She pressed the tip of the blade to his throat, stopping just short of breaking the skin.
“We’re supposed to be family, Charlotte,” his voice breaking now, his black eyes full of desperation.
At the mention of the wordfamily, Charley felt that hot coal ignite in her belly again, but she tamped it down. She wouldn’t give Rudy the satisfaction of unloading on him—she’d given away too much of herself already.
Never again, asshole.
“Charlotte!” he shouted. “Think about what you’re doing here. Please!”
“No,” she said. It was a single word, spoken just above a whisper.
It felt like the first time she’d ever said it to Rudy, yet she knew it was the very last thing she’d ever give the man.
“Are… are you going to kill me?” he whimpered. “You said you weren’t a killer.”
Charley stared down at the pathetic man before her and tried to feel… something. She’d dreamed about Rudy’s demise for so long that when the time finally came, she thought she’d be elated. Instead, there was only a quiet relief.
For years, Rudy had existed as her boss, her benefactor, her controller. When she tried to imagine him outside that role—even as the uncle she’d known in childhood—she saw only a faceless form.
She felt neither remorse nor joy at his fate; for Charley, Rudy was simply gone.
Nonexistent.
She didn’t know whether that made her cold-hearted and cruel, crazy, or perhaps just shocked and numb. At the moment, she didn’t care.
Rudolpho D’Amico’s story had come to its end.
“I’mnota killer,” she said. “I’d never take a human life.”
Rudy let out a rush of breath, his greasy lips stretching into a smile. “I know you’re not, kiddo. You’re a good girl. You—”
“Fortunately,” she said brightly, “you’re not human.”
Then, without another word for the bastard who’d sold out his family, who’d hurt Charley again and again, who’d relished in her pain, she shoved the blade into his throat.
His eyes flickered like lightning, then turned black once more.
Seconds later, his body turned into charred ash.
Charley let out a deep sigh, and a new feeling rushed into her heart.
Freedom.
Chapter Thirty-One
The shadows on the stairwell were their only warning.
“Move! Now!” Dorian pulled the emergency exit door shut and jammed the fire axe through the handles—a temporary blockade that wouldn’t hold the assailants on the other side for more than a minute.
The group rushed back down the hallway toward the apartment they’d just abandoned, hoping to go out the windows, but the instant they reached the threshold, the windows in the apartment shattered, and a dozen Duchanes vampires crashed into view.
There was only one way out now.
Down through the club.
Charley grabbed Sasha, and she and the others blurred to the back stairwell, the newly-arriving vamps closing in fast behind them.
They hit the ground floor and barged through the door that led into the club.
