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Her brow furrows as she searches for it.

“The Scarlet Letter. It’s about—”

“I know what it’s about.”

I don’t mean to snap, but the thought of this sitting under my nose all this time guts me. Her favorite book. Or at least the one that mirrored her the most. My mother, always so elegant in her suffering, leaving the truth tucked inside a story about shame.

Zaiya’s gaze drops to the letter. “What does it say?”

I let out a broken laugh and toss the envelope onto the desk. It slides like a dead bird.

“My mom had another son.” The words taste unreal. “She killed herself because he rejected her.”

Now that it starts, the truth keeps spilling.

“My dad’s heart broke when she died. He refused help when he got sick because he wanted to be with her again. And now I’m…”

I gesture at the suite. The hotel. This gilded cage with my name engraved on it.

“Running everything before it was my time.”

Rage surges too fast to hold, and I sweep the lamp off the desk.

Glass shatters. The bulb bursts. The room dims. Better for this place to look less like a palace and more like a tomb.

Zaiya doesn’t flinch.

She puts her hand over mine, my fist still clenched around the crumpled letter. Her touch quiets the violence in me that has no right going still. The tension loosens. My fingers open. And I let the paper drop.

I stare at her fingers, baffled by the gentleness of them. After what she’s endured, she shouldn’t be comforting anyone. Least of all me.

My lips press to her knuckles as I hold her hand in both of mine. When I look up at her, the violence in my heart finds a name.

“I’m going to kill your father for what he did to you. I’ll slit his fucking throat. I’ll boil his head and mount his skull on the wall.”

Her cherub lips curve in recognition. She shakes her head, then swings a leg over my lap and straddles me, her bare pussy right over my cock. Her tits hang free under the loosely tied robe.

Even so, what holds me are her gorgeous gray eyes. There is no fear in them now. Only hunger for justice.

She cups my face to kiss me softly, and I am not ashamed to admit that tears well in my eyes. I would die for her. The softness she’s brought into my life is what I never knew I needed until it was wrapped around me.

Life is brutal, but loving someone who eases the pain I thought I deserved makes it worth continuing.

When she pulls away, her gaze trails over my face as her fingertips follow, tracing the memory of every line and detail.

“I don’t want him dead,” she says with a calm certainty that chills me. “I want him to suffer.”

My hands slide beneath the robe and up her bare back. The softness of her skin against my rage ruins the brutality I was so desperate to release. She keeps me from unraveling.

I see her clearly now. Not the victim she was supposed to be. But the angel of death, dripping black ichor from her regrown wings.

“I’ll do anything for you.”

I mean it, and the world should shudder at the consequences of a demon devoting himself to his master.

She stares into my eyes like she’s focused on the specific blue of my irises.

“What if I want something terrible?”