“You see,” he drawled slowly as he pushed off the desk and dropped into a crouch before me, pinching his slacks so he could squat comfortably. “I once found your mother extraordinarily attractive, Lila. I still remember when she served me pancakes at that little diner.” His eyes lost focus as they trained on the memory. “She had your smile, and it tempted me to take her the moment she trained it on me. I am not a man to deny myself,” he said with a self-deprecating grin, opening his palms as if in surrender to it. “So I took her. And I had her for eight wonderful years whenever I came to Entrance, until your beast of a father murdered her.”
His eyes flashed dark, and his hand was at my face so quickly I flinched, thinking he would strike me.
He didn’t.
Instead, he cupped my cheek in his smooth hand and stared at me nostalgically. “I called her my dark beauty…did you know, sweet Lila, that is exactly what your name means?”
Nausea rolled through me. I leaned away from Javier, curling over my rebellious stomach to vomit all over the side of the chair. My head swam as I expelled the small, remaining amount of nutrients I had in my belly, and when I righted myself, sour still clung to the back of my tongue.
“Hmm,” Javier hummed in mild disgust as I retched. “Don’t worry, I’ll have that cleaned up.”
There was a shrill cry from outside the room, feminine and outraged, and then Piston was shoving open the door, pushing a bleeding, mutilated Irina into the room so hard she stumbled and fell to her knees.
She looked up at Javier through her hair, eyes crazed, split open face held shut with butterfly bandages and still seeping blood. “Javier, that hijo de puta scarred me!”
“I can see this,” Javier noted calmly.
So could I. The sight of her beauty torn diagonally down the middle by a ragged wound made something dark and gleeful flare in my chest.
From my position, I could see the way Javier leaned back against the desk, his fingers curling around the gun he’d discharged earlier.
“We must kill every single one of those men,” she shrieked, moving her hands through her hair, trying to right it. “I will make an appointment with a plastic surgeon in Mexico and convalesce down there while you clean up the club. I do not want to spend one more moment in this horrible country.”
“No,” he agreed softly. “Irina? Did you not see we have a guest? I believe you invited her yourself.”
Irina paused for a long moment then slowly turned to look at me, half hidden in the huge chair. Her face blanched so deeply she looked like she might keel over into a faint.
“Javier,” she started, scrambling to get to her feet.
“Stay down!” he snapped, his mild veneer cracking as he stalked forward to loom over his wife. “Do not act innocent when you know what you did. You hired Lila as a tool to use against me, Irina, and you know how I feel when you try to manipulate me.”
“I, I didn’t, I just––” her words cut off with a gurgle as her reached down to grab her throat and haul her half into the air.
“You did,” he snarled. “You are pathetic. You think I would not know you tried to use Ellie and her daughter against me? You think if you bring me pain, it will bring you power?”
He let her go, watching as she crumpled to the ground before he spat on her face.
Then, he moved back slightly, just two steps, and pulled the gun he’d put in his waistband free so he could point it straight down at his wife.
“My wife,” he purred. “It will only bring you death.”
And then he pulled the trigger.
I screamed as Irina’s head exploded, the sound like a burst watermelon, pieces of gore flying everywhere.
That was why, I realized as I gagged behind my hand, Javier had stepped away.
To avoid getting blood on his suit.
“Hush, hush,” he soothed me as he put the gun down and moved forward to stroke my hair even when I flinched and gagged again. “She will not bother you again.”
“What do you want with me?” I demanded before I gagged again. “What am I to you?”
He studied me then, somber and considering me for so long, I worried that I’d pushed too far and he would use that gun on me too.
“I have lost children before,” he explained slowly. “It is the bane of a man of power to watch the vulnerable in his car be exploited or killed. I… I would not have that happen to the daughter of the woman I once loved.”
“So you’re actually going to let me go?” I ventured.
He smiled sadly then went alert as boots stomped over the deck above and shouts erupted.