“You evil son of a bitch.”
“Watch what you say about my mother.”
“Where’smymother?”I demand.“My sister?What have you done with them?”
“They’re fine, Hannah.I love your mother.I’d never do her any harm.”
“Love?A demon speaks of love?You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
He shakes his head.“Demon profiling, as usual.You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, bitch.”
“Cool it with the bitch, you condescending asshole.”
“Are you kidding?Do you know how much I’ve had to hold my tongue over the years?”
“Seriously?”I scoff.“You’ve called me every name in the playbook.My mother never believed me.Do you have her under some kind of a thrall?God, it’s all making sense now.”
“You think it was chance that I met your mother?I knew all along who she was.Who you all were, before you knew yourself.”He gives me a sleazy smile.“And there was and is no thrall.Your mother was so damned needy after your father got through with her that all I had to do was treat her a little less badly.”
Motherfucker.He’s not wrong.My father treated us all badly.But Richard mistreated Larissa and me just as much, to our mother’s blind eye.Still, he’s a demon.Demons are notoriously untrustworthy.
Once I became aware of my vampire side, I spent no time with my mother and stepfather.Big mistake.If I had, I’d have been able to sense his lack of emotion.
“You say my mother’s okay.What about Larissa?”
“Fine as well, and blissfully unaware of who I am and who her father is.”
“And I should believe you because…”
“I can’t think of any reason why you should,” he says.“But it’s the truth.”
I have no choice but to take him at his word.I’m hardly in a position to do anything otherwise, at least until whatever he dosed me with wears off.
“Why am I here?For that matter, where the hell am I?How did you get into Rogan’s penthouse?”
“Your father thinks Rogan is behind the vamp murders he’s investigating,” Richard says, “and you’re going to prove that he’s right.”
“Damned right I’ll prove it,” I say.“IfRogan’s guilty.”
“His guilt is irrelevant,” Richard says snidely.“Roganwillgo down for the murders.”
A black haze still clouds my brain.I still have no idea where I am or how I got here, other than through a secret passageway in Rogan’s closet.
Does Rogan even know the passageway exists?
Think, Hannah, think.I need my brain at full capacity at the moment, and it’s not.I’m still in some kind of drug-induced fog.
The bomb threat.Rogan.He said he wanted me to come to his place to find what I was looking for.Yet I got a text from an unknown number telling me to stay away.
Is he in on this?Rogan?
No way.No way is Rogan working with my son-of-a-bitch stepfather.
Then again, hedidorchestrate the attack on me that first night.Hedidtell Delacourt I wasn’tworth the effort.
Who the hell can I trust?
Not the man standing next to me—that’s the one thing I know without a doubt.