Page 75 of Sinner's Secret

“My talent is with bladed weapons, not guns or grenade launchers.” He shrugged. “I also didn’t want to give myself the opportunity to kill anyone I didn’t have to. Killing can be as addictive as any drug you can name.”

“So, why did you choose the military?”

“I wanted...I wanted to do something...” his voice trailed off. He wasn’t even sure why. He just knew he had to do something.

“Useful?” she asked, watching his face. “You wanted to serve?” she added.

He sucked in a breath and let it out slowly before nodding.

“Okay, that’s fair. Where were you before that?”

“I was in Slovenia, living in a shack on an old, old farm. I’d been there a long time and people were starting to notice that the man in the woods was the same man in the woods for way too long.”

“So, you’d been at the edge of the world for a long time before you came to the USA?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

She thought for almost a minute before asking her next question. “Who was behind your wife’s death?”

His last memory of her rose up to the front of his mind. She had been pushed out of one of the highest windows in the castle, her body left to rot on the stones below.

A silent roar of pain filled his ears and rage flashed through his body, hot and electric.

A warm hand on his arm distracted him for a moment. Long enough for Nika’s words to penetrate the walls of agony surrounding him.

“Who could have benefited from her death and your destruction?”

“I wasn’t destroyed, I’m still here,” he could hear that he was breathing hard, but couldn’t seem to control it. “Always here.”

“That crime destroyed your life as you knew it. It destroyed whatever you and your family were creating. It removed you from the world in every way that matters and put you in a prison of your own making for hundreds of years.” Her voice echoed through his thoughts, breaking through the worn paths of thinking in his mind. “Someone benefited.”

She reached up with one hand and turned his face, so he had to meet her gaze. “Someone believes they’re going to benefit now.”

He thought of his family, vampires every single one. “After I lost my mind, no one was able to step into the gap. The church took control of Europe. A couple of vampires attempted to establish power bases, but they were torn apart and burned. We went into hiding after that. A couple of people asked me to re-establish my titles, go to war with regular humans, but I refused.”

“And things were quiet until now?”

“Yeah. At least, I think so. I didn’t pay any attention to what was going on in the world until I left Slovenia.”

“Someone benefited from your fall from grace. It might have been a small thing, or revenge, or because they enjoyed watching your fall.”

“I like that description, fall from grace is exactly what happened to me,” he said on a grunt. “I can think of no one.”

“What about Yvgeny?”

“No, he was my trusted lieutenant. He was with me when it happened and tried to support me even though I was insane with grief. If it weren’t for him, I’m sure a mob of regular people would have burned me at the stake.”

“He saved you?”

“I was so drunk, I couldn’t defend myself and I didn’t want to. Yvgeny broke into the prison they had me in and literally carried me off.”

“Does he benefit now in some way?”

“You saw what happened to his favorite seedy motel. Whatever is going on might result in him losing everything he’s built here.”

“Who else?”

“Nika, there’s approximately two hundred vampires spread out across the world. We don’t have time to put them all in a spreadsheet and list their pros and cons.”

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