Her forehead puckers, the first hint of real concern. “They’re far worse than any I’ve ever seen.”
“Trust me, I know,” I mutter. I narrow my good eye at her because surely she can’t be feeling sorry for me. She’s probablyworried about the supernatural who is strong enough to have delivered these blows.
“The magic has extended right down to your bones.” She draws back a little, her shoulders tense. “It should have killed you.” She chews on her lip as she contemplates me. I’m gratified that her expression becomes wary for the first time since she approached us. “And yet you’re still alive.”
“I guess I’m hard to kill.”
She makes a humming sound in the back of her throat that’s difficult to interpret. “Who did this to you?”
“My father.”
Her expression changes so rapidly that it’s like a storm rushing in, as powerful as the churning sea the keeper once showed me. All that lightning striking across a beautifully dark sky.
Her growl is dangerously low. “Fathers should never hurt their daughters.”
My thoughts exactly. It’s a shame she’s my enemy. I might otherwise like her.
“Who is he?” she demands to know.
I don’t lie, even though I maybeshould. “My father is the Ultima Nostra.”
“Of New York,” she says, her lips twisting angrily. “I’m aware of him. I have friends who would like to see him eliminated.”
“As would I,” I snarl, my own anger rising. “He doesn’t deserve his title or his empire. I loved him once.”
Damn. I didn’t mean to blurt out that last bit. My throat constricts and my good eye burns with tears. Hot, angry ones. Tears I wish weren’t threatening to fall right now because I don’t want this woman to see my vulnerabilities or know my deepest hurts.
But I can’t stop my rising rage and, damn her, she stays silent and lets me talk.
“I loved him so much that I would have died to avenge him. But not anymore.”
Slowly, the woman exhales into the silence, as if she’s breathing her own tension out and dragging clean air in. The silence extends as she breathes, as if it’s a deliberately controlled action on her part.
She exhales a fourth time and the anger in her demeanor finally fades.
I can only stare at her, watch as she deals with whatever anger she was feeling—whyever she was feeling it.
Oh, to be able to release hatred so easily from my body.
Not that hatred is bad for a dark creature like me. Just that blind rage could lead me to make reckless decisions that don’t do me any favors.
She leans a little closer to me, the strands of her hair cascading over her shoulder and brushing my bare stomach.
Her expression hardens again, a steely glint in her blue eyes that brings to mind the sharpest blade. “The critical question is: What will you do if I let you live?”
CHAPTER NINE
My voice sticks in my throat. “I…”
It should be an easy answer, but it isn’t.
Where does my vengeance lie now?
Where is my dark justice?
If I vow to end my father and take his empire from him, am I not repeating a cycle of the past?
My father killed my mother and then tried to kill me, all because he wants to retain power. Oh, he framed his murderous intent in terms of stopping me, as if he has some kind of altruistic purpose because I’m supposedly some incredibly dangerous creature. But his actions have ensured he retains power.
