“Yeah?Why?”
“The answer is simple.”A serpentine smile crawls across his face.
I suppress a shudder.“Clearly I’m too stupid to figure it out for myself,” I say sarcastically, “so you’re going to have to enlighten me.”
He walks away from me and sits down.I narrow my eyes to focus them.Things are still pretty blurry, but the chair he’s sitting on is ornate and gawdy.His smile is even bigger and more corrupt.
And it dawns on me.
He’s seated on a throne.A fuckingthrone.
My stepfather is the demon king.
21
“King?”I gasp.“You’re the fucking demon king?”
“Give the girl another gold star,” Richard drawls.
“You know, I didn’t think it was possible to hate you more than I did.I see now it is.”I rub my temples.My head is throbbing, and I swear a jackhammer is pounding inside my brain.
“Demons aren’t all bad, Hannah.”
“Are you kidding me?You’re evil.It’s part of being a demon last time I checked.”
“You’re not wrong,” he says, “but we’re capable of emotion.We’re capable of love.”
“I’ll never believe it.”
“Just because your vamp senses can’t tune into it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
“You expect me to believe that?That you actually love my mother?”
“I expect you to believe it because it’s true.”
“She’ll be very happy to know that you drugged her daughter, then.That’s an act of love if there ever was one.”
“I never claimed to loveyou.”
“But you love her, andsheloves me.You said yourself you wouldn’t harm me for that reason.”
“She does love you, in her own way, but she loves me more.Has she ever taken your side over mine?”
Dickhead has a point.My mom is blind when it comes to this jerk.Totally blind.She abandoned Larissa and me the day Richard came into her life.And he expects me to believe there’s no thrall?How does an intelligent Fulbright scholar who loves her daughters forsake them for an asshole demon withoutsome kind of spell?
“You want my help with Rogan?Fine.But you have to do something for me as well.”
“I’m not sure you’re in the position to be making any deals, Hannah.”
“You’re forgetting one thing, Richard.I don’t give a rat’s ass about you or Rogan.I’m bound, though, by blood, to follow my father’s command.He asked me to find proof.You’re asking me to manufacture proof.If there’s proof, I’ll find it.I have to.My blood requires it.That’s all I’ll offer.I’ll give you the proof if I find it.”
“And I’m telling you that you willfindproof, whether it exists or not.”
I shake my head.“You got a hearing problem, old man?”
He laughs then.A demonic and maniacal laugh.A laugh I’ve seldom heard over the years, but when I did, I never realized how evil it was.
“You think you have any cards to play, bitch?Really?I’ll never harm your mother or your sister, but I can make your sister’s life a holy living hell.”