Page 63 of Love & Heart Braking

A female said, “You made it.”

Gug? “Interesting meeting place.”

“These anonymity booths are purpose-built for journalists to interview the fearful and reluctant,” she answered. “Each booth is joined to one other and there’s a no-gossip on all of them.”

Go figure. Gug probably already knew who I was, but I appreciated the gesture. “I see. Fenton told you I wanted to talk?”

“He did. I was eager to hear what happened last night.”

I’m sure she was. “Just one thing. Before I tell you what happened, I need to know your husband’s name.”

The silence through the connecting panel was almost louder than her voice had been. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“You found something?”

I didn’t answer, and I was glad for the darkness to cover my wince. I didn’t mind holding my ground against the twelve and the corrupt, but dangling information over a blackmailed wife’s head was a new jacket for me—and one that didn’t fit particularly well.

She blurted, “My husband’s name is Maligni Ammatus.”

My chest loosened even as my stomach swooped and tension had me curling my hands to fists. “I see.”

“You know the name?”

“His last name.” Just like he’d known mine. “His father was named Odiun?”

A longer pause. “It was. He would have been gone before your time. What does his father’s name mean to you?”

“He wasn’t gone before my time. Odiun drained my father. Killed him. My mother died of heartbreak not long after.”

Gug sucked in a breath. “Maligni’s father was a deplorable man until his last breath. He carried the underworld with him everywhere—too much of Vulcan’s power in him, Maligni always said.”

I closed my eyes, trying to assemble myself.

“My husband is not like his father,” she said quietly. “He knows right from wrong, despite the strength of his power.”

And yet a feeling I’d never felt coursed through my veins. Something that tasted like sweet, sweet revenge. Odiun killed my father out of sheer impatience to find his love. Instead of just asking my dad to search, he took the murderer’s route. And when he’d chosen to do that, I’d lost my mother too. How hard had my father fought his death knowing that his maiden wife would have no option but to follow after him?

And now Odiun’s son was at my mercy.

The power of the fates must be laughing right now because they’d intertwined the paths of our families well and truly.

I could refuse to hand over the information about Maligni’s whereabouts. I could leave him and Gug vulnerable to the twelve. I could leave the daemon to rot in his underwater prison.

And for what?

Odiun was dead and gone. As were my parents. Nothing would bring them back, and I liked to think my father would urge me to do the right thing, that my mother would praise me for my mercy.

Living by their memories was all I had left because some sick bastard had chosen the easy route.

And I wouldn’t betray those memories—or myself—now by doing the same. “The two of you are very lucky I’m the kind of person I am.”

Gug released a tiny breath.

I wasn’t done. “Don’t give me reason to regret doing this, Gug. And I’m making a deal with you. In writing. Maligni’s whereabouts for a return trip to the underworld once he’s free.”

“You’re cursed?”

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