AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She didn’t say anything, just looked at me. Blank. Not offering the slightest reaction at my brother’s name. Like she wanted to crumple but wouldn’t give me the satisfaction.
I took a step toward her, my arms dropping by my sides. “You need to know that Cletus isn’t coming here. I don’t have him lined up waiting to torture you. I haven’t seen him since the castle was destroyed.”
“You haven’t?” She looked away from me, dropping her face toward the floor and hiding between her arms. In the beat of silence, I could hear her swallow hard. “Did they…you…find his body in the wreckage?”
“No.” Fucking cockroach, I could never tell Ada what I’d really found.
“So you don’t know where he is?” Her voice warbled.
“No.”
She pushed herself upright and turned to me, her face visibly paler than it was a second ago. “He’s out there? Just like I’d feared? I had thought…hoped…”
The pounding energy in her head started to spin out of control and her eyes closed, her body swaying slightly.
A visceral reaction, I took another step toward her and reached out, setting my palm on the right side of her forehead to siphon away the pain.
She slapped my hand away. “Can you leave, please?”
“Ada—”
“Please.” Her eyes opened, her glare whipping up to me. Tears had started to brim in her eyes. Tears of pain. “Please just leave.” She turned around, giving me her back, her body shaking it was trying so hard to remain upright. In control.
“Ada—”
“No. No. Leave. Just leave.”
Fine. She didn’t want my help. I wouldn’t give it.
I spun on my heel and left the wardrobe, stalking out of her room.
Even as I did it, regret fell in every one of my footfalls thudding on the wooden floor.
Not being able to help her was its own kind of torture.
I was here.
Willing to help her with the pain and she didn’t want it. Didn’t want me. And I needed to help. Needed to help now, especially, after what she’d said about what Cletus had probably done to her.
My own brother. Unspeakable torture had fallen upon Ada because I couldn’t control my own fucking brother. The crazy one that should have been easy to control.
It had been a hundred years ago, true, but still. I should have taken Cletus out myself long before he ever had a chance to get near Ada.
I should have insisted that Rodolfo back me up on it.
Cletus never should have been within a mile of Ada. Much less…
Bile crawled up my throat as my imagination flashed an image through my brain of Cletus standing over Ada tied to a cold metal table, naked…
And with that image, anger like I’d never known surged through my veins. I was ready to murder someone—or at least torture them.
I needed to go below ground.
A month ago I had found the fucking lawyer that Cletus had been using to move his fortune around. It had taken me four years just to follow the money path to this shark, but now the lawyer was in one of the cells in the undercrofts, rotting away, waiting for me.
It was time to unleash some of my own angst.
Chapter11
