Page 99 of Bottles & Blades

Smart. Confident. Able to navigate the phone calls and caregivers and nurses with a cool head and calm focus.

It’s impressive.

If she seemed to have the least bit of interest, I’d be doing my level best to bring her into Titan, to groom her to be another Marie.

She’d be fantastic.

But she has a different path.

So, all I can do is buckle in and help where I can.

“I don’t get it.”

I tear my gaze away from Tiff and her dad, from the gentle way Diego interacts with her, and look down at Tiff’s mom.

Roberta Hernandez is a bitch.

She’s ill and she’s old.

But she’s a bitch, and it’s ground into the lines of her face, built into the careful way Tiff tiptoes around her, into the wide berth her husband gives her.

As though one wrong move might set her off.

Hadset her off.

Fuck, just remembering sprinting into the kitchen and seeing her mother with hands on her…

I wanted to commit murder.

Luckily, I have plenty of experience with pushing down those urges, with clinging tightly to my control, no matter how filled with rage I am.

“You don’t get what?” I ask quietly.

Her gaze is trained on Tiff. “What’s so special about her?”

Another wave of rage, but I don’t allow it to escape.

Instead, I shake my head, say, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Deep brown eyes, so much like Tiff’s come to mine. They’re completely lucid—unlike when I’d walked into that scene in the kitchen, unlike during the long minutes it took to calm her when I’d gone to check on her afterward—and because of that, I don’t mince words.

“That you can’t see the treasure you helped to create.”

Those eyes flare. Not with pride, but with anger, and I shake my head at Tiff’s mom.

“It’s sad,” I mutter. “Pathetic really, that you’ve decided to hate something so beautiful.”

“You’re just like him,” she spits, glaring over at Tiff and Diego.

I’ve spent the last few hours in this house, seen the way father and daughter interact. Diego loves his daughter and makes no bones about it. Same as I know Roberta’s anger at Tiff isn’t a new behavior. Maybe heightened by the sickness in her brain, the dementia that’s making her lose time and space and memories.

But not new.

“Seems to me,” I say, “that being like him isn’t all that bad.”

She sniffs.

I crouch again, hold her eyes. “I need you to know that if you put your hands on her again, if you so much as make her cry again, you’ll be dealing with me.”

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