Page 70 of Elicit (Decadence After Dark)

“Try me,” I seethe.

“I owed big favors to bad men after we arrived in America. And I gladly paid the price for our freedom and your safety. I did what I had to do to survive. To escape the shithole your mother and I grew up in. She wanted a different life for you, and so did I.”

“You tortured an innocent young girl! I heard what she said to you last night. Heard what you did to her.” My sentences are laced with disgust. I’m ashamed we share the same DNA.

“I did what I was ordered to do,” he defends his actions.

“Break an innocent woman!” I bellow.

“Yes!” he barks back. “She was my best work. The perfect pet.”

I hear London’s distressed sobs in the corner of the room. This trip down memory lane is destroying her.

Amber is standing right next to her, clearly torn, a myriad of emotions playing across her face.

It all ends now.

“Get the fuck out,” I growl at Alistair.

“Jett!” Amber screams in protest.

“Go! Before you can’t walk out of this house on your own.”

“Jett, please!” Amber begs, but there’s no changing my mind.

The room crackles with hostility before anyone moves. Alistair and I stare in contention, a battle of wills. I’m a mess of emotions, trying to understand the person standing before me. The man I considered a father.

“I’ll go, Jetson.” I cringe hearing my real name leave his scorned lips. Alistair creeps around the opposite side of the room, with me watching his every step. In the short seconds it takes to reach the door, I read an entire book of emotions in his eyes. Pride and regret the two main themes. Dueling affections.

As he pauses in the doorway, his gaze lands on Amber before jumping to London. She won’t even steal a glance at him, but Amber can’t peel her eyes away. It’s clear she’s torn.

“Jett, please,” she implores desperately one last time. It breaks my heart. I know how much she loves him. I know how she’s suffered every time he’s gone away. But nothing will change my mind. I not only want him out of my house, but I also want him out of my life.

I shake my head at her authoritatively. “If you want to be with him, you can go, too.” That was harsh. But the truth. If she can still love him knowing the truth, she can’t do it in front of me. Or London, or any of the other women in this house. It sends a dangerous message. That violence is acceptable.

Not under my roof. And not by my own blood.

Not by the man who taught me contradicting values.

Amber and Alistair exchange a silent look, the longing on his face is unrecognizable even to me. If she means anything to him, he’s professing it now.

With an apologetic frown, Amber slides across the wall to the doorway until she slips into Alistair’s arms.

Decision made.

They disappear out of sight together.

My feet are nailed to the floor as I process everything that just happened. Finding out who my uncle really is and what he did to the woman I’m in love with.

A huge part of my foundation just cracked, but it’s nowhere near as devastating as the damage he did to London.

“Jett!” London flies into my arms, nearly knocking me over. Crying against me, she claws at my shirt as if trying to find safety beneath my skin.

“It’s okay.” I wrap her solidly in my arms. “Every monster in your life is finally gone,” I whisper distantly in her ear. Both of us still reeling from the discovery.

I catch Javier slither across the doorway. “Never a dull moment in this house, is there?” he comments vilely.

I sneer malevolently.

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