Page 54 of Bonded By Blood
“Who?” Trista asked firmly. She narrowed her eyes on him. “Who would dare challenge me?”
“I didn’t ask,” Garvin replied. “I signed on for the chance of living to see your regime fall.” A fact he was all too proud of, if the tone of his voice was any indication.
“If you lived the extent of your mortal life, you would never see that day.” Trista punctuated the statement by jerking her arm to the side and snapping his neck with all the effort it took to turn a page. She stepped back and Garvin’s body slumped to the floor.
Brianna drew a quiet breath.
For a moment, Joe thought about going to her. Surely, she was upset at learning her treasured employee had betrayed her—maybe, too, at having watched him die. Then he remembered the feel of Matilda’s body going limp in his arms, the taste of Matilda’s blood still warm on his tongue. He held his position.
“Seth,” Trista said, turning her gaze toward the man as she spoke. “You know the Wilson brothers best. Are they working for another?”
Joe watched as Seth’s wife closed her eyes, as if repelling an unpleasant memory.
Seth took a moment before replying. “I can’t say for sure.” His jaw ticked. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but the truth is we’ve been several steps behind them all along. If nothing else, I could believe they have a dangerous ally.”
Trista’s lips curled and she turned to make her way back to her chair. “Update Jasen. Increase the hunt. And empty the trash.”
Seth inclined his head and broke from Veronica’s side in order to pick up the body on the floor.
Veronica followed him out the door quietly, several feet behind.
Joe watched the door close behind them, debating whether or not he should make his own exit, but when Brianna spoke up, he knew he would linger.
“Mother.” The word hung in the air just long enough for all eyes in the room to refocus on her. Just long enough for Joe’s insides to twist in trepidation. “Call off whatever punishment you’ve assigned to Matilda.”
Both of Trista’s brows lifted, for a moment, before she flicked a wrist in a casually dismissive gesture. “Impossible.” She turned toward her preferred chair.
Brianna didn’t budge. “Don’t be so unreasonable. Garvin confessed to everything. You took his life for it.”
“That’s true,” Trista said. She crossed a leg over a knee and swung her booted foot twice in the air almost as if she were bored. “But she was still complicit in your poisoning, Brianna. I can’t ignore that. Besides, it’s already done.” She left unsaid that the worst of it was also irreversible.
Joe wondered if Brianna knew yet even a portion of what fate had befallen the woman.
“Matilda was a victim, Mother,” Brianna argued. “Surely you can see that.” She took a step forward, toward her mother. “She was used as a vehicle to carry out a crime Garvin knew full well came with a heavy penalty. At most she was guilty of complacency. She doesn’t deserve the punishment reserved for those who willfully try to harm us.”
So there’s a standing punishment for that? In a way it made sense. Trista set the laws, such as they were, for vampires the world over. She would need to implement some rather steep penalties, then, in order to keep the more power-hungry, egocentric vampires from targeting her or her daughter in a bid to take over the throne. Joe had never thought of it that way before, and it hadn’t been put in so many words while they were in the safe-room, but he saw the logic of it. Although he was curious as to what the standing punishment was.
Was it something specific? Had Trista gone off-script with Matilda? Or was it something vague, which might allow for situational creativity?
Yeah. Probably the second one. But that was one question Joe didn’t think he wanted to ask.
Trista sighed. “So if one of our blood slaves had fed me poison, you wouldn’t have taken immediate action against them? You wouldn’t have made certain they paid the highest price possible?” She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. “Tell me, daughter, would you have punished them at all?”
A chill stole down Joe’s spine.
“Of course I would have,” Brianna replied. Her voice was clipped, her tone hard to read. “But I like to think I’d have also considered the larger circumstance. You knew immediately she wasn’t the real traitor. You went out of your way to make an example out of her, didn’t you? And for what, so you could just snap the traitor’s neck and be done with it?”
“The traitor wanted to live to see us fall,” Trista said. She settled again in her oversized seat. “So I made certain he wouldn’t live to draw another breath.” For the first time since the conversation had begun, her dark gaze snapped to Joe for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Matilda’s … example, if you must, served a different purpose.”
“What sort of purpose?” Brianna asked. Her back was still facing Joe, but he could perfectly picture the frown curving her sweet lips.
His throat ran dry as he realized the answer. He’d been set up to play a part in that punishment from the beginning.
“She needed to answer for the crime of nearly killing you, regardless,” Trista said. “But hers wasn’t the only loyalty I felt the need to test.”
The nausea Joe had been successfully managing for the duration of the conversation rose up in his stomach with a vengeance. It doesn’t change anything. That was true. Trista would likely still have killed Matilda and her son if he’d just stayed quiet. He’d thought he’d involved himself, impulsively, but maybe he’d been played. The entire confrontation had happened right in front of him, as a test, to see how he’d react—and whose side he’d take.
“What are you talking about?” Brianna asked, thrown enough by Trista’s statement to lose a little of the edge from her voice.