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“Lucius Dragos,” Doyle said, his voice practically giddy. “It’s going to be a hell of a day.”
* * *
She had no time to process, no time to realign her reality with this new perception of the world. Luke was a murderer.
A vicious, cold-blooded killer. The very epitome of the evil she’d dedicated her life to putting behind bars.
There had to be some sort of mistake.
And he wasn’t simply a murderer. No, he was also an in-your-face, straight-out-of-your-nightmares vampire. The exact kind of creature that had murdered her father.
She closed her eyes, fighting tears. Determined not to show any reaction while she was in this room.
It was outrageous. Unbelievable.
Mortifying.
He’d had his hands on her. He’d touched her—he’d claimed her—and surely, surely she would have known if she’d been sleeping with a killer.
She remembered, though, the strength in those powerful hands and the determination in his amber eyes. She’d seen control there along with an undercurrent of violence that had both scared and excited her. He’d practically thrummed with a potency and raw carnality that had wreaked havoc on her. She’d wanted him, yes, but he’d wanted her, too, and he was a man who took what he wanted.
He’d taken her, leading her to where he wanted her to go and then watching with unabashed rapture as she’d shattered under his touch.
He was dangerous, all right.
She’d seen it, and she’d simply ignored it. In his arms, she’d felt no risk. The opposite, actually, because he’d made her feel more secure than she ever had in her life.
She fought a shudder. If it had only been sex with a murderer, she could handle that. But she’d felt something for him. More than something. Being with Luke had felt like coming home. Like they belonged together. Now all of that had shattered. Now, she felt like a fool.
And the worst of it was, she’d never seen it coming.
“Constantine?”
She noticed that someone had turned off the screen. She blinked, turning her attention to the director. “Sir?”
“Are you okay?”
She nodded.No. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m fine. It’s just strange. After years of thinking it was all fiction, to see a photo of a normal-looking man and learn that he’s a vampire.” She looked again at the screen, as if Luke’s face was still there, but saw only her own reflection. A storm of feelings raged inside her—anger, confusion, even longing—but she saw nothing in her face that would give away her secret. Nothing that would reveal that she’d been thrown.
It was the face of a trial attorney, and a damn good one. A prosecutor who could get the shit kicked out of her by a witness in front of twelve citizens good and true and make it look like the witness said the exact right thing to put the final nail in the defendant’s coffin. It was, she realized, the face that had gotten her this job.
Her job.
She shouldn’t be working this case. Not with the baggage she was going to be lugging into the courtroom. She should tell Leviathan the truth right now.
But she said nothing. Later, when he was in custody. Maybe she’d talk then. If she told them now, they’d surely shut her out. A frisson of fear cut through her as she realized that they might even erase her memories and send her back up to Porter. They could do that, and then she’d never have her answers.
She couldn’t take the risk. She needed to do this. Needed to prosecute this case. To put away a murderous vampire. For justice. For Braddock. And for her father.
She might never learn exactly who had taken Frank Constantine from her, but she could walk this path. She’d hold on to her memories no matter what the cost. And, yeah, she could prosecute the monster who had taken her body and toyed with her heart. The killer who’d gotten under her skin.
It might not be closure, but it would be close.
With determination, she forced herself to recall the crime scene. The body on the ground. The neck ripped open, just like her father’s. “He killed a human?”
“A Therian,” Leviathan said. “A shapeshifter. In this case, a were-fox. Considered a para-human for purposes of the Concordat, and violence against a human is the most egregious of crimes.”
“Which means that once the jury comes back with a guilty verdict. Dragos gets a stake through the heart.” Doyle didn’t even try to hide his smile. “About time. The serpent rides high in that son-of-a-bitch.”
