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Regina gaped at him as though he'd struck her. "Corinne was our child too, Victor. She and Lottie were as much our children as Sebastian. We brought them into our lives, into our hearts, just the same as if they'd been born to us."
"It wasn't the same to me!" he snapped, bringing his fist down on the desk. Futile rage coursed through him when he thought about his boy, the sensitive, overly contemplative youth who should have had the world in the palm of his hand. The promising son, who might have had all that and more, if not for the web of deception Bishop had so carefully spun all around them. Not carefully enough, he reflected now.
It was that very web that had eventually found Sebastian, strangling his goodness, his future.
"It doesn't matter," Bishop murmured to his clearly outraged Breedmate. "What's done is done. It was all for nothing, anyway. We lost Sebastian regardless of everything I did to protect him."
Regina's eyes held him too closely. She stared, too knowingly. "He was never quite the same after Corinne went missing," she said, more to herself than to Victor. "I remember how withdrawn Basti became just a few years later, how distant he seemed from us in those last couple of weeks ... before his Bloodlust took over."
Bishop hated the reminder. He hated to recall how painful it had been to realize his only son had turned Rogue - lost to his thirst, his addiction to blood, the very thing that gave all of the Breed life and strength and power. Basti had been weak, but it had been the discovery of his father's corruption that had pushed him over the edge.
Regina would have read his guilt now, even without their blood bond. "What happened, Victor? You betrayed Sebastian too, didn't you?"
Bishop ground his molars together, furious that she would make him relive what had been the worst moment of his life. Second worst - there was little that could top the day Sebastian, drunk from a killing spree, took one of Victor's own guns to his head and pulled the trigger before anyone could stop him.
"He'd figured it out, hadn't he?" she pressed. "You fooled the rest of us, but not him. He somehow uncovered the truth."
"Shut up," Bishop growled, his mind flooding with memories.
Sebastian and his sense of organization and order. How proud he'd been of the mahogany gun cabinet he'd made with his own hands, a gift for his father. He'd wanted it to be a surprise, had begun transferring Victor's prized collection of antique weapons from the old cabinet to the beautiful new one, when he'd discovered the hidden panel at the bottom. All of Victor's darkest secrets were in that private cache.
Sebastian had learned of the whore who'd been killed to look like Corinne. There were receipts from a dressmaker's shop for clothing hastily made to Victor's exacting specifications. A note from one of Victor's jeweler friends downtown, containing a sketch of a custom-made necklace ordered to match the one Corinne had worn the night of her disappearance. Foolish mementos that should have been burned along with the hope of ever seeing Corinne again.
Sebastian had been horrified at his discovery, but he'd kept his silence. Victor had forbidden him to speak of the matter, threatened him, for crissake. He'd told Sebastian that to expose his lie would be to invite the deaths of all of them.
The terrible secret was a burden Sebastian could not bear.
"It was you," Regina said, her voice wooden. "You were responsible for what happened to our son. My God ... it was you who drove him to Bloodlust, to blow his brains out in this very room."
Bishop's fury exploded out of him. "I said shut up!"
Although Regina startled at the sharpness of his voice, she didn't falter. Her hands still fisted, knuckles white in her own outrage, she approached the desk where he stood. "You destroyed Sebastian's life as surely as you destroyed Corinne's, and yet that's not enough for you. You would betray her still." She glanced at the phone now cradled in its receiver. "You have, haven't you? That call you made ... it was to save your own neck, even if it comes at her expense. I can't live like this, not with you. You are a coward, Victor. You disgust me."
He struck her, reaching across the desk to cuff her with a closed hand, hard across the face.
She dropped to the floor from the force of the blow. He came around and glared down at her, seething with anger now, his fangs filling his mouth. She didn't cower. Lifting her head, she stared him narrowly in the eyes, not even flinching at the sight of his transformed irises, which bathed her face in an amber glow. Her tongue went to the corner of her mouth, testing the small gash that bled a scarlet trickle onto her chin.
"Do you have any idea what was done to her all these years?" she challenged him sourly.
"She was raped, Victor. Beaten and tortured. Experimented upon like some kind of animal. She had a baby in that prison. That's right, Corinne has a son of her own. They took him away from her. She actually thought you might help her find him, bring him back to her. All she wanted was for us to be a family again, including her and her child."
Bishop listened, but he remained unmoved. Not even Regina's tears, now streaming down her cheeks, had any effect. He was in too deep and for much too long. Rather than wasting time feeling pity or remorse for things he couldn't change, he was already calculating ways to twist this situation so that he might curry the favor of Gerard Starkn - or Dragos, whatever the powerful male had taken to calling himself now.
Offering neither a word nor a hand, he watched Regina come up to her feet. She despised him; he could feel it seething in her blood.
"I want you to leave, Victor. Tonight, I want you gone from this Darkhaven."
It was such a ridiculous demand, he laughed out loud. "You expect me to walk away from my own home?"
"That's right," she replied, steady as he'd ever seen her. "Because if you don't, I will expose your corruption to the entire Breed nation. You, Gerard Starkn, Henry Vachon ... all of you."
Defiant, she turned on her heel and headed for the open doorway of the study. He didn't let her reach it.
In a second - less than that - he flashed from where he'd been standing in the center of the room to directly in front of her, blocking her path into the foyer beyond. He grabbed her fiercely by the upper arms, then spoke through gritted teeth. "You will do no such thing. You, my dear, will mind your fucking tongue. You will mind your mate, if you know what's good for you."
Her eyes went a bit wider, and he saw her throat move as she swallowed. Before she spoke, he had mistaken it for fear. "Or what?" she asked, much too bold for his liking. "What will you do, Victor, kill me?"
Although it was rare enough to be virtually unheard of, particularly in these modern, civilized times, he wouldn't be the first Breed male to lose control of the more savage side of his nature and kill his mate.
