Page 130 of Corrupted Heart

It was because she realized I’m the only one she wants. And that’s all I needed to see.

…But, I mean, I already had the car borrowed from Ares. And I’d bought the wig and fake mustache. And who am I to turn down a chance to feast on her screams as I chase her through the dark?

I still have questions, though. Something spooked her and pushed her away, and it sure as hell wasn’t just me getting cold with her after she freaked out in the bath.

My teeth grit as I replay that scene, when Bianca threw up her walls, rebuking intimacy—intimacy that takes a lot for me to find within myself. Intimacy I haven’t ever sought out with another person. It fucking hurt. Hence, my frostiness afterward.

“Who is she?”

I frown, pulled from my thoughts as my attention slides down to Bianca’s face against my chest. Her eyes are open now, staring into the dim, cocooned warmth of the back seat as she strokes a finger over my ribs.

“Who’s who?—”

Her finger stills.

“That woman, Kratos. Just…tell me,” she says quietly. “Tell me if you fucked?—”

It hits me like a backhand to the face and makes me want to roar. It makes me want to break something.

Namely, Amaya’s fucking neck.

“You saw her leaving the house.”

Bianca says nothing. She doesn’t have to. Because in an instant it all clicks into place, and I can see it right there on her face.

She ran into Amaya leaving the brownstone after the bitch stopped by unannounced to threaten me with prison time. I can only assume the miserable cunt did or said something to send Bianca running, because that’s the kind of fucking ghoul she is.

That’s why Bianca left. It’s why she went out, and drank, and tried to find someone else on the Venom site.

Son of a bitch.

I suck in slow breaths, trying to calm the beast roaring inside of me. My arms squeeze around her a little tighter.

“Please,” Bianca whispers, taking my silence the wrong way. “Put me out of my misery. If it’s going to hurt, just do it fast instead of?—”

“Her name is Amaya Mircari.”

Bianca stiffens in my arms.

“And no,” I hiss quietly. “I didn’t fucking touch her.”

Bianca exhales swiftly against my chest.

“I’m guessing she insinuated that she did?”

Bianca’s lips purse tightly.

That’s a yes.

I look away, my eyes stabbing viciously out the tinted window into the darkness of the forest.

“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone.”

I can’t tell her that Amaya is CIA. Not because it could mean trouble for me if the people in my world found out I was talking with the Feds…though it would.

I’m not worried about me. But I’m worried about her. Bianca’s in this criminal world, too. If she knows about this, it could put her in danger. And I won’t have that.

Bianca looks up at me, her eyes darting over my face like she’s working up the courage to say something. Finally, she does.

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