Page 19 of Runaway Queen

“Must be an O’Connor trait. I’m sure she’ll be a guest of the state before her twenty-first birthday.”

“Fuck you. Ronan won’t let that happen.”

“Having a stepbrother who’s a criminal defense attorney didn’t help you, though, did it?”

Bran laughed. “I guess you’re right there.” He broke off as some burly trucker bumped into his chair from behind.

Bran twisted around to look up at the guy.

He was one of those local yokels, overconfident in his little pissing patch. He jerked his chin at my friend. “You got a problem, pretty boy?”

Bran shook his head slowly. “No, man. No problem.”

“Good,” Mr. Soon-to-Be-in-ICU grinned. He thought he looked tough, in his trucker cap, with his straggly beard. His plaid shirt was straining around his belly. He slapped the waitress’s ass as he passed by her. A king in his shitty little kingdom.

I wiped my mouth on a napkin and set my fork down.

Bran was looking at me with amusement in his eyes. “What about not getting into trouble too quickly?”

The whirling chaos inside me chomped at the bit to get out. The beast I’d always tried to deny was frothing at the mouth for blood. It had become addicted. It demanded daily feeding.

“The man is clearly looking for a fight. Who am I to deny him?”

I pocketed the knife from my place setting and headed outside, already grinning in anticipation.

8

NIKOLAI

“Ican’t believe you let his friend get you,” I muttered to Bran, steering his car into the lot of the Hade Harbor hospital, St. Mary’s, a few hours later.

Bran grimaced. “It’s not my fault. A fucker like him shouldn’t have any friends.”

I parked and opened my door. “Come on then. What road trip is complete without a trip to the ER?”

“You take such good care of me, man.”

Bran’s shit-eating grin was more irritating than normal. I didn’t want to be going to the hospital and waiting around for him to have his leg sewn up. We were here, in the town where Angelo had settled, and where there was a Sophie Rossi living, according to public record.

Bran limped into the waiting area of the ER as I took the forms for him to fill out and dumped them on his chest.

“I’m going for a walk,” I told him shortly, before leaving.

First, I hit the restroom. The trucker’s blood was gummy under my fingernails, and I couldn’t get it out. That had been reckless. Killing off De Sanctis men was one thing. Antonio wouldn’t do shit about it. It was an unspoken rule of the underworld that we lived in that no one involved the cops. But killing a random rude trucker? One with friends? That had been a legal headache I shouldn’t be inviting into my life.

I caught the wild expression in my eyes in the mirror.

I was losing control of the beast inside. The one that Sofia’s death had finally freed. I didn’t know what would happen if I found her alive. Something dark and twisted that smelled like impossible hope had rooted in my chest since I’d discovered her coffin empty.

I washed my hands again and dried them roughly. Looking in the mirror, I knew that when I found her, which I would, if she was really alive, that the way I looked would scare her.

Good. The damage life inflicted on us should show, so we’d know where to direct our vengeance. My eyes were shadowed pits. There was nothing inside. My eyes, more than my tattoos, shaved head, or predatory energy, made people nervous.

I’d really become the monster Sofia had once accused me of being, and people knew it. They stayed back. Except for Bran, apparently, and Molly, my brother’s wife. Since she’d already married a demon, I guessed she was used to it.

I left the restroom and headed deeper into the hospital. I’d always found them fascinating places. A place where death walked the halls. Everyone knew it was there, but they tried not to look directly at it. Nowhere did the grim reaper walk with such acceptance. I, too, walked the halls without too many stares. Maybe people in the hospital are hardened to death, in whatever way it comes.

I found a cafeteria and grabbed a bottle of water, sitting in a secluded corner to stare out at the lights of Hade Harbor. It was dark already, and blackness seemed to yawn beyond the brightly lit cafeteria window. A long gulp of water wet my dry throat.

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