Page 194 of Psycho Beasts

A sick realization hit me.

Was Jinx right?

Am I an idiot?

Jinx took a delicate bite of asparagus. “If a person can’t defuse a small chemical explosion, then they shouldn’t be allowed in a chemistry lab. I stand by that.”

“You blew up the room, and one student died,” Jess said with rising frustration.

“Wrong. The blast didn’t kill him. He died from third-degree burns,” Jinx said in a “duh” tone. “That was his own fault. He wouldn’t have survived the cold shifter realm anyway. I did him a favor.”

Jess scowled down at her much smaller sister, her copper-toned skin flushing as she gripped her fork like a weapon. “Wait, Jinx, someone died? You never told me that.”

A low rumble escaped from Jax’s throat as he also glared at his sister.

Jinx gritted her teeth. “I didn’t need to, because he died from the burns. Not the blast.”

Cobra nodded. “You can’t fault her. If the blast didn’t kill him, it clearly wasn’t her fault. Lay off. How old were you when it happened?”

“Eight,” Jinx said.

Cobra pointed his knife like he’d proven a point. “See, she was just a child. Give her a break. When I was that age, my snake accidentally ate a family of four.”

“What?” Jax, Ascher, and I said at the same time.

Xerxes didn’t even blink, just kept eating like Cobra’s statement didn’t surprise or concern him.

Aran was silent, pushing her steak back and forth like nothing anyone said mattered.

Ascher looked down at her with a frown.

“Exactly. It happens,” Jinx said to Cobra, and the corner of her mouth pulled up into what almost appeared to be a slight grin.

For her, that was the equivalent of a beaming smile.

I took it back; the don was not the only person who looked at home in the elegant mansion.

Jinx’s posture was perfect, long black hair lying in a silky sheath down to her waist. With too-pale skin and massive dark eyes, she looked more like a caricature of a doll than a flesh-and-blood person.

Jinx arched her dark eyebrow as she caught me staring.

I quickly looked away.

Actually, maybe I wasn’t completely dead inside, because she terrified me.

“I’m sorry, son, that I wasn’t there to help you.” The don spoke for the first time, and his perfect posture broke as his shoulders hunched with something that resembled despair.

He stared across the table at Cobra with tired eyes. At that moment, the terrifying Mafia leader looked almost…weak.

Cobra shrugged and said nothing.

The table fell silent as everyone processed that both Jinx and Cobra had committed murder at eight years old, and that they thought they were in the right.

“My visit is not purely of the social nature,” the don broke the silence as he cut his steak.

If he told us we were getting tortured again, I was shoving a bread roll up his ass.

“The third trial begins now,” the don said casually.

---