Page 72 of Cruel Lies

Not even if you wanted to fuck them.

Especiallyif you wanted to fuck them.

"It’s a damn good thing you passed along all the good-looking genes to me before life sucked them out of you."

Dante’s grip faltered for a split second as his brain caught up to the words I’d just uttered. "Who are you?" he hedged, his eyes narrowing dangerously as he looked from me, to Angel, and then back again, his hand tremoring slightly at the realization we weren’t one of his dealer’s henchmen groups. "You’re not with Hector, are you?"

"Ding ding ding, give the man a prize." I laughed hysterically, eyeing Angel as he staunchly avoided my gaze. "Bet you never thought you’d see me, huh, pops?"

The dig at his relation to me struck home—his fragile male ego. I felt the pressure of the gun to my head increase as his rage built. It was the opposite of progress, and had me switching around my entire plan.

I just had to open my damn mouth and piss him off, didn’t I?

"You’d better let the girl go, Dante, or what Hector would do to you will begin to look like child’s play to what you’ll look like when I’m finished with you."

He wasn’t aggravated. In fact, he sounded fuckingbored.I was worth nothing to him, just a pawn in this game, a chess piece he’d had to drag along with him because his brother said so.

I was in the way.

"Is there even a bullet in the gun, Dante?" His eyes lifted to mine and then flicked away before I could read what lay in their depths. "I doubt a man like you has enough money to rub together to buy a bullet, let alone a full clip."

As expected, my father lifted the gun to the ceiling and fired off a shot, coating us in plaster crumbs and dust as we both coughed and sputtered. His hand slipped from my shoulder, and I took the opportunity life handed me and slipped from his grip, kicking his gun from the sweaty palm he held out conveniently. Angel watched it skitter across the room with an air of disinterest, and I beat Dante to the fucking thing byinches,only for him to laugh maniacally when I pointed the thing at him.

"The pretty boy is right, girl. There was only one bullet. You can’t hurt me with that thing?—"

I moved to bring it against his temple in a smash-and-run move, but as if life was determined to deny me any pleasure in his comeuppance, a blade appeared in the middle of his throat, pressed so tightly against the skin that blood welled up in a line, trailing over the slick steel blade and dripping down his chest like a blooming flower of pain.

The threat was very suddenly real for him.

And behind him stood Angel, a feral look on his face, his lips split in a malicious grin, those violet eyes flashing dangerously as he forced Dante to his feet and dragged him a safe distance from me.

"Now, I’m only going to ask this question once. Did you give anyone information about your daughter?"

Dante looked ready to piss himself, his fingers not quite touching his throat, shaking uncontrollably now that he’d been disarmed and defeated. "No one. I didn’t even know the bitch survived that beating the loan sharks gave her mama when she was knocked up." He eyed me with no small amount of undisguised, unfiltered lust. "She’d catch a pretty penny for a man like Hector, though, daughter or no."

"She’s not for sale," Angel growled, and with that, he sliced the man’s throat in front of me and let his body fall to the floor, bleeding out with the sound of wet gurgles echoing behind us as he picked me up off the floor and carried me from the room into the sunlight of the outside world again.

I didn’t lose my breakfast, at least, so there was that. The world spun around me, but I didn’t get sick. That was the only consolation I had before Angel set me on a nearby ledge and ran his hands over my body, inspecting me for marks, damage, whatever.

"Did he hurt you?" There was a hint of concern in his voice, but that was all for show. All for his own concern, so that Rowan wouldn’t think he’d let me come to harm for the fun of it. "Harper!"

I shook my head as thoughts swirled in my head. Thoughts I shouldn’t have to replay in my head.

The welling up of that dark red blood as the blade cut him clean through. The wet gurgles as he fell to the floor. The cocky smile on Angel’s face as he threatened the man with the same knife he eventually took his life with. The way his eyes flashed as he ended another man’s life without hesitation.

His arms around me as he carried me from the carnage.

The realization that my fingerprints were on that gun.

Shit.

Shit.

"The gun," I muttered, unsure how to tell him to get rid of it or wipe the prints. "I touched it."

"I’m not worried about the damn gun, Harper. I asked if he hurt you."

"I’m fine," I spat, suddenly hating myself for the way I lit up like a firefly when his hands touched me, even informally. "The gun, Angel-"

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