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“David never touched her.”

A sob shakes me to my core.

I did not fail my daughter.

Tears falling down my cheeks, Ifinally reach for her.

He hands her to me, gently placing her in my arms, and then I curl back in on myself, sheltering her from the world that’s so horrible and cruel to the women of the Shadow Domain.

I kiss her sweet forehead, closing my eyes to match hers.

My tearsfall off my cheeks and drip down onto hers. Each drop carries a mother’s love for her to take across the ferry of the Styx or perhaps across the bridge and into Niflhel. I do not know which of the three underworlds she’ll end up in, so I pray to Hades, Hel, and Arawn to let her into the good fields. To judge her soul to be worthy of finding happiness in the afterlife.

Holding her close, I kiss her for the last time.

Then take her little body into my shadows.

Twenty-Two

CADEN

14August1947

Each pulse of my heart demands I go back to my wife, to hold her as she cries in her sleep. It hasbeentwo hours since we said our goodbyes and Sau wrapped our baby girl in her shadows.A mere half hour since she fell into a fitful sleep. Ten seconds since Myers called me into the hall.

A Boss does not have the luxury to grieve.

It is a lesson I’ve learned over and over these last thirty years, and I have never been more ready to just burn this entire Family to the ground.

I used to think we could actually be afamily,us against not just the werewolves and vampires but the entire world that wishes to see us burn.

Instead, the fighting comes more from within our own halls. The betrayals. The pain. The fucking pitchforks and pre-strung nooses.

Myers’ eyes are as raw as mine.He stands before me in ared-splattered shirt, his knuckles dripping both his blood and David’s. He beat him unconscious, but he didn’t kill him.

“He’s going to be a newFamilycommodity,”he said when I finally found the strength to step out of David’s ensuite. “For every hour for the rest of his life, he will be sold to be tortured and raped and humiliated.”

For the first time, I did not protestthe Familygetting involved in human trafficking.I still think it is beneath us, fit only for the savage vampireswho aretoo uncouth to handle the finer crimes of blackmail and extortion. But it is a punishment fit for a nobody. A coward who prayed on thosetooweak to defend themselves.

Exhaling harshly, my brother holds up the tip of a severed penis. “You said you promised Sau his head.”

It is not the head she meant, but it is the only one she’ll get. I take it from him with my telekinesis, not wanting to touch it with my own flesh. “How did we miss what he was doing to her, Myers?” I ask softly, guilt crushing my lungs, my words, my entire fucking body until I want to just fall to the floor and scream.

He swallows hard, and I can see him struggling to find words to comfort me despite his own guilt.“David creates illusions, Caden,” he finally says. “He fooled us all.”

“But I’m–” My throat closes. “Washer father. I should have –” I shake my head as I try to remember any sign he gave that I just missed. Any lingering touches. Any bad feelings in my gut. Anything at all.

But all I can remember is how much laughter he pulled from my children. How they rushed over to see him every time he came to visit. They love him so much. His death is going to devastatethem.

“I should’ve noticed,” I say.

Myersdoesn’t say anything this time,but I don’t turn from him even though silence bangs loud between us. Iknowthisis not what he called me out intothe hall for.

He entered David’s room for a reason –one he has yet to share.

But I don’t push him to speak, too exhausted to want to deal with anything further. Too tied up by responsibility, though, to take my leave until the morning.

As much as I have grown to hate the Shadow Domain, it is my wife’s legacy. Mychildren’slegacy.