Page 44 of Vow of Sin

A light flips on illuminating the room. It’s so bright that I have to shield my eyes to keep the pain to a minimum.

My eyes slowly adjust. It’s cold and damp, mostly likely a basement. On wobbly legs, I force myself and notice the old mattress I’ve been left on. It’s stained. Many of them a dark brown, the color that you normally find with dried blood.

I can see the lightest reflection of the mattress next me. I reach out and my hand comes into contact with the cool glass, but there’s no window on the other side, only cement blocks. Quickly, I turn around. I’m completely incased in a glass room. The walls are close enough that I can touch both of them with my arms out.

I see the outline for the door and reach for it.

“Don’t bother. You don’t think I’m stupid enough to leave it open?” I whirl around, instantly regretting the decision, the pain in my head increasing tenfold.

At first, I don’t see where the voice comes from, but then a figure leans forward, pushing their face into the light.

“Elena,” I whisper.

Her long black hair, tumbles in waves over her shoulder. The picture of her on the church page is deceiving. Even in the dark and with my head pounding, I can see the hatred in her eyes. “Good. You know who I am. Did you really think you could come have a chat with my son whenever you liked. That I wouldn’t find out?”

I roll my shoulders back. There’s no way in hell that I will let this woman see me cower in fear. “You mean Luis’ son?”

“My son,” she snarls. “Luis is dead.”

I step closer to the glass, doing my best to stare her down. Let her know that she doesn’t scare me, even as my insides turn themselves upside down. “I think I know that better than anyone.”

“Considering how much you don’t know, it wouldn’t surprise me if you didn’t.”

“You bitch. You steal my husband from me, now you want to lock me in here and insult me.”

“I didn’t steal your husband,” she spits the word out like poison, “You never had him. He loved me. Spent his nights with me.” She stands up and comes to the glass directly across from me. For the first time, I get an up close and personal look at Elena DeLuca. She’s nothing that I would have expected from the pictures. If people think I’m cold, I have nothing on her. “The only reason he married you was to keep you away from Nico.”

“Why the fuck would he care about keeping me away from Nico?”

She taps the glass making me feel like I’m an animal in a zoo exhibit. “Guess you don’t know everything do you? I’ll tell you a secret,” she says with a conspiratorial wink, like she’s suddenly on my side.

“Let me guess, you’re going to tell me where the key is?”

Her laugh is menacing. “No, but you don’t need to worry about that. You are the only thing standing in my way of having everything that should have been mine years ago.”

“Your family has their own empire.”

“We do and I want to control both. Luis loved me. He knew that once my father died, we could be together.” She pushes her dark hair back. “With you gone, I can finally give my son his empire. Frankie will control it all. He’ll be a man no one messes with once I’m done teaching him.”

Elena’s plan to exploit her son makes me sick to my stomach. How could anyone want to turn their child into a ruthless killer, especially one as innocent as Frankie.

This bitch is as sick as her father. I’ve seen the fear in that poor boy’s eyes.

“Nico will stop you from taking over the family.”

“Don’t worry about Nico, we’ll make sure he doesn’t suffer too badly.” She turns on her heel and walks back into the dark. “Now, stay here like the good little girl you are. There’s so much more I need to learn from you.”

And with that I hear footsteps echo up what I can only guess are stairs before the room is plunged into darkness once again.

ChapterTwenty

Nico

Sitting in the living room, I lean back with my feet up. It’s the first morning in a few days that she hasn’t found me to start a argument. In what seems to be her new way of dealing with shit, she pushes my buttons until I lose my cool, then walks away like it’s all my fault.

How the fuck did I think keeping all those secrets would end up for me? None of it has gone well.

I lean my head back on the chair and try to push thoughts of Scarlett out of my head. As mush as she wants to piss me off, I can’t help but see it as her own defense mechanism.