Page 11 of The Last Time You Break Me

“And how did you do that?” Dom asked with narrowed eyes as he swiped a crimson strand of hair from her cheek, and tucked it behind her ear. He pulled out a chair but she refused to sit, shrugging off his attempts to help her.

I gripped her by the waist and pulled her into me before spinning her and pushing her into the seat. I lowered with her so that she didn’t hurt when I forced her to sit. She stared back at me with such a closed-off look, a prolonged moment of disconnect, that my heart constricted.

“By allowing them to kidnap me,” she began before looking away as she pushed away my hands. “Luring them into a sense of power while I interrogated them from the electric chair.” She winked. Her smile was wicked, and her father looked livid at her disregard for her safety. “Left them thinking I was weak and cute, right before I got inside the mind of the smarter one who knew something was up. I bled for them. Then I made them both bleed for me. Right until I got exactly what I wanted and slit their throats.” As she pushed to her feet once again, I growled lowly at her defiance as I clenched my fists at my side to keepfrom reaching for her again. “You’d be proud of me, Pa. I did exactly what you taught me. I let them believe that I was afraid.”

“And were you?” he asked slowly. “Afraid?”

She just stared back at him with an impassive look etched onto her fierce features.

“You could have been killed. That was reckless and impulsive. I fear that I have taught you nothing! What if they didn’t torture you? What if they went straight for the goddamn kill?” he shouted as he tried to hold himself back from blowing a fuse and making this situation worse for her. But that anger, that fear he had kept hidden inside about losing one of his children was raw and I could see it threatening the surface of his calm.

“Then we would have been having a funeral,”she deadpanned, staring him down. “I needed to do this and I couldn’t tell anyone about it because we were running out of time. I wasn’t going to risk this family and I sure as fuck was not going to break bread with a traitor. What’s done is done, and now we have five days to prepare for war. So again, I ask. Is the chair ready for me now?”

Dom shook his head, grief-stricken. He clenched his eyes tightly and turned his back to the rest of the room. “Go and get cleaned up. Have the nurse tend to you, we will discuss this later,” he demanded and with a delicate shrug on her deceptively fierce shoulders, she turned on her heel and walked out.

My teeth ground together, I could feel them crack as I bit down with more force than I was sure they could withstand. “Tell me you’re not going to give her a goddamn seat. She is a brat, Dom. A liability. Heading into the lion’s den is not how we do things around here. She will end up getting us all killed!”

“Relax, Bones. My sister can handle anything. She is a psycho after all,” Dallas inserted with a heavy thump on my back and a smug fucking smirk on his lips. I shook him off, taking a step closer to Dom.

He turned to me, eyes heavy with worry before they flickered back to the body. “Boys, clean this up. Not a word about what happened here today. The rest of you, get back to work and inform me of any changes. Same rules apply. Keep your mouth shut about the traitor. Reg, with me in my office,” he ordered and everyone followed suit.

I stalked down the hallway and into his home office. The darkness of it was a welcome sight as the shadows were thicker in this room. I always loved the shadows. It was an easier place to be yourself and to play with the monsters inside your head.

“She deserves the seat, Reg. She has done everything I have asked of her. Despite her reckless behavior.” He sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose before taking a seat as he opened the bottom drawer to his desk and pulled out a crystal glass and a decanter of fire-starting whisky. He pulled out another glass before he poured it and offered it to me.

“She isn’t ready. You know what it means to bring her in officially,” I snap, it was a hard fate as I tried to keep my temper in check when all I wanted to do was slaughter and maim. I brought the glass to my lips and took a heavy sip.

“Why are you so against this, Reg? Is there something going on I need to know about? Has she done something?”

I gritted my teeth as I flexed my jaw in frustration. “Question is, why aren’t you? There was a time you would have killed if she stepped foot anywhere near this mess. After the promise you made…” I started and stopped immediately as he threw the glass and it shattered against the wall by my head. The shards fell to the ground and the sound was as loud as hearing a pin drop.

“Be careful, Reggie. Do not speak to me about my promises,” he growled and I took a step back knowing that this was a wound I shouldn’t poke. I knew the history. I knew what had happened. This one was better left alone.

When I nodded my head, he glared at me pointedly expecting my answer. “No. She hasn’t done anything. But she is the youngest, Dom. She has more of her life to live before we make her a target for our enemies. You know how I love those kids.”

He waved a dismissive hand in the air as he scoffed, “Please. She is already a target. You know they call her the wraith. She is more feared than any of us. She has surpassed her lessons and learned all I could have taught her. She is ready to take her place beside her brothers. Beside her father. Even if we both deplore the thought. I can’t hold her back any longer. You never protested like this when we brought the boys in,” he noted, thick brow raised.

I ignored the prompt. “You call this holding her back? You know you were more brutal on her than you were on any of the boys. This is a mistake. I’m telling you now, she is not ready,” I stated, which caused his head to snap up as his eyes bored into mine with a brewed, unchecked fury at my outburst.

“Then make her ready. Because by the next meeting and when we head out for war, she will be standing right beside me. It’s done, Reg. I have made my decision. Now sit down and have another drink.”

Chapter Four

Lara

Play with Fire - Sam Tinnesz

Istood under the cool spray of water as I washed away all of the blood from my assault. The sting made me feel alive like the numbness would soon retreat and leave me once again with some kind of feeling, even if it was experienced differently to other people.

My father had called me a psychopath once. He knew who and what I was from the start. He knew that I may have been broken, but I was something that could become weaponized too.

I didn’t resent him for the way he trained me. I envy him for it. Psychopath or not, I didn’t have it in me to ever hurt my family. It was one lesson I was yet to learn.

Crimson rivers swirled around my ankles as it stained the water red that ran down the drain.

I scrubbed my skin raw, it opened the wounds, but I needed that man’s touch erased from my flesh. When I was done,bleeding and needing to redress the wounds again, I stepped from the shower and reached for the towel.

I stopped, arm outstretched with the softest towel in my grasp when a dark figure filled the doorway to my bathroom. Reggie stood there, a dark and hungry look on his hard and cold-etched face. He looked demented, crazed even and there was something about those gray eyes that made me want to shiver in fear, laced with a hell of a lot of ecstasy.

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