Chapter 131 131

Chapter 131 131
“He hates you, you know,” I blurt suddenly. Not because it’s the smart thing to do or the brave thing to do, but solely because I want to find something—anything—that will hurt this cold-hearted son of a bitch. “You thought using his mother against him would create a heartless monster just like you, but it backfired.”

Gregor is unfazed by my vitriol. “I’ll admit, my plan for young Daniil veered away from my control. But I see it only as a detour in the road. The path remains in place for him to walk, and I will see to it that he finds his way back there. I have built a legacy for my son. He will inherit all once I am no more.”

“You threw him in jail.”

“All he had to do was swear subservience to me and he would have been free.”

“The fact that he never did should tell you something.”

“Au contraire, little spitfire—it tells me that he is the man I always hoped he would be. With a few glaring… weaknesses.” His pointed glance at me conveys his meaning perfectly well. “Of course, those can be ironed out in time. He’s still a boy in so many ways.”

I feel sick to my stomach. I’m trying not to think of Isla, because God only knows what this sick fucking monster might have planned for her, but it’s getting harder and harder not to feel that bone-deep fear that only a mother knows.

How can a parent be so callous? So cruel? The man sitting in front of me brought a person into the world who is beautiful and kind and brave. A person who loves me. Who showed me how to swim in a cold, cold river. Who saved me from myself.

And he doesn’t even recognize the good he did.

Fine. If he won’t… then I will.

“He’s not going to give you what you want, you know.”

“Oh, I think he will,” Gregor says with a smug smile. “And you know why? Because I’m going to illustrate one of my lessons to him. I’m going to show him why I always preached strength over sentimentality. Why loving a woman is as useless a thing as a man can do.”

I can feel my fear unspooling inside my chest.

“He made himself weak by showing me how much he cared about your safety,” Gregor continues. “A child is one thing—that is blood. And blood means family. Heirs. Legacy. A woman? Well, that is another thing entirely. She is… expendable.”

Is it weird that I can’t feel my legs? I can feel my heartbeat and I can hear my breathing, but it’s like they belong to someone else.

No one’s coming for me. At least not anytime soon. Petro thinks I’m at an interview for the next few hours, and Daniil is half a world away. He might as well be on the moon.

I’m all on my own. Trapped in the palm of the man who killed his own wife in cold blood, and sent her severed fingers to the prison where he’d locked up his only son.

“You look pale, my dear.” Gregor’s crocodile grin stretches another tooth wider. “How about something to eat now?”

34

DANIIL

My feet can’t carry me fast enough.

In between the pompous columns, beneath the gargoyle-laden arch.

Through the atrium and down the hall.

Faster and faster I go, my breath coming in harsh, painful spurts, like daggers in my chest. But they could be literal blades slicing between my ribs and shredding my insides to ribbons and I still wouldn’t stop, still wouldn’t quit, still wouldn’t give up on the woman who changed my world.

I see the man’s silhouette through the smoked glass door. Without breaking stride, I throw myself right into it.

Fuck a doorknob; I’m coming for blood.

The explosion of glass is ear-splitting. It rips open my clothes and my skin, but I don’t give a shit, because I get what I’m after at the same time.

The man who was standing guard at the library door collapses beneath me. The biggest shock of his life, I’m sure. It’s also the last shock, because we’ve barely hit the ground before I’m grabbing one of the loose shards of glass and cutting his miserable throat from ear to ear.

Then I stand, dust myself off, and look across the room…

Where my father is seated next to Kinsley.

Gregor is looking back at me with dark eyes, but there’s a smile on his face. “Son, you decided to join the party.”

“There is a dead body on the floor,” I snarl back. “Definitely seems like your kind of party.”

I glance at Kinsley. Her cheeks are flushed with frightened color. I want to tell her it’s okay. That I won’t let anything happen to her. That I’d fucking die before I let something happen to her.

But first things come first.

“Sit,” Gregor says. “Let’s talk.”

“Not one conversation in ten years and now, I see you twice in only a few short months,” I growl. “I’d say we’ve reached our quota.”

“I disagree. We have much we need to discuss.”

“Actually, I’m done talking.”

“You really think I’m going to let the two of you just walk out of here?” Gregor asks in a bored voice. “Sure, that useless fuck on the carpet is dead, but the place is surrounded with my men.”

“Your men won’t have a leader to follow when I walk out of this room,” I tell him bluntly.

Gregor just laughs. Cocky and full of pride. “Have we already moved on to the exchange of threats?”

He doesn’t look the slightest bit threatened, and I know why. He’s secure in the knowledge that our shared blood will protect him. All those hard-taught lessons he drilled into me when I was too young to question them—that’s what he’s counting on.

He thinks he made me. And to be honest, he did.

But then Kinsley unmade me.

And that’s the best fucking thing that ever happened in my life.

Gregor hasn’t moved since I walked in. I wouldn’t be surprised if his blood was frozen solid. The man isn’t human. He just reclines in that chair, legs crossed, coolly at ease.

I know what he’s doing: calling my bluff. All I have to do is attack. He’s old and frail; I’m stronger than he ever was. I could kill him in pure silence and no one would know until Kinsley and I are far from this wretched fucking club.

His smile widens. I feel as though I can read every thought running through his head.

That’s right, boy: I created you. I still have a hold on you after all this time. You ran when you should have sat still and done as you were told. But even now, when the chance to get your revenge is right here for the taking… you can’t do it.

“I think we both know how this is going to end,” he sighs at last.

“This is going to end with Daniil’s bullet in your fucking head,” Kinsley cries out.

She’s panicked. I can feel it, but her fear is as much for me as it is for himself.

“You haven’t domesticated your bitch yet, I see,” Gregor remarks dourly.

I flinch in his direction. “You will not speak about her like that. Ever.”

His eyebrow arches. “Are you commanding me, son?” he asks. He’s still smiling, but the smugness has been replaced by heat. The kind of heat that comes off the earth’s core. Lava. The fucking sun.

“I am simply telling you how things will go.”

The smile remains plastered on his face. “You sound like me.”