Page 188 of Lovely Venom

“No, actually, I’m not.”

“Now, you listen⁠—”

“No, you listen for once in your miserable life,” I cut him off. “You’ve been dead to me since the day you killed my mother. So you can save your breath—or choke on it. Either way, I don’t care.”

He narrows his gaze, subtly keeping an eye on Ares in his periphery. Considering my mother was Ares’s aunt, my father should be worried.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snaps. “You weren’t old enough to understand that your mother was a sloppy drunk.”

“I saw you.”

“You saw nothing,” he growls.

“You pushed her down the fucking stairs.” My voice pitches higher. “I watched you, and I heard her skull split open when it hit the floor. You knew she wanted to leave you, and you wouldn’t let her go. Now you can’t even be man enough to admit it.”

The vein in his forehead throbs as he glances at Ares. “I suggest you end this now. I have every right to go to war with you for what you did, and I have my men on standby.”

“Yes, well, I have to give you my condolences,” Ares answers in a bored tone. “As of thirty minutes ago, your men took a permanent underwater tour of Puget Sound.”

“You’re lying,” my father accuses.

“Afraid not.” Ares shrugs. “But don’t worry, I saved a spot for you.”

Without warning, Ares raises a gun I didn’t even see he was holding and fires a shot straight between my father’s eyes. He crumples to the ground, his bloody head lolling to the side, and everyone seems to be stunned into silence.

“So sorry you had to see that, Kat,” Ares offers. “But thank you for confirming what I always suspected.”

I’m too numb to respond, and it’s at this point that Damian seems to realize he might be next.

“I had nothing to do with that.” He takes a step back and holds up his hands. “All that shit happened way before I came along.”

“True,” Ares agrees. “But you did beat my cousin and try to kill her, which really doesn’t seem like a fair match.”

Damian opens his mouth to speak, but Cristian cuts him off.

“He doesn’t get a quick death, and I’ll be the one who gives it to him.”

“Fair enough.” Ares’s mouth twitches.

Tension ripples through the Vitales, and I can tell they thought that was too easy. Ares negotiates everything. So for him to hand Damian over without a discussion, he must have a bigger plan.

Cristian nods at his brothers, and Romeo and Rafe stalk toward Damian.

Damian reaches for his weapon, but before he can draw it, Ares pistol-whips him in the back of the head and knocks him to the ground.

Rafe and Michele secure his hands behind his back and pull him to his feet a minute later. But I stop them as they’re hauling him away.

“Wait a second.”

Cristian tracks me with his gaze as I step forward and peer into Damian’s soulless eyes.

“Ask me to save you.”

His jaw tics as he glances at the men around me, probably wondering if this might actually work. When they give him nothing, self-preservation seems to outweigh his pride.

“Tell them to let me go, Katarina. I know you don’t want this on your conscience.”

I almost laugh at the irony of him talking about a conscience when he doesn’t even know what that is.