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My heart skips a beat.

“I’m just looking for some information,” I say, carefully, my eyes on the gun.

“Well, as I said,” he murmurs, stepping in, “you won’t find anything.”

I don’t like his tone, and more than that, I don’t like the gun in his hand. He is scaring me, there is a coldness in his eyes that makes me uneasy.

“Death, what’s going on?” I ask, moving around behind the desk.

“The more I thought about it, the more things just didn’t add up...”

He moves closer, I take a step back.

“What are you talking about?”

“You knew your mother was dead, but more than that, you weren’t even shocked. So, I started digging a little deeper, and it turns out...you were the last person she saw before she went ‘missing’.”

No.

Ohno.

My heart thumps against my chest as I frantically try to figure out how the hell I’m going to get out of this. He is going to kill me, I can see it in his eyes. I came here to avoid doing just that, and all along, he wasn’t even going to hesitate. He will take my life to avenge hers, and for a stupid moment, I actually thought I mattered to him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, as my eyes scan the room, desperately trying to find a way out.

“Oh, but you do. You do because you’re the one who killed her.”

I meet his gaze. “Death...”

He laughs, bitterly. “Part of me gets it, you know? She was a terrible mother. I know it, she knew it and you knew it. Yet, she kept you alive through some of the most dangerous times in your life. If it wasn’t for her, you would have been sold off a long time ago.”

What a load of crap.

She didn’t sell me off because I was her daughter and nothing less. If I was a random stranger on the street, I would have been thrown out with the rest of them. If that’s what helped her sleep at night, then I’m happy for her, but she could never take the claim that she was ever protecting me because that is simply not true.

“I’m her child, she had no need to protect me from being sold off. I shouldn’t have been a consideration to begin with. Nothing you say will make me believe she is any less the monster I know she was.”

“Was?”

He takes another step forward, the gun swinging into his palm now so he can get a better grip on it.

Death is going to kill me.

“You know what’s hilarious about this situation?” I say, moving around the desk as he slowly stalks closer. If I can get him away from the door, I might be able to run. “Is that I came here to kill you. Marek told me that’s all I had to do for my freedom, but I was truly beating myself up wondering how I could ever live with myself if I did it. What a fool I am.”

Death’s eyes flicker. “I will deal with Marek once I’ve dealt with you. Nobody will take my life from me again.”

“I thought of you as a father,” I say, taking another step. “I know you always had her back, but I truly thought you had some compassion in your heart for me. Turns out I was wrong.”

His eyes flash with something I can’t quite make out, I would almost say hurt and possibly fear, but there is no way that Death is afraid. Nothing scares him. Nothing.

“There is only one person in this world I love, and you took her from me. You were nothing. Youarenothing.”

His words hurt more than I ever expected they would.

“All this time, I was just a thorn in your side, wasn’t I?”

He shrugs. “I dealt with you because I had no other choice, but if I could have chosen, I would have had you removed a long time ago. Our lives were better without you in them.”

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