Page 60 of Destined for Shadows
She lifted her head, giving him a hurt and accusing look. “Why would you go through my stuff?”
“I was curious,” he admitted, coming closer. There was surprise in his expression, as if this was not the response he’d expected.
Her gaze fell on the portrait again. She hadn’t looked at it in years, even when she’d moved into the cabin. It was the last one she’d painted of Faith before her little girl died. There was a reason Cori didn’t keep photos of her daughter out in the open and stored most of them at her mother’s place. Seeing them sent her into a dark place every time.
Tears glazed her eyes as memories of Faith flooded her. Her knees buckled, and she started to fall into the broken shards of her coffee mug. Bartol caught her just before she reached the floor and swept her into his arms. She dazedly recalled that this was the second time in two days he’d done that. As she rested her head on his shoulder, she noted his body was tense but that he still kept her as close as possible. He headed for the couch and gently laid her down across it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, lifting her head to put a pillow under it. “I had no idea you’d react that way about your daughter.”
Cori squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t talk about her. It’s too painful.”
She’d thought confessing everything to Melena had made things better, but she’d been wrong. It only started the healing process and then Griff had stalled it with his continued attacks on her. Maybe she’d never get over it. At least, not enough to reminisce about her daughter without feeling like she was falling apart.
“How did you know that was a portrait of my daughter?” Cori asked, staring up at him. He seemed even taller with her lying down on the couch.
Bartol cleared his throat. “Your mother called yesterday. I told her you were sick and that I was taking care of you. She went on to interrogate me to see if I would be a proper suitor for you. In the midst of that, she mentioned your daughter and how you lost her.”
“Great.” Cori rubbed her forehead. Of course, her mother would spill the beans on her past to a stranger without thinking and give him the third degree. “If she liked you, I’m never going to hear the end of it. She’s determined to get me married off again no matter how many times I tell her it’s never happening.”
Bartol chuckled. “That is the impression I had as well.”
Cori dreaded this next question, but she had to ask. “Did my mom like you?”
“I’m afraid she may have despite my best efforts to dissuade her.” Bartol took a seat on her coffee table. “Melena did not make matters any better when I handed her the phone. She extolled virtues about me that I did not even know I possessed.”
“I’m going to kill her,” Cori swore.
“Melena or your mother?”
She had to think about that for a moment. “Both.”
“I suggest you wait a couple of days until you’re feeling better first,” Bartol suggested, a smile playing at his lips.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. I sure as hell screwed it up the first time I tried offing someone.” Cori covered her face with her hands. “For so long, I regretted what I did to Griff, but now I wish I’d gotten it right. How screwed up is that?” She let out a heavy breath and dropped her arms to her sides.
“I believe most of us wish you’d finished him before, so you are not alone.”
“But maybe I made him into the monster he is now.” And if she had, she had no one to blame except herself.
Bartol gave her a censorious look. “Can you honestly say he wasn’t a monster before?”
“No,” she admitted, memories of his violent temper coming to mind.
When Griff got angry, he lost all reason. He’d enjoyed taking all his frustrations out on her and making her think everything was all her fault. By the time she left him, she’d learned to hide her pain—physically and emotionally—or else he would only hit her harder. Griff’s only saving grace was that he never hurt their daughter. In fact, he wouldn’t even touch Cori if Faith was around or awake to see it. He held back his most violent outbursts for when it was just the two of them. When their daughter was around, he doted on her, buying her toys and taking her to the park to play often. That was part of what had kept Cori with him for so long.
“He killed her, didn’t he?” Bartol asked.
Her throat swelled, and it was all she could do to respond. “Yes, though not intentionally. He’d been drinking, and the roads were bad because of a snowstorm.”
“He shouldn’t have been driving at all, but especially not with a young girl in the vehicle.”
“No, he shouldn’t have, but that’s not what made me try to kill him.” Cori took a shaky breath. “It was his lack of remorse after the fact.” Then she went on to tell Bartol how she found Griff that night.
The nephilim stared out the window, silent. She wondered what he was thinking. Did he see her as a cold, ruthless killer or a mother who’d lost her mind after seeing her dead baby girl? She’d tried making excuses for herself over the years. It would have been easier if she could justify her actions, but she never could fully convince herself. In the end, she’d made a choice, and she had to live with the consequences even as they came back to haunt her now.
“Griff sounds no better than Kerbasi,” Bartol finally said.
As much as Cori wanted to hate the guardian, he was at least trying to become better. Griff, on the other hand, had taken his second chance at life and used it to get revenge. Still, she and Bartol had more in common than she’d realized until now. Both of them had been beaten and broken by men who enjoyed seeing their pain. She just didn’t have to suffer for as long as the man next to her had, or live with scars everyone could see, but she did lose the most precious thing in the world to her—Faith. Cori would have suffered anything to get her daughter back.
