Page 33 of Crime Lord's Paradise

Lyla had to make a concentrated effort to keep her expression neutral. She had given her mom the space she claimed to need, but the emaciated form beneath the sweats was unacceptable. Beatrice was wasting away, and she wouldn’t allow it.

“I’m not going to let you do this to yourself.”

“If you had any inkling what I went through at the hand of those monsters, you’dleave me alone.”

The last three words were said on a hair-raising screech. Her mother surged to a sitting position with a suddenness that belied her motionless state. Blade inserted himself between them, but Beatrice didn’t even notice. Her whole focus was on Lyla. She leaned forward, deformed face terrible.

“You have noideawhat I’ve been through. Every moment of every day, I’m reliving it. Drugs don’t help. They even follow me in my dreams. Do you know what they did to me? Do you know what they said? How many hours I was bound while they—”

Her mother screamed and ran her nails down her cheek. Lyla leapt forward, but Blade got there first. He yanked her hands down while Beatrice bared her teeth like an animal. Blood slipped down her cheek as she stared at Lyla with a manic gaze.

“I prayed for death. I begged for it and then you come at the last second. How dare you!”

Beatrice tried to lunge, but Blade kept her on the bed. She didn’t even seem to be aware of him.

“You had no right to save me. I wanted to die. Ishouldhave died. You thinkthisis living? A life where I need help? Where no one can look at me? You think I want to live with those animals’ marks all over me? Do you know how many times I was raped?”

She saw her mother’s face go slack as she relived the horror. Her body began to vibrate. Beatrice pressed her face against Blade’s chest and shuddered as she fought her waking nightmare. Lyla wanted to touch and soothe but knew it wouldn’t be welcome and may incite her mom to violence. She watched helplessly until Beatrice lifted her face and shoved Blade away as if he was nothing. It was another indication of just how much she changed. The doctors said the trauma was bound to change her. The woman she faced today had nothing in common with the soft-spoken submissive she had been.

Beatrice jabbed a finger at her. “You bought this house because you feel guilty.”

Lyla’s stomach clenched.

“When your dad and I needed you, you turned from us, and now you offer help? When it’s too late?”

Drool slipped out of her mouth. She wiped it away, but Lyla could see it was going to be a permanent problem because her lips didn’t meet.

“You survived against all the odds. There’s a reason you’re still here,” she whispered.

“Without your father, I have nothing.”

Whatever pity she felt for her mother vanished in an instant. Her mother had Pat on a pedestal that no one could knock him off. Even in death, her mom viewed him as a fucking saint.

“You’re still breathing. You have the ability to regain your strength. Some people are fighting for their lives and here you sit in a dark room, willing yourself to die.”

Blade shot her a quick glance, which she ignored. It had been four months. Four months of worry, sympathy, regret, and guilt. There were things she couldn’t do anything about. She couldn’t change what happened at the safe house. She couldn’t erase what Steven Vega did to her or the city. She couldn’t will away the vicious nightmares or the panic attacks, but this—this was something they could do something about. Beatrice was still here. There could be a different outcome for her. Life was within her grasp, but she turned away from it.

“I’m not going to let you waste away.”

“Watch me,” Beatrice said through clenched teeth. “They raped me in front of your father. He was crying …” Her nails curled, ready to rake down her face again, but when Blade stepped forward, she hissed at him. “They wanted something from him. He promised he would save me. He’s never let me down.” Beatrice ran her hands over her scarred head and then wrapped her arms around herself as she rocked. “I know this has something to do with Gavin. Pat would never get mixed up in something like that. He never would have let this happen to me.”

Lyla’s hands balled into fists.

“Is he really dead, or is Gavin torturing him somewhere?”

Beatrice perched on the edge of her bed, crazed eyes fixed on Lyla. She seemed more animal than human.

“Tell me the truth, Lyla!”

“He’s dead,” she said.

“How do you know?”

Her chest swelled with the need to say what had been festering in her for months. She would never get over Pat’s betrayal, and her mother’s blind naiveté and faith in him enraged her.

She stepped forward. Her hand moved to the tie at the back of her neck. She tugged on the string and let the high neck top of her dress fall. It took Beatrice several seconds to register what she’d done. Lyla waited until her eye dropped to the eight stab wounds and three slashes over six inches in length that decorated her chest. They were nothing compared to her mother’s scars, but they had clearly been inflicted to kill. A flicker of some emotion wiped the loathing from her mother’s face.

“You think I know nothing of pain and suffering?” Lyla whispered. “I know more than you think I do. I’ve been stabbed, raped, and hunted. I begged for death too, and I didn’t get it.”

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