Page 59 of Taming Seraphine

“Not any more than the others.”

“There were others.”

My breath shallows, and shame settles in my stomach like a stone. After that night, I was trapped. The twins told me I was the most wanted person in New Alderney and I had to keep killing if I wanted their protection.

“Every few months, they’d send me to kill some man. I had to memorize his face and the pictures of his associates. They didn’t even free Gabriel because now I owed them for protecting me from Enzo Montesano’s sons.”

“Shit,” he hisses.

“I’m glad they’re dead, but I wish I was the one who had killed them.”

“Yeah.” He tightens his arms around me. “So do I. That’s why I plan on helping you take down every guard who worked with Capello to destroy your family.”

My eyelids flutter shut, and I melt against his broad chest. For the first time since I arrived in Leroi’s apartment, I feel a sense of peace and hope. Peace, knowing that Leroi will help me slay my demons. Hope at the thought he might help me to be normal, like him.

I’ve never felt so at ease with a man, but I’m not stupid. Men are as changeable as the weather. One moment, you’re basking in the sunshine of their love, thinking it’s going to be warm forever, then it only takes one dark cloud or a gust of wind can ruin things forever. In the space of twenty-four hours, I went from being Dad’s sweet princess to the chew toy of his psychopathic twins.

Leroi’s generosity has an expiry date. I have to make sure to leave him or kill him before he changes his mind. Because he eventually will. I can’t really trust anyone.

“You did well this morning,” he whispers against my ear. “And your rewards are mounting up.”

His words don’t spark any kind of excitement. My eyes open, and I gaze around the rooftop garden, the flowers I once thought vibrant, now dull. All this talk about my past has left me wrung out and drained.

The only way to feel right again is to spill blood.

“Can I see the pictures you gathered of the guards?” I ask.

Leroi helps me to my feet and guides me to a wooden bench where he takes out his phone. With a few taps, he brings up the photos.

The first few faces are unfamiliar and not the ones that haunt my dreams. I’m about to lose hope of ever finding those bastards when I meet a pair of cornflower-blue eyes set within cruel, angular features. They belong to a blond man I last saw lying on the floor of Dad’s office with his throat slit.

“That’s him,” I whisper.

Leroi pauses. “Who?”

“Dad says he was my real father.”

“Raphael Orlando?”

“I only knew him as Raphael,” I mutter. “He was our guard, but he never talked to me.”

Leroi doesn’t speak, instead he lets me stare at the photo for as long as I want. Raphael looks nothing like me, apart from the hair and eyes. Dad was dark-haired with green eyes. He always said I got my looks from Mom, but now, I’m not so sure.

“Do you think he knew?” I ask.

“Your mother certainly did,” Leroi says.

I tear my gaze off Raphael’s picture to meet Leroi’s deep brown eyes. “What makes you think that?”

“Raphael is the name of an archangel, as is Gabriel, and your name is suspiciously close to the word seraphim. The affair probably started before your brother was born.”

My jaw clenches. I had thought the same during my darkest days, when I lay starving and shivering, cursing everyone for my predicament. How could Dad punish Mom’s infidelity when he already had a wife and family?

“Do you think she told Raphael?” I ask.

“It would have been obvious,” Leroi says, mirroring my thoughts. “All of Capello’s children were dark-haired and green-eyed. Raphael probably kept his distance because he suspected you were his.”

I nod, my throat constricting. So, it wasn’t just one father figure who rejected me, but two. Raphael could have taken us and ran but he chose to stay and was killed for it.

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