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“I have people who can come to me at whatever time I wish.”
“Of course.” She brings her hands together and I sense she wants to continue the conversation she tried to have with me last night. “I need to talk to you.”
Unsurprisingly, I was right. If I were her, I’d want to know every single detail about what’s happening, and I’d be thinking of every which way out of this situation.
I understand how she feels but that doesn’t mean I want to talk about it.
Serenity has always conflicted me. When I’m with her my head and heart don’t align the way it should. Instead they respond to her as if she owns me.
That’s why she’s always been dangerous to me.
“We’re talking now.” My voice is firmer. It needs to be because I’m trying to avoid any conversation about her father.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that everything we talk about next will only lead to her trying to convince me not to take his miserable life.
“We’re not talking about the things I need to talk about.” It looks like it took an ounce of her life to say that to me. Her beautiful face has gone paler and her eyes are overcast with despair. “Dante, there’s no way you truly can expect me to accept this fucked up situation, knowing my father dies at the end of it.”
“I already told you, I don’t expect you to accept anything. It is what it is.”
“I know and I understand that. I understand that my father did a lot of wrong and I would never overlook it just because he’s my father.” She places her hand at her heart. “It was the hardest thing in the world to speak to him yesterday knowing he’s a fraud. But is there really nothing else you can do to punish him besides death?”
There it is. The question I’ve been waiting for all this time.
“No.”
As the word falls from my lips, Serenity looks as if she’s just going to fade away into the air surrounding us.
“Really Dante, you’re telling me there’s absolutely nothing more you can do to him? Hehasto die.” Her voice catches in her delicate throat while her eyes beg me.
“An eye for an eye, blood for blood.” There hasn’t been a time in my life when I haven’t wanted Jason dead. All he’s done now is given me a reason. “There is nothing more to do.”
“I have one more thing.”
I grit my teeth, wishing she would stop. There’s nothing that can change my mind, but I decide to hear her out. “What is it?”
“Me.”
At first I think I haven’t heard her properly, then I look deep into her eyes rounding, filling with hope, and I realize I heard her just fine.
But I pray doesn’t mean what I think she does.
“What do you mean you?”
“Take me instead. Take me, Dante.”
I stare back at her, stunned to silence. Except there’s one word that repeats through my mind—minx.
Not seconds ago I fully believed there was nothing she could offer me to change my mind. But the minx could see straight through me. Then again, I showed my ass last night when my heart spoke words I shouldn’t have spoke when I told her I couldn’t let her go. I wanted to take them back but it was too late.
Now she’s offering me the one thing in this world she mustn’t.
“I can’t do that.” My voice is overflowing with my internal struggle.
“You know you can.” A tear runs down her cheek. I hate seeing her cry. Over the last few days she’s cried several times because of me. “You can take me. My life for my father’s, so he lives. I’ll do anything you want me to do and I’ll won’t say anything to anyone about what you’re investigating. Just please, please don’t kill my father. I already lost my mother. I know it’s different, but you must know what I mean. You lost both your parents, too. I know you’d anything you could to bring them back or stop them from dying no matter what. So, if any of what you said was true about it being real between us, please don’t put me through that.”
I blow out a ragged breath, feeling like my soul is being stretched out too thin.
My lips part to answer but someone clears their throat in an exaggerated manner.
