Page 82 of Darkest Deeds
“I warned you,” she growls hoarsely.
She should be disgusted. Any normal person would be, and the fact that she hasn’t looked away from the gruesome scene sets off warning bells inside my head. Unfortunately, I don’t hear them because I’m too engrossed in watching her stare at what’s left of him. Then every piece of the puzzle clicks together, presenting a picture I never saw coming.
She knew my mother was here the whole time.
I’m on her before she can react. Her mouth opens in a silent scream just before I shove her against the wall with my forearm across her throat and my gun to her head. Again, she doesn’t flinch as the barrel pushes against her temple. “Where’s my mother, Ava?”
“Let me go.” That’s all she says. I have a gun to her head and she just stands there staring at me. I tense, a familiar sensation swimming in my veins. I can’t look away from her eyes. I’ve looked into hundreds of them and never felt a thing. Eyes that cried. Pleaded. Begged for mercy. Not once did they change my mind.
But none of them were hers.
Smoke consumes more of the room, turning my anger into coughs. Ava sags against me, rattled wheezes coming from her chest.
“I should kill you,” I growl.
“I know.”
We both know I should, but those fucking eyes are my undoing. Underneath the emptiness, I still see that sad little girl. The reckless teenager. The broken void. And the only woman who has ever owned my heart.
Killing her won’t bring my mother back.
I lower the gun, and grab her arm while hurling her toward the flaming doorway. “Get out of here, Ava.” When she just stands there blinking at me in that pathetic excuse for a tank top, I take off my jacket and throw it at her face. “Go, before I change my mind!”
She clutches it to her chest, still hesitating with her brows drawn together until I lift my gun and aim it at her face. Before I even have a shot, she’s gone, leaving bloody footprints as the only sign she was ever there.
Letting out a string of curses, I count to ten, cover my face, and haul ass in her wake.
Fucking pussy will get a man killed every time.
I’m fighting flames and smoke while running like a rat in a maze. Lack of oxygen is slowing me down, so if this next turn isn’t the way out, I might as well call my time of death.
Because I let her go first.
As the thought sinks in, my frantic pace slows then eventually stops.
She’s not broken; she’s brilliant.
Sergei was right about one thing. I chopped off the head of a dragon but one grew right back in its place.
And she’s breathing fire.