CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Viola and Graham spent the next few days in the dwelling together, sleeping, eating, wandering, chatting. Graham was chomping at the proverbial bit to get started, but Viola impressed upon him the importance of a rejuvenating period between instances of intense action. “I never took more than one kill every few days,” she explained, “not in the entirety of my career. You never really get used to it, you know? And Rowan knew that. So. We rest, and then we go.”

Graham let things go her way, seemingly content to take her lead so long as she ultimately got the job done. And he was enjoying showing her around the dwelling, introducing her to the den mothers and their Urslings. She stared openly when a baby accidentally shifted into a bear cub, startling its mother who was faced suddenly with a much heavier package in her arms. But the mother just laughed and set the cub on the floor, watching it roam clumsily around. Viola couldn’t help but smile.

“I thought you had to be taught to shift?” she asked.

“Usually, you do. But sometimes it just sort of…happens. Particularly in a situation like this, where the child is exposed to a lot of other shifters, when he or she has seen other people shift. Even though they don’t have language, there is something instinctual about it.”

Viola was amazed. And, she had to admit, grateful that she didn’t accidentally transform into a lemur or something when she was in residence at the St. James Academy.

Their time in the dwelling was companionable, friendly, but charged with unspoken desires kept sharp by a kind of perversity, each denying themselves, each denying the other. “No, no, you take the bed,” one said to the other, “no really, it’s fine.” And they switched off, night by night, sofa, mattress, mattress, sofa. They stayed awake listening to the breathing of the other, they fell asleep playing out scenarios in their mind where they came together. The air between them was thick with such daydreams, and they blushed to see each other come the morning.

Graham made himself warm and soft, and Viola thought she might be coming to love the smile lines around his eyes. For her part, Viola remained quiet and contemplative, neither rebuffing nor inviting moments of contact between them. Except once. When they were looking at the little bear cub, when it began to tremble until it was a small cloud of blurred pixels, when it turned into a baby boy again, she reached out and took his hand. When the mother came in and scooped the baby up into her arms, when she pressed her lips to his forehead, when she cradled him against her, Viola gave his hand a squeeze. And when the mother disappeared into the nursery with the bundle in her arms, Viola let go of his hand and turned on her heel to head back to his room.

Once inside the safe bubble of their private space, she helped herself to his cell phone; he watched her impassively, closing the door behind him that shut out the gentle roar of the waterfall. On his phone, she pulled up the text message option—“I can’t believe you get service down here,” she remarked—and opened up a new message. Into it, she typed Rowan’s number, a number she had long since memorized.

R-

I need to see you. Please. It’s an emergency. Meet me at the Mountain View Motel in three hours.

-V

She sent the message and handed the phone back to Graham. “Time to go,” she said.

~ * ~

The tranquil wilderness was a blur, like an impressionist painting, as Graham sped down the mountain road with Viola in the passenger seat. The city lights were a dim glow on the horizon, and the trees were towering titans that blocked out what little remained of the setting sun. She wondered, absently, if she could shift into a tree. After all, it was a living thing. And what a life that might be: quiet and steady, with her feet rooted to the earth, her limbs branches reaching skyward. She smiled a placid smile at the consideration.

They drove in quiet, until they got to the highway and turned south. It wouldn’t be long until they reached the motel.

“Are you going to sleep with him?” Graham suddenly asked, cracking their happy silence wide open with the jagged edge of his words.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” she spat back, the heat of fury rising into her cheeks. It wasn’t as though she’d made him any promises, wasn’t as though they were peering into the future of a life together. At least, not in the way most normal couples did. No, if they were to be connected in the future, it would be through progeny alone, and Viola crossed her arms in front of her and made herself small on the seat of the truck.

“I just want to know,” he insisted, and she turned her face away, eyes burning.

“Too fucking bad.”

“Viola—”

“No.” She turned around then, one leg up on the seat, her hands balled into fists. “You don’t get to ask me questions like that. I don’t belong to you, or anyone. Understand?”

He set his jaw forward, clenching his teeth, clutching the steering wheel. “Fine.”

They finished the drive in a stony silence, pulling to a sudden stop in the parking lot of the Mountain View Motel. It didn’t so much have a view of mountains as the hillsides that led up into the forest, but Viola wasn’t interested in the semantics. She chose it for its seclusion, it’s guaranteed privacy. It only ever attracted people trying to get from one city to another; no one ever stayed there more than a night.

“Here’s the deal,” Viola said to Graham, unbuckling her seatbelt and reaching into the glove box to retrieve the handgun with which she’d been provided. “You’ll park in the back lot by the dumpsters. You won’t be able to see the room, but you’ll stay there as long as it takes. Ok? I suggest stocking up on snacks and water at the vending machine in the lobby.”

“You’ve been here before.”

“Only once. A long time ago.” In fact, it was where Rowan had taken her after her first kill, when she was shaking with the panic of it, woozy with the adrenaline. In that way, it almost felt like coming home. “So, you’ll stay put in the back lot, unless you hear a gunshot. At which point you will get the fuck out of here as quickly as you can.”

“But—”

“No. Just do what I tell you. You leave. If you hear a gunshot, that means this entire thing is over. Understood?” Graham gave a sharp nod of his head, his brows arched high in a concern that he couldn’t conceal. “Otherwise, I will come back to you, and we will head to Felidae headquarters.”

“But what will you be doing?”

“Leave that all to me.” Viola hit the release, checking to ensure there was ammo and, satisfied, snapped the magazine back into place. She opened the door of the truck and hopped down onto the gravel.

“Viola.” She had her hand on the door, ready to slam it shut, when she paused at looked up at Graham. His eyes were locked on her face, those beautiful honey brown gems swimming, glassy. “Please be careful.”

She proffered a sly little smile—“I always am.”—and shut the door. She didn’t turn to watch him pull out of the main lot, she simply headed straight for the lobby where she could check in and procure a room.

The place was dingy, boasting a flickering pink neon “Vacancy” sign in the window. She stepped through the double glass doors and onto stained blue and white checkered carpeting. It smelled like stale cigarettes and body odor, and she could hardly help but wrinkle her nose at it. Finally, she approached the front desk and rang the bell, summoning a squirrely little man from the back room. He was hunched at the shoulders, his skin hanging on his bones as though he had once been a very fat man and had had the fat sucked out of him. Now he wore his flesh like an oversized suit. His hair was a tuft of white on the top of his head, his beady black eyes peering at her over the top of his wire-rimmed spectacles. She couldn’t tell if he was very old, or if he had just made a series of terrible decisions that aged him prematurely. Regardless, she smiled at him.

“Well, hello there,” he said, betraying a lecherous personality. Viola was rather dressed to impress: Her leather jacket was zipped to just below her breasts, giving a generous view of the red tank top she wore underneath; a pair of dark denim skinny jeans hugged her every curve, and disappeared into a pair of calf-high black boots. Her black hair was pulled into a high ponytail, offering a clear view of her kohl-lined green eyes. What the concierge didn’t know, of course, was that she had a gun tucked into the back of her jeans.

“Checking in,” she said, leaning forward so she could put her elbows on the counter. If he was staring at her breasts, he’d probably forget her face.

“Just one?”

“Oh, no. My husband’s just behind me. He’s driving the moving van, and I’ve got the car.” Another easy lie. And an effective one: the man lost interest, plucked a key from a board behind him, and slid it across the counter to Viola.

“Sixty dollars for the night, sign in here, and you’ll be in room seven.” He then shoved a guest book toward her, and she plucked the pen, signing it: Mrs. Deborah Saltzman. Then, she reached down the front of her tank top and into her bra, where she’d stashed some cash. She counted out three twenties and placed it on the counter.

“Is there any chance room 2 is available?” She asked, making a show of returning the cash to its place in her tits. “Two is my lucky number.”

The man was practically salivating over the sight of her curves, and he just bobbed his head in a nod and got the key to room two for her. “Sure thing, sweetheart,” he said, his voice thick with spit.

“Thanks a million,” she said, and turned on her heel, heading for the door. She hopped the exaggerated sway of her ass drew attention away from the slight bulge in her jacket where she’d tucked the gun.

Room Two was just as much a dump as the rest of the joint, but it was also the exact same room that Rowan had taken her to, all those years ago. She hoped that he remembered it and came right to it, instead of risking blowing her cover with the squirrely man in the office.

And she didn’t have to wait long for Rowan to show up, rapping gently on the door. She swung it open to grant him admittance, and he came tentatively in, a gun held tight at his waist and pointed forward. She stepped back with her hands up, admiring him. He was freshly shaven, his dark hair slicked back. He wore dark jeans, and a black collared shirt that he’d rolled up to the elbow.

“Is this a trap?” He asked.

“No.”

“Wouldn’t you say that if it were a trap?”

“Yes.”

“I’m gonna have a look around.” Rowan advanced into the room, opening the shoddy armoire to ensure that no one was hidden therein. He checked under the twin beds, which actually didn’t have enough space beneath them to harbor an accomplice. He looked in the bathroom, pulled back the shower curtain and, satisfied, joined Viola, standing in front of the bed nearest the door. “Ok,” he said at last, “what am I doing here?”

And Viola smiled. She smiled because she was relieved, relieved to see him, relieved that he showed up at all. She hadn’t realized that she was worried he wouldn’t show at all. But she’d been terrified that she would wait in this depressing room, full of memories of him, for hours and hours, on into the night, before she would have to admit that there was no way forward.

“I’m so glad you came.” She threw herself into his arms, she clung to him with her arms around his neck, and she stayed there until she felt the tension go out of him and his arms come up around her waist and hug her back.

“You have a gun,” he said, but there was a smile in his voice.

“You can take it,” she said.

“Seems only fair we both keep our guns, hm?”

They stayed that way, locked together, for a long stretch of familiar silence, before Viola finally let him go and, abashed, took a few steps back, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “What happened to ‘we can never see each other again’?” She asked, peering up at him through a thick forest of lashes.

“It’s idiotic that I’m here,” he said. “It’s completely moronic. I hate myself for it. I know Graham McCallum is in a truck out back, I knew you’d be armed, I know that you’re probably going to kill me or sedate me or something, but I came anyway because I just…couldn’t stay away.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” she said quickly. “I couldn’t.”

He peered down into her face and lifted a hand to brush his fingertips over the gentle slope of her cheek. “Yes, you could,” he gently intoned. “I trained you, I know what you’re capable of.”

“Do you remember the last time we were here?”

“Of course.”

“Did you…I mean, back then…did you have feelings for me?” She averted her gaze, suddenly shy.

“I told you, Vi,” he said. “From the first instant I laid eyes on you.”

She smiled, and it light her up from the inside out. “I was such a mess that day. I was shaking from the adrenaline. I was manic.”

“I remember.” After a pause, he sighed, disentangling himself from her arms, releasing himself from the prison of her gaze. “What am I doing here, Viola? You said it was an emergency.”

“Before I tell you, I need to show you something.” And she had no idea it would even work. She walked over to the wall by the door and drew the faded floral curtains over the window to block the night out. Then she set her gun on the table underneath the window and unzipped her jacket.

“What?” He asked, watching her, dubious.

“You’ll see.” He took a seat as she shrugged out of her jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. Then she tugged her tank top over her head and tossed it aside. She kicked out of her boots and shimmied out of her tight jeans so she stood there in a white bra and panties. He couldn’t look away.

She fished her spare cash out of her bra and set it down by the gun, then plucked off her socks, unclasped her bra and freed her breasts to the air, thick with anticipation. Finally, she slid her panties down the length of her powerful thighs until she was completely naked in front of him.

She crouched down on her hands and knees then, closing her eyes and tensing every muscle in her body. She stretched her arms forward, like a cat yawning, and thought of Rowan in his panther form. She thought of the moment he’d padded over to her and propped his big paws up on her knees and nuzzled her. She thought of him, hoping that she could change into his panther form, the way she had previously changed into his human form. She trusted that he was so much a part of her that she would be able to do it, and she felt a tingling in her limbs that indicated the change had begun.

She thought of black, jet black, ink black, pitch black; she thought of green, like peridot. She thought of muscle and sinew, and she arched her back and became a smudge, obscured, a cloud, a mist. And when that fog cleared, in her place was a beautiful black cat, a jungle predator, a panther.

“Holy fuck,” Rowan exclaimed, but when she turned her cat eyes on him, she saw him smiling.

She was uneasy on her large cat paws, but oh, how she loved the swish of her tail. She thought perhaps that she didn’t realize up until that point that she’d missed having a tail, she rather enjoyed having a tail. It made her feel more balanced, and it moved like the slithering of a snake behind her as she moved.

Approaching him, she butted against his knee with her smooth, black head and he reached down to scratch behind her ears. She closed her eyes; she reveled in the calming sensation and allowed her mind to clear. That clear mind made her lose the shift, and she stumbled back when she felt herself changing. But she was trying to hold onto it just a little longer—the feel of his hand on her head, the feel of the swish of her tail. But she felt the change in her bones, the revision of her marrow, and crouching on the musty carpet at his feet was a human girl with dark hair and bright eyes.

“How did this happen?” He asked, startled.

She rose slowly, uncoiling to her full height, and arched one slender shoulder in a shrug. “I imagine it was always in there,” she said. “But Rowan, you have to understand—”

“I’ll take you to my father. You have to show him. Everything can be different now.”

“No.” She sat beside him on the springy old mattress, suddenly conscious of her nakedness, and placed her hand over his. “It won’t work.”

“Yes, it will. Please, just let me try.” He wore a pleading expression as he lifted a hand to cup her cheek. He had such hope in his eyes, hope that he might have everything he ever could have wanted: His family, his clan, and her—his mate.

“Rowan—” She was about to tell him everything, her whole plan, when he leaned forward and sealed away her voice with a kiss. He was full of hunger, as his skepticism and dejection broke open and made room for the full, unabashed wanting of her.

He gathered her up into his arms and cradled her tenderly, one of his hands resting on the thickest part of her thigh. And maybe it was the sheer proximity, or maybe it was the relief that he’d showed up at all, that he wasn’t out of her life forever. Maybe it was the fact that she’d been in close quarters with a man who barely touched her for several days. Whatever it was, she felt a heat for him, and she felt it fiercely.

“Are you going to sleep with him?” Graham’s question echoed through her mind as she shifted on top of him so that she might place one of her knees on either side of his legs and press her breasts against his chest. There was a part of her that thrilled at the idea of making Graham wait for her in a truck in the parking lot while she had Rowan between her legs. Maybe it was because Graham hadn’t copped to the full force of his feelings when she’d given him the chance. For all Rowan’s flaws, he was always direct with her.

For his part, Rowan nearly swooned at the nearness of her naked form. When she planted her knees on the mattress on either side of his body, he couldn’t help but bring his hands up to grip the soft flesh of her ass. He liked it like this: her body nude and exposed while he remained fully clothed. He ran his hands up along her hips and bent his head so that he might take one of her pert little nipples between his lips. She tossed her head back to make room for him, moaning quietly as he flicked the sensitive pith on her breast with the tip of his deft and insistent tongue. After a moment, he shifted to shower the attention on her other breast, and she found herself clinging to the fabric of his shirt, her hips moving almost involuntarily as she ground her Venus mound against the rising hardness between them.

They kissed again, a frenzy overtaking them both, the animal instinct that necessitated the propagation of the species working in their bodies and clearing their minds. He pulled away and gazed down at her, lips parted as though he were trying to catch his breath, and gripped her by the hips. In one agile movement, he lifted her up and laid her down on the mattress on her back, rising to stand over her before she could hook her legs around his waist and keep him close.

Viola eyed him curiously as she spread her legs, knees bent so that they went winging out to the side. She kneaded her breasts with her hands and watched him look at her, practically salivating. In a sudden burst of movement, he dragged her forward by her hips and dropped down onto his knees at the foot of the bed and reached forward with two exploratory fingers to dip into the warm, wet folds of her sex. But he didn’t plunge them in all the way, not yet. Instead, he took a moment to admire her: her hips undulated slowly, like a conductor’s hands during the adagio; her pretty, pink pussy was warm and soft as wet velvet. Rowan had always thought that she was beautiful, but there was something in the way she indulged herself in the sins of the flesh that he found utterly intoxicating. She owned her sexuality; she fucked like no one had ever tried to tell her that she shouldn’t. And he adored her for it.

“More,” she gasped, and he obliged, thrusting his index and middle finger into the orifice already slick and ready with her wanting. He worked it in and out, in and out, finally pressing in as deeply as he could and using a come-hither gesture to drive her wild. Then, he leaned down and, spreading her nether lips apart with his free hand, passed his tongue slowly over the engorged kernel of her clitoris.

Viola whimpered very prettily, her eyes squeezed shut against the sickly yellow glow of the overhead light, and lost herself to Rowan’s enthusiastic overtures. When he pulled his hand away, it came back coated with the evidence of her desire, and when he stood up and held his hand out toward her, she sat up and licked his fingers clean.

“Get on your hands and knees,” He said, his voice husky and low. She did as he asked, arching her back and spreading her knees apart so that he had a rather unobstructed view of the flower between her legs.

He began to undress slowly, admiring the view of her from behind, smirking rather slyly at how she positioned herself, just so, like a cat in heat. He shimmied out of his jeans and boxer briefs and laid his shirt over the back of a chair before crawling onto the mattress behind her. She could feel the head of his engorged prick pushing insistently against her entrance, and she pressed herself back against him so that one thrust of his hip buried his cock to the hilt inside of her. She let out a cry as she was filled, so eager was she to have her desire sated that she was bouncing back and forth on him; he barely had to move at all.

He gripped her hips and pulled her back against him, but it was her movements that brought him in and out of her in a fevered rhythm. After a time, he pulled out of her and came to lay on the mattress at her side. He didn’t have to say anything to her: she simply climbed astride him and took him inside of her once more, bracing herself with her hands against his chest, fingers splayed. She moved only her hips then, which allowed for a quickened pace, one in which Rowan clearly delighted, given the how his eyes seemed to roll into the back of his skull as she moved on top of him. Panting, he reached forward and pressed his thumb against the nub of her clit, immediately provoking a groan that seemed to catch itself in the back of her throat.

“I want to feel you come,” he said. “Come for me.”

And once he’d spoken that request, it was as though it were a command, one that she could not help but obey. Her heart was a timpani in her chest, and her orgasm was a tightly coiled spring that finally gave way and released into the open air. Her body spasmed atop him and she shuddered, collapsing against him, in a state of blissful exhaustion.

But he wasn’t quite done with her yet, and he scooped her gently up and rolled over so that he was atop her. He fucked her through the pulse of her orgasm, prolonging it, so that when he finally tensed and released inside of her, she was still tingling with the force of her own liberation.

When he rolled over onto the mattress at her side, she rolled with him, resting her head on his chest and laying her hand on his stomach, the warm residue of their lovemaking dripping down her thighs.

When he said, “I love you, Viola,” in that sleepy, familiar tone, her eyes shot open. She wanted to cling for a moment longer to their warm little bubble, but it had already popped. Just one more moment, she thought, just give me one more moment.

But the moment had passed, and she’d kept Graham waiting long enough. It was time to get back to business. “Rowan,” she softly intoned.

“Hm?”

“I have to kill your father.”

She felt his entire body tense, but he didn’t move, not immediately. “I see,” he said at length, frozen in place. At once, they became the semblance of lovers, but both were ready to spring into entirely different roles at a moment’s notice. “You can’t imagine that I will just…let you.”

“You will,” she replied, “if you’ve any sense at all.”

She lifted her head from his chest, completely breaking whatever was left of the spell they’d woven together, and scooted toward the edge of the bed before rising to her feet and standing still in front of him. He lifted himself up on his elbows, still playing at being relaxed, and watched her, well, like a cat. He wanted to ensure that this hadn’t been a farewell fuck before she put a bullet in his brain. But that had never been her intention.

“I need you to watch me very carefully,” she said. “And to just…not kill me for a few minutes, all right?”

He considered her words and answered with a level, “Very well.”

She thought of Graham, summoning him as easily as she’d summoned Rowan, in both of his forms. She hunched herself at the shoulders, she thought of brown, and teeth; she thought of the Urslings and the den mothers, the dwelling and the smell of honey mountain hair. And she became that mess of static, disappeared into it, and emerged again in the shape of a Kodiak bear.

Rowan looked at her, impassive. “So, it is true, then,” he mused quietly. “What my father had hoped for—it’s real.”

She opened her mouth to speak, forgetting that she could not, and the low gurgling growl of an expression wild animal emanated from her now powerful jaws. Rowan cracked a smile in spite of himself.

“So, that’s it, then? You tear my throat out and leave me for dead, then take out my father so that you and the other Ursus bastards can…what? What exactly is your end game? No, don’t tell me, I’d prefer not to hear that pathetic excuse for a roar again, thank you all the same. You are acting on the behalf of the other clans, whose Alphas we have eliminated, is that it? Or you’re hoping to edge into some of clan Felidae’s current markets, while they scramble to name place a new Alpha, while the other members of my clan rip each other to shreds vying for the spot.”

She tossed her head from side to side, then could no longer hold onto the form. She’d felt more natural as a panther, somehow; but even more natural still in the form of Rowan himself. She was panting and achy when she returned to her own skin, which seemed so slight and fragile after having been in the shape of something so powerful.

“That’s a very impressive party trick, Viola,” Rowan languidly drawled. A panther was a marvel; a bear was a party trick.

“I don’t want to kill you Rowan,” she said, slowly rising to her full height and feeling somewhat unsteady on her two human feet. “In fact, I won’t kill you.” He watched her move over to the table on the far wall, springing up to his feet when she realized she was going for her gun. She sped up as well and they reached their weapons at the same time, training them on one another in the same breath, taking the same stance. He’d taught her, and he’d taught her well.

“I just need you to listen to me, Rowan,” she said, staring down the sights at him.

“Well this isn’t something you see every day,” Rowan flatly remarked. “Two erstwhile lovers, naked and drenched in each other’s fluids, pointing guns at the other’s head.”

“Your father, like Graham’s before him, is a violent and bloodthirsty criminal. He’ll stop at nothing to keep his seat of power. But a change is in the air for all the clans.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, Rowan. You love me because you saw something special in me, right? Something unique.” He made no immediate protest, so she took that to mean she was right. “Well, you were correct—I am unique. And I can help to usher in a new age for all of the clans. I just need your help.”

“I’m not going to help you kill my father.”

“No, and I wouldn’t ask you to. All I’m asking is for you to stand aside and let me do what needs to be done.”

“And after he’s dead—then what?” There was a hesitation in his voice, a crack just big enough for her to slip through, to make her point and hope it stuck.

“You rise to power, with me at your side.” She locked her eyes on him, a blue the color of the sky after the break of a storm, and he stared back with his cat eyes, yellow, green, fire-forged.

“So this is your big power play, is it?” He asked, cocking his head to the side, inching forward with his gun held out at arm’s length in front of him.

“It isn’t about power.”

“Then what is it about?”

“Belonging.” And she said it before she even knew it was the truth. But there it was: a place for her, for her sister, uniting a great coven of shifters of all kinds. With her, and Graham, and Rowan, at the helm. “I will be your mate. And Graham’s. And our children will be the same kind of powerful shifter that I am, and the bloodlines will spread and grow strong, until we’re not divided by clan, until all of the shifters can work together.”

There was a look of disdain, then remorse, than utter dejection that clouded his handsome features. “I can’t have you to myself, can I? Never to myself.”

She shook her head. “No. But I will love you, if you let me.”

The word made his heart drop into the pit of his stomach, and he felt it flutter with the butterflies that lived there when she was near. “And if I refuse this plan?” He asked. “Then what?”

That’s when she turned her gun on herself, holding it with one hand and pressing the barrel to her temple. “Then I have failed, and you cannot share in my vision for the future, and you might as well put me down.”

Her heart began to race as he stared at her, frozen in an elongated moment of consideration. A cold bead of sweat formed on her brow as she began to wonder if she’d overplayed her hand. She’d been so sure that he would not kill her, that if push came to shove, he would save her again, as he had before. But with him so still, with both his gun and her own trained on her, she lost all of her assurance. She closed her eyes and took in three deep breaths, figuring that this might be a good time to prepare to meet her maker. But all she could see behind her eyelids was the image of her sister. Verity, smiling as they played fairies; Verity, bent over Jane Eyre; Verity, asleep in a hospital bed.

When she opened her eyes again, Rowan had lowered his gun and was giving a slow shake of his head. “You win,” he said, at last. “I can’t kill you, so. You win.”

Viola stepped forward and placed her own gun on the table. She advanced on him with her arms open, wanting to embrace him, but he put his hand up to stop her. “I can’t…I can’t touch you right now.”

She dropped her arms, crestfallen, but understanding.

“I was never particularly close to my father,” he went on, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. “We never did the sorts of things that…normal fathers and sons do. He never took me to little league, never taught me how to throw a ball, never taught me how to ask a girl out on a date. None of that. And yeah, you’re right…he’s a power hungry, bloodthirsty son of a bitch.” He paused, angling his eyes on her then, his lips a stern line. “But he’s the only father I’ll ever have.”

“I know,” she muttered. “I wish there were another way.”

“Will you just…promise me one thing?” He asked.

“Anything.”

“Promise me that you’ll try to talk to him first? Talk some sense into him? Anything…?”

“Yes,” she said. “I promise.”

He nodded. “Good. Maybe then I’ll be able to forgive you.”

Viola swallowed hard and reached up to tug the elastic out of her hair, letting the ponytail loose so it became a black waterfall over her shoulders. She moved to gather her shoes and clothes into a pile that she could carry in her arms, collecting each item and leaving it on the table, along with her pistol.

“So,” he said, lounging on the old mattress. “Now what?”

“Now,” she said, “you stay here until everything is over and done with.”

“That’s all you need me to do?” He asked.

“Well,” she said, “that, and let me borrow your clothes.”