Page 138 of Ballrooms & Blackmail

It’s enough to rattle the rage inside me, for the cage housing it to threaten to give way.

I reach for the key, know that the monster will help me survive this?—

No, Thorn, it won’t. Don’t let them do this to you.

River’s voice in my head has me slamming back down into myself, the rage disappearing and all the pain flooding in—my ribs, my face, the back of my head.

Pain is information.

The Lyons taught me that before they taught me anything useful.

But right now, it’s too much information—I can’t think, can barely draw in a full breath.

God, being the monster was so much easier.

But it wasn’t living, the River in my head says.

No. It wasn’t. So, I exhale. Breathe. Think.

Sergio steps closer. “You were meant for more than this, Thorn.”

“No,” I rasp. “I was meant to leave.”

His smile fades. “Because you think you’re better than us?”

My first instinct is to disagree, to tell him I’m just another piece of shit who doesn’t deserve anything good or bright or beautiful. But then I don’t just hear River’s voice—I feel her in my heart, my soul. “I know I am.”

He lifts his fist and punches me hard enough that my head snaps sideways.

The room tilts, then steadies.

Sergio crouches in front of me, his eyes bright with old cruelty and new desperation. “You always were an ungrateful fuck.” He punches me again. “Walking away from your family?—”

I laugh. “This was never my family.”

Another punch.

This one splits skin somewhere near my eyebrow, and I blink away the blood.

Hold on, Thorn.

Sergio leans close. “She’ll leave when she knows everything.”

I hold tight to her voice in my head…and not the monster that used to consume me. I hold tight to the woman who loves every part of me and the man I’ve learned to become since she gave me her heart. Then I smirk at this asshole who used to be my brother. “She already knows it all.”

Sergio eyes flare with anger, and he grabs a metal bar from the table, lifts it?—

Right as the door swings open…and Angela walks in like she owns the place.

Her trench coat swings around her ankles, her sunglasses hang from her shirt, and her heels click as she walks across the tile floor.

Sergio turns toward her, slowly lowering the pipe. “Angela,” he grits out.

“Sergio,” she chirps. “Is there a reason you’re damaging Lyon property?” Her gaze flicks over me, seeming to take in every inch of me in a second, though there’s not even the slightest visible reaction on her face, in her body.

Nerves of fucking steel.

“You look terrible,” she says amusedly.