Daphne rolled her eyes, shocking me with her lack of sympathy.
Maybe she was more like the Sons than she pretended.
“Jett was a manipulative asshole,” she said. “No one here liked him.Ihated him.”
And Enzo isn’t worse? He and his red-masked friend?
“Why?” I twisted a loose thread on her pillowcase. “He warned me about Enzo, and that’s what he got for it. He was only trying to help.”
Daphne sighed like I’d disappointed her. “Oh, sweet, naive Blair. If you’re going to be a Fawn, we need to make you smarter.”
I frowned, taking her words as an insult.
I wasn’t naive. I’d witnessed things just as ugly as what they had done to Jett.
Daphne gave my foot another squeeze. “Trust me. Jett wasn’t helping you. He was being petty. Don’t you dare blame his little window dive on yourself.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Then why?—”
She cut me off. “Because Jett wanted to be a Night Son. And they never accepted him.” Her tone stayed light, as if she were talking about someone who’d cut her off in traffic and not a murder victim. “He and his father paid Enzo to select Clarissa as his Fawn. I’ll never forget the night Jett stormed in here and threatened her, saying if she didn’t please Enzo, there’d be hell to pay.”
My eyes widened, and I hugged the pillow to my body.
“Jett thought Clarissa could convince Enzo to reconsider and allow him to join the Night Sons, but his plan backfired, and Clarissa paid for it. Trust me, Jett didn’t want to protect you. He did it out of spite.”
She wandered over to the vanity, then suddenly stopped. “Oh.” Turning to face me, she held a black envelope between two fingers. “Looks like your demon admirer left you a love note.” She lifted a small box sitting beside it. “And a gift.”
I slid off the bed and crossed the room to her. I plucked the envelope from her hand and tore it open. A single piece of paper was inside. As much as I didn’t want to read it, I knew I had to.
The paper was black, and the words written in white.
His handwriting was sharp with restrained strokes. Too neat for such a violent man.
I only find red appealing when it’s your blood.
From this moment forward, you only wear black bows and ribbons.
Failure to listen comes with punishment.
I clutched the note to my chest, took a deep breath as I let it fall from my fingers, and stomped on it. The note crinkled beneath my heel.
Daphne watched my little rebellion with a smile before handing over the gift box, and I took it from her.
It was lighter than I’d expected. I turned the box over in my hands, eyeing the trash can beside the vanity and seriously considering slam-dunking it inside and pretending it never existed.
The wrapping paper was black. So was the satin ribbon tied around it. A small name tag dangled from it.
My soon-to-be Fawn.
With shaking hands, I pulled the ribbon loose and peeled back the wrapping paper, bracing to find something horrifying inside.
A finger, an eyeball, someone’s soul, a piece of Jett.
I let out a breath when I found none of those.
Instead, my ribbons were inside, lying neatly on black tissue paper. He’d cut each one clean through the middle. A clump of my hair sat on top of them.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t horrifying, per se.
