Page 197 of His Pretty Little Duet

"Not now, sweet girl.”

"Max took a bullet for me?—"

"That changes nothing!” he spits out before schooling himself again. “I would take a bullet for his fucking dog, but I would never undermine his decisions relating to Cassidy. I would never take her.”

“You undermined hisconcernswhen it came to Xander… though, Sir.”Fuck.I actually said that. I swallow over the lumpforming around those words, wishing them back down as the powerful muscles holding me bunch.

I don't push him further.

Not right now.

In the bathroom, Clay runs the shower. The seclusion of this space, the soft splashing sound, and the strange stillness after such intensity make pin pricks hit the back of my eyes.

Alone now.

Weak. Suddenly so weak I barely want to stand, weighed down by the sorrow of all those lives, the horror, the heat, and how quickly I picked Clay and his family over my own blood. It all splinters me. Creates thin cracks in my soul.

And I pickedClayeven as Dustin's eyes blinked in a kindred way to mine, shifted the same…

I roll the events in my mind, list and sort them. The night I met my dad, he was murdered. That happened. And I stood by. But it wasn’t a murder… A murder is vile, uncalled for. This was revenge. This was an execution.

Thinking about my dad's eyes, I barely notice when Clay removes our clothes. Stepping from my knickers absently, I wonder whether Dustin had the same ears as me too. Or the same mannerisms.

In the shower, the warm spray falls around my shoulders while Clay stands outside of its warmth. Allowing me all its attention.

He lifts me and sets me on the ledge; our eyes are level. And he starts to wash the ash and dirt from my shoulders and across my chest.

I think I lose focus, staring through the stacks of muscles at his chest and the coils down his forearms, staring at the tattoos he refused to explain the last time I asked him. At the large scar that etches from his shoulder to the dip of his neck. The one hehides with a vine.How many more does he have after tonight? How many do they all have?

Suddenly, he lifts my hand and places it over the scar, having obviously noticed my distant gaze. My eyes jump up to meet the intense blue glowing in his. "You asked me once what this was. Would you like to know, sweet girl? Would you like to know the kind of man I really am?”

I know what kind of man you are, Sir.

A dangerous man.

I simply nod, my lips thin, my heart shuddering to scream I don’t care. I accept you. "Yes."

He uses his big hands to caress soap from my fingers over his collarbone down the length of my arm. "No one quite understands, sweet girl, that just like you believed in the moon, I believed in theCosa Nostra.It is—was—my entire life.

“It was what I was born to do. Me. The heir. I had pride in that. I accepted long ago that this was my future… Just this. I wanted it. Was seduced by it. And when you don’t have a choice, your decisions become remarkably clear. Life becomes black and white.”

He continues to wash me as he speaks. "When I was your age, I was just out of boarding school, and for the first time in my entire adolescence, I was staying in the family home. As part of my initiation, I was ordered to kill a girl. Jimmy and your father told me it was an honour of mine to finish this job for my family. They were proud when I accepted. I had presumed, as I always did, that byfamily, they meant my father and my brothers and theCosa Nostra.”

His brows draw in. "Shewas the daughter of a man who knew too much. So,sheknew too much. That is all they told me, and that was enough for me then. I didn't question it. I accepted their words and orders. Your father went with me that day. She was young. Nine or so. And I put a pillow over her head, and I held itdown." He pauses, and my throat tightens. "And I killed her. For them. That is the man I am.”

Tears stream down my cheeks, meeting the water from the showerhead as they slide together down my trembling lips.

He presses his hand over mine, applying pressure to the scar, holding it, protecting it, as if we can heal it together.

His eyes level on me with an intensity and honesty I have never seen in him before. Not like this. "She fought back, little deer." He almost smiles. "She sliced me with some kind of ornament she had hidden under her pillow. And left me with this scar to remember her by… I should have asked questions. I should have spoken up. I never did.”

An ache moves through my chest for him… not her.What kind of person does that make me?

It’s the truth in his blue eyes, the gravelly aftershock to his timbre, that hurts my heart. A heart only whole and healed, trusting and strong, because he loves it. I can’t see this man asbadwhen he is my number one good thing. So, I accept, he’s the villain in that girl’s story, but he’ll never be the villain in mine. "You were following orders. You?—"

"You cannot make excuses for this, little deer," he grounds, wanting my disdain, my shock and horror. "I was exactly your age when I blindly followed that order. I was not a child. Why do you think I told you this? Why now?”

“I don’t know.”

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