Page List

Font Size:

“What do you want me to do?”

“Find her children, Silas, and protect them. I fear once Thena and Dakota learn Diana is free, they will seek her children and kill them.”

“Consider it done.”

With that, I hung up the phone.

There wasn’t anything more to say.

Seeing the small photograph in Diana’s file, I picked it up. Leaning back in my chair, I held the photo in my hand and looked at the smiling woman lovingly hugging the small boy and girl as if they were the most precious things in her life, when movement caught my eye.

Looking up, I said nothing when she asked, “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

“You lost, Thena. She is safe and reunited with August,” I said as I kept my eyes on the instrument of Diana’s torture, Dakota Stone.

“No one is truly safe, Crispin. You of all people know that.” Thena sighed as she walked toward me, while Dakota looked at my vast collection of books. “Tell me something. Does August know you hid her from him all those years, or does he still believe you knew nothing?”

“My sins are my own, and I own them. Unlike you, who still has yet to acknowledge the fact that you are just as complicit in her torture as the man standing beside you. Now, please tell me why you are really here or leave.”

“Now, why would I do that when we’re having a civil conversation?” The young girl I once knew was now gone, replaced with something viler than I could have ever imagined. “I know you know where her son is at. Tell me and we will leave.”

Closing my hand around the photograph, I simply replied, “I know not of whom you speak, my dear.”

Thena smiled and said, “Darling. Would you please?”

Before I could blink, Dakota’s arm shot out and connected with my face, knocking me to the floor. The sharp crack of Dakota’s fist against my jaw sent a jolt through me, and I tasted blood. Thena watched, her gaze impassive, a chilling testament to the monster she had become. My own sins, my decades of clandestine watching, of orchestrating events from the shadows, suddenly felt like a naïve game compared to the cold, calculated malice radiating from them. They wanted Diana’s child, the last tangible link to Diana’s stolen life. My file, my meticulously kept records, lay open on my desk, a testament to my failure, my inability to truly protect the woman I’d sworn to keep safe.

“I told you,” Thena purred, stepping over my prone form and picking up the photograph I’d clutched so tightly, “he’d know where the brat....” Her voice trailed off as she looked at the photo in her hand. “No. It’s a lie. It can’t be. That fucking lying whore!”

Chapter Forty

Valhalla

The rage that poured off me was suffocating. It wasn’t just rage, though, was it? It was a festering knot of betrayal, a poisoned chalice I’d drained willingly, believing it was honor. And now, the bitter dregs were surfacing, tasting like failure and regret.

It wasn’t true. I refused to believe that after everything I endured, everything I did for that piece of shit, after trusting that motherfucker with my very soul, he allowed the bitch to deliver not one but two fucking brats.

“NO!” My shriek was a raw, primal sound that ripped through the air like a jagged shard of glass.

He’d played me. He used me to blackmail August into his own sadistic game, and when he was done with me, he threw me away in that fucked-up place. He never cared about me at all.

I was nothing but a means to an end.

My eyes, no longer holding even a pretense of normalcy, now blazed with furious disbelief as I stared at the photograph. Dakota, his own face a mask of annoyance, snatched it from my grasp, his knuckles white as he stared at the image of the whore, radiant and full of life, clutching two small children.

“You’re losing it.” Dakota’s voice was a low growl, laced with a disgust that stung more than any of George’s lies. And he was right. I was losing it. This all-consuming fury was a path I’d sworn I would never tread, a descent into the very savagery I’d fought so hard to escape, the kind of savagery that branded my past and threatened to consume my future.

But what choice did I have? To accept this was to accept my own utter annihilation, my entire existence a charade built on a foundation of deceit. To lash out, to destroy, felt like the only way to reclaim something, anything, of myself. And the terrifying part was that even as a piece of me screamed against it, another, darker part, relished the thought.

It was a twisted kind of catharsis, a promise of oblivion that felt terrifyingly like freedom.

Dakota growled, his voice raw, dangerous as he advanced on me. His eyes, twin pools of malice, promised a swift and brutal end as he raised his hand, backhanding me hard across my face. “I had the little bastard, and my fucking father let him leave!”

My own fury erupted, a tempest mirroring Dakota’s. “You fool! You absolute imbecile!” I shrieked, lunging at him, as my nails raked his face. “He played you! He played us both!” I screamed, snatching the photograph back from him. My eyes, wide with a manic gleam, scanned the smiling faces of that bitch and her two children, my breath coming in ragged gasps. “Two? She had two children. All this time...”

I could see the wheels turning in Dakota’s mind, the realization dawning that he had been played too, that his meticulously crafted plan had unraveled because of his father’s desire to play games. I was a whirlwind of destructive energy; my earlier composure now completely shattered. “He knows where to find them, Dakota,” I spat, my voice laced with a desperate hope, my eyes darting back to the man on the floor. “Sinclair knows. He knows everything!”

Dakota’s rage, momentarily diverted, now settled back on Sinclair with renewed intensity. He grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, his eyes blazing. “You will tell me where they are, or I swear to fucking God, I will rip out every last tooth in your head and make you eat them.”