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I couldn’t fucking believe it. She laughed.
“Or what? Andraius has done everything possible to me, so I doubt you could add anything new to the list. Oh, wait. You can’t touch me, can you?” she asked with fake smugness that pulled at my nerves. “Like at all.”
“So it’s the brat today?”
She glared now. “No, there is no brat. You might as well forget about that brat you loved. She’s dead and gone. I’m a raging, cold-hearted bitch. I became one because that’s the only way to survive when you have no one but yourself to depend on.”
Fuck. This wasn’t how we needed this conversation to go.
“You’re not alone. There are many more people on your side than you believe,” I tried to assure her. “We had to stay in the shadows until we could get everyone in position.”
She shook her head. “Oh, I feel so safe with everyone in the shadows, moving me around like a chess piece.”
“Don’t you want your seat? It belongs to you.”
Fire lit her dark eyes as she stood and moved toward me with a fist and more anger directed at me than I’d ever seen before.
“You fucking bastard. How dare you? How fucking dare you?”
Theo grabbed her by the waist and hauled her against him, keeping her from attacking me. She thrashed in his hold, trying her best to get free.
When she realized there was no hope of Theo allowing her to unleash her rage, she said in a tone so cold it was as if she were a different person. “Once upon a time, I may have wanted to fulfill Papa’s dream, take my seat, run his empire. But that all died with him and Linus. Now I want to escape this hell with Mama and the girls and leave all of you assholes behind. Every fucking last one of you. I want nothing to do with any of you.”
“And where would you go?”
She smirked. “As if I’d tell either of you. You’re not my knights in shining armor here to protect me. I’m not depending on you. Were you ever the man I could tell all my secrets?”
I grimaced. “I’m still your Xander. No matter what, you can still talk to me.”
“That’s a fucking lie.” She shook her head. “You’re not my best friend anymore. Neither of you are. I’ll find a way out. I’ll get my revenge one day. Let’s hope you’re not in my way.”
“Angel, all we wanted was to keep you safe.” Theo spoke against the back of her head. “That’s all we still want. You mean everything to us.”
I wasn’t even sure he realized he hadn’t let her go. The lucky bastard got to hold her, even if she was spitting mad at the time.
She dropped her head, and her shoulders sagged. “Theo, I’m not your angel. Please, I beg you. Please stop calling me that. I’m nobody’s angel. And how can you keep me safe when the enemy shares my bed?”
“Let us explain.”
“No. The time for that has long passed.” She settled her attention out the window. “You just stay in your corner, and I’ll stay in mine. We will pretend, as always, that our little Theo-Angel-Xander throuple never existed. I’ll do my best to curb my bitchiness, and you stay out of my way.”
The defeat of her words made it seem as if there was no hope for us in the future.
Fuck that shit.
“Nerine.”
She shifted her gaze to mine.
“Do you remember the promise we made to each other? Or the way we described what we had?”
She said nothing, just stared at me.
“Did you forget? Or is it that you don’t want to remember?” Theo asked as he released her and stepped away. “If you hate us so much, it wouldn’t have meaning. You could talk about it as part of your past, right?”
There he went again, pushing her buttons.
Anger washed over her features. “And what good would talking about us do? It makes no difference.”
