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“Life isn’t fair. You get what you fight for, and I’m far from done fighting.”
“Okay, then. So, what’s the plan?”
I look at my friend, and what I need to do is suddenly clear.
“I need you to do something for me, and don’t ask any questions. Can you do that?”
Dimitri shakes his head and grimaces. “You’re about to get me in deep shit, aren’t you?”
I clench my jaw. “I said, no questions.”
He throws his hands up. “Okay. I got you. No questions. What do you need me to do?”
Eight
Seleme
WORK AND RUNNING HAVE always been my respite. The only things in my life I could control. The only things that seem to bring harmony between the two aspects of my reality.
But the last four days, even running for hours on my treadmill until I can barely stand hasn’t helped to clear my mind as it usually does.
I’ve barely been able to concentrate but I’ve still come to the office with Papa everyday thankful for the minimal distraction this environment offers me.
My case before the state supreme court has been postponed, as often happens with these things. Normally, I’d be fuming, but right now I’m counting my lucky stars because my head is not in the game. And if my father had his way, he’d keep me locked up in the house until tonight is over, but I refused.
“Seleme, honey.” My mother’s soft voice cuts through the noise in my head. “You have to decide. No one can force you. If this isn’t what you want, we’ll accept the consequences. We made that deal, not you, and you can walk away from it if you want to.”
“I know,” I reply, glancing to where my father stands looking out the window in my office, arms crossed, deliberately ignoring me. “Thank you, Mama.”
My father hasn’t been able to look at me the same way since that night, which is just as well because I can’t look at him, either. There are things a father and daughter shouldn’t share, and the sight of me straddling Maxim, ready to give him what has been promised elsewhere, is one of those things.
My father spins and looks at my mother. “You say ‘consequences’ like they’re going to take us to small claims court or something. The Messinas aren’t going to just accept an apology and a bit of compensation. Promises were made. Breaking them will put us all in danger, Seleme included.”
“We’re always in danger, darling,” my mother retorts. “Would you rather see your daughter unhappy?”
“Unhappy but alive, yes,” he huffs. “Maxim is a felon, Seleme, a traitor to his country. I showed you the report. He led his whole team into a trap, and it was only blind luck they made it out alive.” My father’s face is tight, his jaw hard. “This is not a man we can trust. Not someone we can have in our lives. And even if we could, there’s the fact that he’s mortal. He would never understand our world. Never be able to give you what you need. We don’t even know what is going to happen at midnight tonight. We don’t know what you will become. The Messinas are better equipped to deal with whatever might happen. I should never have invited that man into our home. I knew that you were a half-vampire, that your hormones made you vulnerable, I just had no idea how much difficulty you were having controlling those feelings. I made a snap judgment, thinking he could protect you in a weak moment. Trusted the word of the man that had worked for our firm. I’m sorry, my sweet. I made a mistake. I’m sorry it ended with you getting hurt.”
For the past four days, he’s insisted I’m protected everywhere I go. Even right now there are Messina goons in the windowless office next door. When they investigated the accident at the Israndia Estate, it was clear someone had set it up.
There was one of those electric waterfall things under the skirt of the table just behind me, switched on apparently as soon as the lights went down and nobody would see what was going on. The rope to the chandelier hadn’t just broken, there were knife marks going right through it.
It was supposed to kill me. One of the entertainers hired for the event had been replaced by a vampire from the Hasanov coven at the last minute, and he had been tasked with taking me out before I could make the Messinas any more powerful than they already are.
Right now, the Messinas are hunting down the Hasanovs and taking them out, one by one, as is their ruthless and unforgiving manner and that gives me no pleasure at all. Perhaps they had the right idea and it would be better if I was dead, unable to give the Messinas what they want.
