Lover Avenged(204)

Shoving the Tohr crap out of his head, he thought of Xhex.

She was hurting right now. Badly.

He hated that there was nothing he could do for her.

Except then he reminded himself that even if there were, she wouldn’t have wanted what he had to offer. She’d made that perfectly clear.



Xhex sat on the twin bed in her place on the Hudson River, head hanging low, the weight of her shoulders braced against her hands. Next to her, on the thin blanket, was the letter iAm had given her. After taking it out of its envelope, she’d read it once, refolded it along its pristine creases, and retreated into this small room.

Shifting her head to the side, she looked out through frosted windows to the sluggish, murky river. It was bitterly cold today, the temperature slowing the current of the water down and icing up the rocky shores.

Rehv was such a bastard.

When she’d sworn to him that she would take care of a female, she hadn’t thought that vow through well enough. In the letter, he called her on the pledge and identified the female as herself: She was not to come for him, nor endanger the life of the princess in any way. Furthermore, in the event she did anything like that on his behalf, he would not accept her help and would choose to stay in the colony no matter what actions she took in the name of saving him. Finally, he directed that should she go against his wishes and her word, iAm was to follow her to the colony, thus endangering the life of the Shadow.

Mother. Fucker.

It was the perfect endgame, worthy of a male like Rehv: She might be tempted to can her vow, and she might think there was a way to talk sense into her boss, but she already had the burden of Muhrder’s life around her neck, and now Rehvenge’s. Adding iAm’s to the list would kill her.

Plus Trez would go after his brother. Making it an even four.

Caged by the situation, she gripped the edge of the mattress so hard her forearms shook.

The knife got into her palm somehow; only later would she recall that she’d had to stand up and walk naked across the room to her leathers to get it out of its holster.

Back on the bed, she thought of the males she’d lost over the course of her life. She saw Murhder’s long dark hair and his deep-set eyes and the scruff he always had on his heavy jaw…heard his Old Country accent and recalled the way he’d always smelled of gunpowder and sex. Then she saw Rehvenge’s amethyst stare and his mohawk and his beautiful clothes…smelled his Must de Cartier cologne and relived his chic brutality.

Finally, she pictured John Matthew’s dark blue eyes and short-cropped military-style hair…felt him moving deep inside of her…heard his heavy breathing as his warrior body had given her what she’d wanted and hadn’t been able to handle.

They were all gone, even though at least two of them were still alive on the planet. But people didn’t have to be dead to be out of your life.

She looked down at the viciously sharp, shiny blade and angled the thing so that it caught the weak sunlight in a flash that momentarily blinded her. She was good with knives. They were her favorite weapon, actually.

The knock on her door brought her head up.

“You okay in there?”

It was iAm-who not only had acted as Rehv’s mail carrier, but was evidently charged with babysitting. She’d tried to throw him out of her house, but he’d just shadowed on her, taking a form that she couldn’t get hold of, much less bootlick out the damn door.

Trez was sitting in the hunting cabin’s main room, as well, but talk about role reversal. When she’d locked herself in her bedroom, he’d been stock-still in a hard-backed chair, staring out over the river in a heavy silence. In the wake of the tragedy, the brothers had traded personalities, iAm being the only one who talked: As far as she recalled, Trez hadn’t said one thing since the news had droppped.

All that quiet was not about Trez mourning, though. His emotional grid was marked with anger and frustration, and she had a feeling Rehv, in all his cock-sucking wisdom, had found a way to trap Trez into inaction, too. Like her, the Moor was trying to find a way out, and knowing Rehv, there wouldn’t be one. He was a master at manipulation-always had been.

And he’d put a lot of thought into this exit strategy. According to iAm, everything was all set up, not only on the personal levels, but the financial ones, too. iAm got Sal’s; Trez got the Iron Mask; she got a chunk of cash. Ehlena was provided for as well, although iAm said he would handle that. The bulk of the family estate went to Nalla, with millions and millions of dollars passing to the young, along with all the heirlooms that, according to primogeniture, had been owned by Rehv, not Bella.

He’d exited beautifully, wiping clean ZeroSum’s drug and bookie businesses entirely. The Mask still had girls for hire, but none of the other stuff was going to go down there or at Sal’s. With the Reverend gone, the bunch of them were almost clean.