbed up and up, and when she could hold it in no longer…
Cora threw up her very big breakfast.
Chapter forty-one
Saiden
Saiden closed the door to his bedroom, and the resounding click of the lock sounded like a jail cell swinging shut on his life.
He stalked over to his bathroom and flicked on the shower. There were a lot of pros to being a vampire, but the heightened senses kind of lost their shine when the love of your life vomited blood and bile in your face.
Not that he didn’t deserve the gore-filled puke explosion. He more than deserved it. Not to mention all the other things she’d said to him before Eliana politely suggested that he give Cora some time alone.
It killed him to walk out the door. To leave her in the hands of his cousins. But he lost his right to make demands the moment he turned her against her will.
He would clean himself up instead, and focus on the only thing he could.
Revenge.
Saiden almost felt bad for the older woman curled up on the dirty cot in the damp, moldy cell.
Almost.
Even if she hadn’t been the one to force his hand, Donna was still part of the reason that Cora was lying traumatized in a bed upstairs, thinking about all the ways she despised him for turning her.
No, he didn’t feel bad for this frail human with her quiet coughs and tiny groans of pain while she struggled to find a comfortable position. They let her into their home. Paid her generously. And she betrayed them. There was no forgiveness.
Sliding from the shadows where he’d been observing her, Saiden allowed his steps to be heard, alerting Donna to his presence.
Even as a vampire he found the dungeons to be a bit overkill. It wasn’t necessary for them to look like they came straight out of the Catacombs of Paris, and he’d often championed for them to be cleaned up. He was always voted down in the end because the truth was atmosphere could be an extremely powerful influence when it came to intimidating a confession out of someone.
“Donna,” he greeted bitterly, prowling closer to the thick metal bars.
Inside the cell, their once jovial housekeeper remained hunched up against the wall with her back to him. “Saiden,” she replied just as bitterly, and he had to search for any semblance of the kind woman he’d known for decades.
“Look at me,” he demanded. He wanted to see her eyes when she explained herself. Wanted to see if there was any hint of remorse forthe damage she’d done.
“I’d rather not,” she said quietly, her words swallowed up by the darkness of the dungeons. “And you don’t have much to threaten me with now, do you? I made my peace with death the moment I came back to this place.”
His fists clenched at his sides. Yanking her still beating heart from her chest really wouldn’t get him the answers he needed. As tempting as it sounded.
“You think you have nothing to lose except your life?” Saiden let out a perfectly constructed evil laugh that was designed to make even the most hardened of killers a little uneasy. “You think we don’t know everything about you? About your family? We know all about your daughter, Lindsey, and the job she took teaching first grade in Sioux Falls. We know all about your three grandkids, Josh, Micah, and Becca. I believe Josh just got accepted into Harvard, and I’m sure your generous salary is helping to pay for that. It would be a shame if he didn’t live to see orientation. It would be a shame if none of them lived past tonight.”
It had taken Baylin less than five minutes to hunt down Donna’s family, and while he had no intentions of ever harming the innocents, the shaking human in front of him didn’t know that. She must hate them more than he ever realized if she legitimately believed he was capable of such a thing.
“You wouldn’t,” Donna protested, finally rolling over.
“Your quivering voice tells me that you believe otherwise. That’s smart.”
His eyes scanned over her in the darkness. A few scrapes on her legs and the hint of a black eye but nothing too serious. Just a deep rumble in her empty stomach that he would have been able to hear even if he wasn’t supernatural.
Carrot or stick,Saiden mused.Carrot or stick.
