Page 433 of Shadowblood Souls
I hit a sore spot—but she’s managed to prod one of my own too.
My shoulders stiffen with a flare of anger I can’t contain. “I guess you don’t know much either, then. The guys I grew up with are closer than family—closer than I bet you or your boss could understand. We’veonlyhad each other. And here you are trying to tear us apart. What does that say about you?”
Toni glares at me for a moment before she visibly reins in her irritation with me. “Enough. Let’s get going. He won’t be happy if you make him wait.”
She heads down the hall again, and I stride after her, following her down the grand staircase. “Why should I care about making him happy? He doesn’t give a shit about what I want. Is he going to start killing off my ‘family’ over a five-minute delay now? That’s the kind of lunatic you’re supporting?”
This time, Toni doesn’t even answer. Her silence gnaws at me.
Something I said got to her. I provoked her out of her professional front.
How can I do it again?
“They don’t know, do they?” I venture, speaking quickly to get as much out as I can before she interrupts again. “Hisfamily. You’re helping him go behind their backs while they figure?—”
Toni lets out a laugh so dark it sends a chill through my bones. “You really don’t have any clue.”
I lift my chin. “Then how about you tell me? Explain to me how this job you’re doing is anything other than horrific.”
“I don’t have to justify myself to you.”
She ushers me into the drawing room. In another few seconds, she’ll let Balthazar know I’ve arrived, and I won’t get to push any farther.
I fling my arm toward the case that contains Dominic, as still as ever with the medical equipment keeping him stabilized in his coma.
“That’s what Balthazar’s done to my family. To one of the people I love more than anything in the world. You helped him do it. Maybe you can’t be bothered to justify it to me, but if you’re more than a total idiot, someday you’ll have to justify it to yourself.”
Toni looks at Dominic with a faint twist of her mouth that might actually be discomfort. The moment only lasts a couple of beats of my heart before she returns her dark gaze to me, but the edge in her voice has softened.
“I know who I owe and what they deserve,” she says. “We have our own loyalties. You’re best off accepting that.”
She must give some signal, because the screen begins to hum up from the tabletop across the room. Toni marches out through the doorway.
I find myself staring after her, turning over her words in my mind. Who she owes… Her own loyalties…
Something about her phrasing leaves me with the strange sense that it wasn’t Balthazar she was talking about. But who else could she mean?
Could she really see what he’s doing to us as a necessary evil? I’ve certainly slaughtered a lot of people in the interests of protecting the men I’m loyal to.
Of course, those people were outrightattackingus in most of those cases. If Balthazar hadn’t taken us prisoner, we wouldn’t have done a thing to him.
We still haven’t, as much as I’ve burned to.
The screen clicks fully upright. I file my thoughts about Toni away in case they’ll be useful later and focus on the man whose image is blinking into view before me.
Balthazar rests his thick hands on the desk in front of him. My gaze flicks from it to the walls behind him, searching for some clue about where in the villa he is.
Can I decipher the shape of the room’s window from the fall of the light? Guess which floor it’s on from the angle of the beams?
Are there any sounds seeping through the speakers alongside his voice that might help form a clearer picture in my head?
If I knew exactly where he is, I could wait until he summons one of the other shadowbloods to speak and then dash over there. It doesn’t matter that I’d need to smash the window if I’d be gutting him an instant later.
Or I might even be able to shriek his death without so much as leaving the grounds.
“Hello, Riva,” Balthazar says in his throaty baritone. “I’ve been glad to hear about your progress in Matteo’s sessions.”
My fingers flex at my sides, the imagined fatal blow tingling through me. I don’t give a fuck about how glad he is. “I do what I have to do.”
