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Even though I’ve fallen in much too deep too fast with them for my own good, I’m still concerned, even if they don’t pose a threat to her life anymore, would there be others within the Anguis who might choose to if they discovered our connection?
Especially if there are unknown threats being made against me, might they go after someone important in my life?
Maybe I do need to woman-up and ask what the deal is with the security they’ve arranged for her. I don’t doubt that Thorne will have put people he trusts in those roles, but after whatever was going on with the whole ‘hooded, cuffed, and gagged’ routine, I’m still not sure what to think.
Even if Em seemed to be completely fine with it all.
Which still baffles me.
Just as I’ve given up on any hope of a reply, picking up my sketchbook and resuming sketching, my phone buzzes.
I quickly close my notebook and pick up my phone. Anticipating some acerbic reply from Em’s wicked tongue. Except the notification on screen shows an unknown number, and when I open up the message, I can only stare open-mouthed at the words.
Something hot and sick curdles in my stomach.
My eyes can’t make sense of what I’m reading.
UNKNOWN NUMBER
Your time under the protection of Thorne Calliano is up.
Will he be prepared to do the same for you, as he did for your mother, Giana?
As I read and re-read the two lines of text over and over, the phone in my hand buzzes again, and this time, I nearly drop it from my fingers.
What appears next isn’t more words. It’s an image. Grainy and in black and white, but the faces are clear.
The man in the photo is unmistakably Thorne—similar to the younger version of him I remember seeing all those years ago.
He has his hand pressed into the lower back of an elegant woman with blonde hair. One who I recognize immediately, even though I haven’t seen her face in years.
My mother.
The trembling in my hands grows with each passing second I look at the image. I’m haunted by the despair at seeing the ghost of my own flesh and blood who was taken from me too soon, and the way my focus can’t escape where his hand is on her body.
How close they’re standing together.
Their apparent ease with one another.
The two of them are dressed in evening wear; this could have been taken at any one of the hundreds of events held at Noire House over the years. How many nights did they spend together like this?
Every inch of my skin shivers with goosebumps, and I let the phone fall from my grasp onto the padding of the seat as if it scalded me. There’s a thudding rush of blood drowning my ears as I try to grasp at explanations for the image taunting me from the screen of my phone.
Who else has my number?
And why would they send me this?
Even worse, is the guilt and disgust I’m currently feeling. I don’t know if it's more with myself or the people I’m seeing in this tiny image. He’s never once mentioned knowing my mother.
Oh, my god. My hand flies up to my mouth as that curdling feeling intensifies.
I’ve been trapped in his sick maze, right from the beginning.
I’m on my feet with the phone clutched tight in one hand while I fly through the glassed-in corridors of the compound. Everything shrinks into a dark tunnel around my vision. I’m desperate for answers, and yet I don’t want to hear them.
But there’s one man who has lied to me, repeatedly.
Right now, I need to look into his ice-blue eyes and demand to hear every detail. To extract from his blackened heart what he knows about my family. The unknown secrets he’s been hiding from me are pumping poison through my veins with each step.
