I sit down opposite him. “Aren’t you going to thank me?” I ask him.
He doesn’t. “How’d you do it?” he asks instead. “You fucked him, didn’t you?”
I flinch and I curse at myself internally for the dead giveaway.
Drago laughs darkly, shaking his head at me. “What a little slut you’ve become.”
I grit my teeth, but remind myself to stay calm. I didn’t bust him out of his cell just so he could drive the getaway yacht. He’s got another part to play.
“Kian told me something,” I remark, ignoring his previous comment.
“Yeah, I bet he told you lots of things,” Drago snarls, his tone full of innuendo.
It’s amazing to me that he can be this cruel even after I’d saved his life. It just proves that he doesn’t really see me as a person he’s hurt, used, and abused over the years. He sees me only as an extension of himself. A stupid, simple tool with a stupid, simple purpose.
In his mind, saving his life is what I’m supposed to do. Because he thinks I belong to him.
“Is it true what you told Kian about my mother?” I ask, cutting right to the chase.
Drago’s eyes go wide. He didn’t see that coming, I guess.
When he doesn’t say anything, I press the issue. “Well?” I demand. “Is it?”
His face twists into darkness. Drago has never been great at hiding his emotions. Which is why it’s so embarrassing that I’ve been in the dark for so long about all his extracurricular activities with Rokiades.
It’s not that I didn’t know something was up. I just turned a blind eye. I purposefully buried my head in the sand, because I believed at the time that ignorance was bliss.
“Why does it matter?” he scowls.
I shake my head slowly. “It matters to me. I deserve to know who my mother was.”
“Your mother was a stuck-up bitch who thought she was too good for the world,” he snarls. “The only thing she had that was valuable was her last fucking name. And, of course, the pussy between her legs. But who cares anymore? She’s been dead for decades.”
“Was she really a Mariani?”
“He told you that, too?”
“He told me everything.”
Drago rolls his eyes. “Is that how he got you to bend over for him?” he scoffs. “If I’d known it was that easy, I’d have told you about her years ago.”
I freeze as disgust pools in the pit of my stomach. I know he’s just trying to scare me, but the level of depravity has me gasping for air.
“I saved your life,” I remind him.
“So what?” he snarls. “You think I owe you something because of that?”
“You do.”
He laughs manically. “What about what you owe me?” he asks. “I kept you alive all those years. Do you know how many different people wanted you after the Clan killed Papa?”
I blink. And slowly, it starts to dawn on me.
The real truth was there the whole time. Hiding right behind the truth Drago wanted me to believe.
It makes sense suddenly. All those years of abuse at Drago’s hands. The way he had looked at me with such bitterness. Such insulted fury. I’d always assumed it was because he felt tied down, held back by having to take care of me.
But it wasn’t that at all. He hated that I was so much more valuable than he was. Because deep down, he knew.