I park in front of David’s apartment building only blocks away from my penthouse. The one I have yet to sell. I need to get Lady Bianchi on that soon. We climb up the stoop and shove the doors open, go past the stairs and straight to the elevator of the antique building. We’re on the fourth floor in two minutes and find Sasha outside of his front door, unsurprised to see us.
“Knew you’d come,” he smirks.
I grin back at him. “I always come for my wife.”
He lets out a bark of a laugh and opens the door. We step inside to find Sabrina sitting on a barstool in the open kitchen, ponytail high and cascading down the obsidian sweater dress that hugs her body like a second skin. Her legs are crossed as casual as can be, gun in her lap with its pale pink bedazzled silencer on, finger on the trigger, poised in David’s direction. I rub my fingers against my forehead, wondering if I need to have another little chat with Damon about how I get a fucking hard-on every time my wife is about to kill someone who has inconvenienced me.
Sabrina doesn’t turn to look at us, just keeps her shoulders back and her spine straight, wholly unbothered. From my position, I can see her invisible crown. It would shimmer in this light. David, on the other hand, is sweating bullets. “Now, Sabrina—” he stutters for a moment, mouth opening and closing like a fish. “This… this would bepatricide. You… you wouldn’t.”
“Why do you think I wore a dress? It’s a special occasion. It’s not every day one gets to delete their parent.”
Sasha takes his place beside Niko who’s been patiently standing behind David, hands clasped over the other in front of him. His gun hangs loosely, but his finger is already on the trigger, ready for whatever might go down like he was trained to be. Likewewere trained to be.
“I know I promised I was going to do this slowly with my scalpel so I could feed you to the sharks like chum—” She lifts a shoulder and so very delicately, so very femininely, lets it drop. “—but as you can see, I thought of a very fun game we could play. Like when I was a child and Charlie was alive, and you’d make up a game so we’d behave ourselves or make ourselves scarce. Besides, I’ve learned a gun helps with getting out a bit more information than a scalpel ever could. Maybe an ice pick, but I don’t have time for that.” Sasha does his best to tamp down his grin but exposes his dimple anyway. Sabrina hums and then, “Do you remember him? Charlie? Your only son?”
His salty brows rise for a fraction. “I see your mother told you.”
“Oh… I found out many, many things during my…travels, David. While yes, I was alerted that Derek is my true father, I met a very peculiar someone. I met Alice. Do you know her? Blonde, brown eyes like honey and a rather petite little thing.”
He remains quiet, eyes on my wife, searching her face. A face I can't see from this angle, but I know is beautiful, nonetheless.
“Right,” Sabrina continues, timbre unwavering. “She helped me, but more than that, she helped my husband. She had more sense in her little finger to get away from the Syndicate than you ever did. So, I need to know; Mother obviously had her indiscretions, I won’t deny that. Now I need to know about yours.” She taps the barrel of the silencer on her knee. “Go on. Confess.”
“Sabrina, I don’t think—”
“And I think,” she pauses, “that at this very moment, I am currently your salvation or your executioner. Either way, this is your damnation. So do the right thing for once and absolve yourself to me. Do not look at them, look at me. They aren’t saving you. Good boy. You can no longer hide from me. I see you exactly as you are. Go on, David…confess.
“You failed Matilda as a husband, failed Charles as a father, unable to protect him from even your own father, then had to sell me off to cover your debts, so, what’s one more? Hmm? Those were your thoughts?”
“Yes, alright? She was mine. Her mother and I had a year-long affair that resulted in the child—”
“—Alice. Say her name.”
“—resulted in Alice,” he winces.
“And you never owned up to her, did you? Never sent any money… never claimed Alice as your daughter because she was nothing to you, correct? Just a bad taste in your mouth, I'm guessing? A memory you wanted to forget.”
David blinks rapidly.
“She died holding my hand. She never got to see that she made it out alive, even if just for a moment. I had your daughter buried on the Winters—now the Giordano-Hayes—Estate. We had an excavator dig into the frozen ground, and I had Niko here purchase a casket to fit her body.She is at rest where she always belonged. So, there you have it. A wife, a mistress, and three children you burned. But you are still so full of secrets, aren’t you?
“Because you see, David, while I was standing over Kane’s bloody and well-bruised body, he let me in on one of them. The one that damned you the second it slipped from his lips. I found out… you knew Kane Burton killed my brother.”
David’s chest rises and falls slowly, blood draining from his face. “I found outyearslater,” he whispers, a tear spilling from his verdant eyes.
“That’s alright. I was angry enough for the both of us. Did you know he raped me?” she asks so fucking casually it makes David grimace.
“Your husband made me aware but a few months ago.”
“Were you the one alerting the Syndicate as to my husband’s whereabouts? How to find him?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “I promise you, I never spoke to Kane outside of Syndicate gatherings unless I was forced to.”
Sabrina dips her chin. “Because of that alone, I would spare your life.”
David sighs in relief.
“Unfortunately, I was also informed whoyourreal father is. And see, I made a dying man a promise… I promised Kanedrew that I would make it my sole mission to kill every Ainsworth alive. I aborted his spawn years ago. I killed him. Then, I killed your father. Shot them both right between the eyes without an ounce of remorse. Like I’m going to do to you.”
