Page 70 of Reaper & Ruin
“He’s alive,” I said again, my voice steady even as my chest tightened. “I swear it. I know where he’s been all these months, and he’s fine. Trust me—father is wrong.”
Her lips trembled, and the tears that had been clinging to her lashes finally spilled over, streaking her cheeks. “Emilio…”
“Gio is not dead?” Violet whimpered as she stared at me, lips quivering. “Do you promise?”
“I promise.” I wiped some of the tears off her face and tugged the end of her braid. “You just need to be a brave girl, and help look after mama whilst I’m gone. When I come back, everything will be fine again. Okay?”
She stared at me as she wiped the tears off her cheeks and did her best to smile. “Okay, Emi. I promise to be brave.”
I glanced at my mama, seeing a thousand questions in her stare that I had no answer for.
Not yet, anyway.
“I need your help to get into father’s study.” I drawled. “And I need you to trust me. Trust that I’m not going to let you get hurt again.”
She blinked a few times, pulling herself together. Then she nodded, swallowing hard as she said the words that would either help me fix things or get her killed by a man that she never should have been forced to marry, “Okay, baby. I can help. Tell me what you need, and I’ll do it.”
Chapter Twenty Three, No Loyalty
Danika sat with one hand loosely gripping the wheel, her other arm resting on the doorframe, fingers drumming lazily. Gio had gone into the gas station, and now it was just her and me in the cramped car. The air between us felt like it was shrinking, growing heavier with every second of quiet that was driving me insane.
I wanted to stab her in the face and watch as she bled to death. I also wanted to hug her and say sorry for leaving her behind when I’d faked my death. Both options were equally good to me. Especially when she opened her mouth.
“How did you pull Heaven?”She clicked her tongue.“She’s beautiful, and I don’t just mean in looks. I mean, she’s nice. She talks to strangers, helps them out. She lets them live when it could have cost her everything—and she’s a walking rainbow. None of that fits you. You’re boring, dark and mean.”
My gut twinged. There was an odd sort of recognition to her words. Like a bad dream I’d had more than once beingmentioned as fact. But even though my brows furrowed, I still snapped back,“You’ve met her once—”
“Wrong.”She cut me off, hand waving.“I stole her. A few months back, when Reaper’s dad first hired me and I found out you weren’t dead. I wanted to do a test run to see how easy it was to kidnap her and piss you off. Turns out it was way too easy. Almost boring, really.”
My gut twinged harder. Pulse racing. There was no fucking chance she was telling the truth because if she was, it meant I’d slacked in my care of Heaven. I’d failed and not listened to my instincts, even when they’d been screaming at me that something was wrong.
My heart pounded in my chest.“You’re lying. I don’t—”
She yanked a knife free from her jacket, slamming it down into the leather of the center console, barely half an inch from my hand.“Don’t call me a liar, you self-serving, traitorous little cunt.”She snarled.
My jaw ticked, but I reworded myself as I tried to wade through sluggish memories to figure out what was fact and not just a nightmare.“I don’t remember that shit happening. I think I would know if my girl was kidnapped.”
“You were drugged, dumbass. I shot you with a tranq gun, and shot Reaper too. Then I kidnapped Blue, chucked her in my dungeon, and was ready to go ahead and turn her into a pumpkin before I sent her back to you with a ribbon on. And I drugged you again, so you wouldn’t know I was playing a game of chase.”
My temper flared harder, but I wasn’t in the mood to be stabbed, so I tried to rein it in.“Then why didn’t you hurt her? Why did you send her home perfectly fine?”
“Because she was nice. I fucking told you.”Her eyes rolled, and for a moment I debated risking the knife so I could throttle her.“If I kill a nice girl to get back at you, it doesn’t fill me withjoy. It just makes me feel like even more of a worthless bitch.”She ran a hand over her face.“I’m already dead inside; I didn’t want to add to it. I figured it would make me feel better if I made you dead instead.”
There wasn’t a lot I could say to that, so I tried to be as petulant as I had been as a teenager.“You can’t kill me. I can take you in a fight.”
“Why do you think your boy toy is here?”She laughed.“I think I can take you, but on the off chance I can’t, Giovanni De Pretty is here to make sure you behave and play my game until it’s over.”
It was hard to work her out. I remembered that vividly. She said one thing, but did another. Got bored at the drop of a hat. Everything with Danika was a game—one that only she knew the rules of. But I was going to try my best, and the second I had a chance, or a mere inkling of an opening that wouldn’t harm either of the people I cared about, I was going to take it.
“So you’re not here because of his father? You’re not going to finish the job you were hired to do?”
“Meh.”She yawned as she kicked her feet up on the dashboard, careful not to kick the cactus she had nearby, in a tiny terracotta pot.“Depends on how the day goes.”
I switched tactics, trying to play on her emotions more than the common sense I was sure she did not have.“You should feel bad if you hurt him. He’s not a killer—all the things Reaper got credit for were done by me.”
She shrugged, entirely unbothered.“I won’t feel bad for killing him.”She snickered.“I’d feel bad for that brother of his, though. If I weren’t busy being murderous, I’d climb Emilio like a tree. Have you seen the size of him? He’s absolutely delicious.”
Ignoring half of her bullshit, I tried to work out her endgame. She was clearly going to drag things out and try to have as much ‘fun’ as she could. But to what end? Were we goingto be tortured, and forced into agony? Handed over to Giorgio? Or was she just going to lock us in her dungeon, never letting us escape?
