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There’s a savage urge building inside me that wants to howl and fling myself at him. I want to sink my fingers into his eye sockets with the force of every woman in this world who has ever been screwed over by a man.
“I know how hard it’s been, and you’ve done so well to set all this in motion for me, darling.” Her nails drag along the collar of his shirt beneath the Kevlar vest he’s wearing. “All the tests were worth it, you see? I had to know for certain where your loyalty lay, and now I have my answer.”
Every part of my foggy brain tells me to look away. Not to see the evidence that she’s touching him. I could close my eyes, but instead, I torture myself with every second she continues to have her hand on him.
“Why didn’t you just kill me?” My skin feels like it’s burning beneath my torn sweater and bloodstained jeans. “You wanted me out of the way so you could inherit the Noire estate instead? You should have simply put a bullet in me years ago.”
The woman I don’t even recognize anymore cocks her head to one side. Looking at me as if I’m some lost little lamb. “Oh, trust me. I thought about it, sweetie. But it’s much easier for my business to run from the shadows. Being a dead woman makes things much simpler to keep operating smoothly. With your power and father’s legacy passing to Thorne, he’ll be the perfect face of Noire House for me.”
That familiar need to vomit seizes me every time she keeps mentioning her and Thorne being so intimately connected.
I’m ready to finally break apart when a chilling voice cuts through the room.
“Not if you’re a fucking dead man, Calliano.”
At the sound, my head snaps in the direction to see a man standing there, with crimson staining his hands, and his gun aimed directly at Thorne.
A man painted in fury and deadly precision, armed with a weapon he could use in his sleep.
My wolf.
69
“You know, something wasn’t adding up.” Raven holds the gun steady. Looking straight down the barrel at Thorne.
“How those threatening texts got through to the very phone that you gave to Fox. The whole Pledging ceremony itself. Then her drink got drugged at the club, when you were the one who handed it to her.” Raven is preternaturally calm. The lethal energy rolling off him is terrifying to witness.
I’m choking on the relief that he’s here, but scared of what this might mean for the man my foolish, broken heart loves. The one currently in the line of a lethal bullet at close range from a man trained to end lives.
“And then the way her tracker suddenly stopped working…yet, you miraculously knew where she was tonight.”
Thorne shifts his weight so that his bulk shields the woman who I want to see dead and buried.
I don’t give a fuck that she is my flesh and blood.
That person is a sick and twisted excuse for a human being.
“Well, aren’t you a fucking genius, Ven,” Thorne growls at him. I see his hands flex around his own gun, but he keeps the muzzle pointed at the concrete beneath his feet.
I’m watching the standoff between two of my men while Ky could be dead for all I know, and this feels like the moment I finally crumble into dust.
The tortured winds of the Anguis can sweep through and carry me off into whatever miserable grave I’m destined for, because if I have to witness Raven murder Thorne, I don’t know that either of us will survive that kind of devastation.
“This thought kept nagging at me, so I went back through the historical logs and security files from Noire House. And do you know what I found?”
He doesn’t look at me, but I know my wolf is saying this for my benefit. Or maybe he’s just choosing to fuck me over with the same ruthless savagery that Thorne Calliano has already done.
“When he was still coming up through the ranks, Thorne here was always posted to a particular part of the mansion. Year after fucking year, his security files show he was always stationed either directly outside, or close to a particular part of the wing.”
My throat closes over.
“That wing belonged to the Noire family. In particular, the rooms belonging to a young girl named Foxglove Noire.”
Tears well, and roll down my face in silent tracks.
“You’ve been Giana’s obedient little bitch for years now, haven’t you?” My wolf snarls and points the gun between Thorne and my mother, half-hidden behind him.
“And what of it, Ven?”
