Page 181 of Blood & Throttle

“I have better things to do with my time,” he says, stepping over Jace’s corpse like it’s trash on the floor. “Like finishing what I started—with you.”

I cock my head. “You’re gonna have to be more specific. I’ve inherited a lot of people’s bad habits.”

He smirks.

“Tell me, Sienna, do you ever wonder why someone as dangerous as me would go to such lengths to erase you?”

I snort. “Because you’re a coward with a God complex and a dick smaller than your moral compass?”

That smile doesn’t fade. “Because you’re my daughter.”

Silence detonates in my skull.

No.

No, no, no.

“You’re lying.”

“I never lie,” Kane says calmly. “Your mother did. She lied when she said she could run. Lied when she said she could hide you. Lied when she told me I’d never find her. She tried to take you,” he spits, “and your brother.”

The word cracks through me like a whip.

Brother.

My stomach knots. My lungs freeze.

Brother.

The blood drains from my face as everything slams into place—hard and fast and merciless.

The brother whose death I was arrested for.

The faceless boy the courts named me a monster over.

The body I was found near. The crime I couldn’t explain.

The one Kane framed me for.

My vision goes white with shock. “Wait…” My voice breaks. “That wasmybrother.”

He doesn’t deny it, doesn’t flinch.

Bile rising in my throat.

“You… framed me for his death. Your own fucking son.”

“Myheir,” he says, with a cold shrug. “I raised him to take everything one day. But you? You were her mirror. Her defiance. Her blood. Every time I looked at you, I sawher. It only got worse as you got older. So I sent you away. Paid for silence as those loyal to me put you in the system and erased anything that tied you to me. I buried the truth.”

I shake my head, but I can’t stop the truth from boiling up, vicious and jagged.

Heblamed me for my brother’s murder.

“You sick, selfish, cowardly piece of shit.” My voice shakes but not from fear. From fury. From the weight of a truth clawing its way to the surface.

He watches me. Silent. Smug. Like he’s already won.

“My own father framed me,” I whisper. “Not just for murder but for killing my own blood.”