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Oh. Now I understood Damian’s fascination with Giselle from the get-go. He’d known all along Miguel was the snake in the grass.
Miguel’s men handed Giselle over to the Serpents, thinking they’d torture and kill her. What Miguel wasn’t expecting was for those Serpents to bring her to Damian, where she was actually safe. Safer than she was in Cypress.
Once she was finished telling me the story of the day’s events, I found myself asking, “Why would Miguel tell you all of this? Why would telling you the truth about your biological dad matter in the end?”
Her mouth hardened, her jaw setting. “He wanted me to die knowing I’d been too late to save my real father from death. I think he’s always hated me because he’s known all along I wasn’t his daughter, and because he’d already had my mother killed, I was the only thing left for him to torment.”
Shit. Was that why… was that why Miguel had agreed to give Giselle to my father for a night? Because he could? Because why not? The thought made me sick to my stomach, and images I never wanted in my brain rose up. It took everything in me to push them away.
Giselle spoke in a whisper as she stared off into space, “I knew he never loved me, but I just thought that was who he was. A man incapable of love. My whole life, I’ve always been his pawn, just as I’m sure he’s now using my disappearance to his advantage.”
She turned toward me, her knee brushing up against mine as her amber gaze locked on my face. “Luca, I don’t think it was a coincidence that you weren’t home when Miguel’s man came for me. I think Miguel and Rocco planned it together.”
I inhaled and exhaled slowly. “I think you’re right.” There might’ve been a time when I wouldn’t want to admit something like that, but… I now knew my father was a sick son of a bitch. Who knew how many young girls he’d hurt, the same as Giselle? “They had a meeting with Atticus and the Black Hand tonight.”
Giselle did not act surprised. “I figured they’d act immediately. I want to take Miguel down, Luca, and I want to know if I can count on you to help me.”
My reply came instantly, “Of course you can count on me. I will do whatever you want me to do, Giselle.” I found her hand and squeezed it. “I will always help you. You never even need to ask. All you need to do is tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do whatever it is. Anything.”
“You might come to regret saying that,” she said, and then she didn’t say anything else. She stared at me for a long time, a heaviness on her face I couldn’t discern, like there was more she wasn’t saying—and that was unlike her.
“What else?” I prodded.
“I need you to act like you’re on your father’s side. Be my eyes and ears. I can’t show my face in Cypress yet, not until we’re ready to strike, so I’m relying on you and the others. I need to know what dirt Rocco and Miguel have on Atticus, besides the whole Nixon thing.”
I nodded once. “Okay. I can do that, no problem. I might be able to hack into his computer, see if anything’s there. Maybe even his phone while he’s sleeping.” Even though I’d agreed, the way Giselle was staring at me didn’t change.
Which meant there was more.
“Luca, Miguel’s not the only one I want to take down,” she whispered. “I know how hard it is to go against your father, so if you don’t want anything to do with it when the time comes, I’ll understand—but you need to know: I will kill Rocco. I’ll probably kill him before Miguel, and even though I care about you, I need you to know it’s nothing personal against you. Just that asshole of a father of yours.”
The way she said it, so level-headed, so evenly, made me realize she was one hundred percent serious. Endgame to this was Miguel Santos’s death… and my own father’s.
Weeks ago I might’ve fought her, I might’ve ran straight to my father and told him of her plans—or even taken care of her myself—because family was everything, right? When you were raised by a man like my father, you were taught that family was life.
But my father had forsaken our family a long time ago, lied to me and my mother the entire time. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I knew he needed his comeuppance. I wanted that for Giselle.
I swallowed. “I understand, and I want you to know that when the time does come, I won’t stop you from doing what you need to do.” I might not be able to, you know, watch her kill my father, but I wouldn’t stop her.
She sighed out a lungful of air, full of relief. “Thank you, Luca. I… I was worried you wouldn’t understand. I might not want to be your wife, but I’d still hate to lose you over this. You’re… you’re a good man. You must’ve gotten it from your mother.”
“I think she’d love you,” I told her, squeezing her hand again. “Not to change the subject, but once this is all over, you’re saying you want a divorce?” A gentle smile crossed my face, soft and unsure. Now probably wasn’t the best time for jokes.
But she chuckled at that, and my smile only grew. I did love making her laugh. “It’s nothing personal,” she said. “But, yes, I think you and I need to separate. You don’t want a wife who’s broken and being pulled every which way.”
“If that’s what you want… but for the record, I don’t think you’re broken, and as much as I don’t understand what you see in someone like Cade, I’d rather have you while you’re being pulled every which way. Better than not having you at all, Giselle.”
Her full lips tugged into a smile. “You are something else.”
“I hope that’s a good thing,” I whispered back.
She nodded once, and she pulled her hand from mine, bringing it to my face, where she trailed her fingertips down along my jaw. One of her fingers brushed up against the corner of my mouth. “You’re not a bad kisser, you know.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Better than Cade? At least tell me I’m better than—” I didn’t get the chance to say more, because Giselle lifted her face to mine.
Giselle kissed me slowly, evenly, steadily. It was the kind of kiss where you could sigh into the other’s mouth while you savored the taste of their lips on yours. Even though it was a gentle kiss, my head still spun. Giselle had that way about her, a way of making you forget everything else while you were with her.
God, I wanted to memorize the way her lips felt on mine, tuck away the memory for later, for when I was alone and she wasn’t beside me.
