Page 150 of Reckless Hearts

My pulse skips. Then her eyes dart to the rack of knives on the counter, and my heart starts hammering in my chest.

“And you and your fucking boyfriend got himkilled.”

The second she lunges for the knives, I’m bolting out the kitchen door. I scream as I hear her charging after me and crash into the living room with her right on my heels. I cry out when I feel the nick of a blade against my arm, sending me tumbling into the hallway by the front door—

Which immediately slams open as a dark shape comes exploding through it. The shape slams into Victoria, wrenching the blade from her hand, twisting it, and then pinning her hard to the floor, pressing the tip of her own knife against her throat.

“Stay the fuck down,” Deimos growls.

34

DEIMOS

“Victoria”—orAllison—pales when the edge of the blade presses against her throat. She doesn’t fight me at all. In fact, whatever fight was in her before floods out as fast as the tears that flow down her face.

“I’m so sorry!” she sobs.

Part of who and what I am is my ability to see through the masks people wear, as if they weren’t there at all. It’s how I could tell six years ago that Spencer wasn’t going to say a thing, and how I know he’s a genuinely good man now.

It’s also how I can tell this isn’t some act from Allison now that she doesn’t have the upper hand.

She’s justdone.

I’m not, though.

“You’resorry?” I snarl. “For trying to fuckingkillher?!”

“Please!” she begs, bawling big ugly tears as she looks past me to Dahlia. “I’m so fucking sorry! I…I don’t know what the knife was all about. I wasn’t planning to hurt you!”

“But youdid,” I hiss, cold malice in my tone, as I turn to glance at the small cut on Dahlia’s arm.

It’s barely a scratch. But fuck that. This crazy cunt could have snipped a single hair from Dahlia’s head, and I’d be acting the same way.

“I didn’t mean to! I just…” She flinches, sucking in air through her hitched breaths. “I get these impulses sometimes, and they’re almost impossible to control…” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m bipolar! And that’s the truth. You can look in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom if you don’t believe me!”

I glance at Dahlia. “Go look.”

She nods, still hugging herself and shaking as she disappears out of the room. A minute later, she walks back in holding a prescription bottle. “Depakote,” she says quietly.

As well as being used to treat Epilepsy, it’s a mood stabilizer commonly prescribed for bipolar disorder.

My gaze swivels back to lance into Allison. She shrinks under my fierce gaze, still crying.

“Please don’t kill me…”

I should. Another version of me, from not so long ago, would have. Not now.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I hiss quietly. “Because I understand privileged and yet broken lives better than you will ever know, believe me. But you’re leaving New York, forever.”

“But I have school—”

“Lying would be averyill-advised idea right now, Allison.”

She goes silent.

She doesn’t go to Columbia. Or any college, for that matter. I had a cop I know who owes me a favor look her up on my way over here. She’s just a former trust fund brat with a backpack stuffed full of psychiatric issues, and an unhealthy obsession with a dead guy who never felt the same way about her that she did about him.

“And I know you’ve got that spark of vengeance still burning in your heart,” I say coldly.

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