Page 179 of Jagged Souls

Love for a mate who’s been dead now for decades.

It is fuckingcertainty.

My limbs shaking, I reach my hands out to the lifeline he’s tossed me and clutch my fingers in his shirt. There is no strength in my grip, but there is power in my words.

“Save her,” I plea.Save me.

Give me a reason to fight this misery.

A purpose to carry on.

His hands move to cover mine just like they did before. “I will if you give me something in return.”

My breath catches in my lungs. My brain screams at me in warning – that this is a trap, that this is what he wanted all this time, and he’s just going to use me, but the haze is too strong for it to properly penetrate.

Though even if I heard it truly… He is offering me a way to get my daughter back. How can I refuse him?

Swallowing hard, I wet my lips. “What do you want?”

“Tell me who gave you the V.”

Fifty-Four

Antonio

I already know the answer, but I want her to tell me. I want her to take that first step in trusting me so I can get her off the V.

Siome needed to believe in something other than herself before she could take that first step towards recovery, so I will be Micha’s higher power.

I will be her safe corner.

Her savior.

The omniscient god she trusts without question.

Then I will use her to end the Shadow bloodline just like Sau did Siome’s.

She makes a noise of pain, not wanting to spill the secret of her dealer, still hoping he’ll be able to sneak her a dose behind my back.

The men tense beside me. They’re still here, having stood in silence all this time. They know better than to leave and make me have to hunt them down.

“Eduardo,” I say.

“I wouldn’t –” the sniveling coward starts to say, begging for his life already.

“Take a bit of the V out of her.”

“No!” She jerks on my shirt, trying to grab my attention. “Please, don’t,” she pleads as she faces me. Her head keeps jerking towards the witch though, able to hear his footsteps as he walks towards her. “Please.”

“Give me a name.”

“It was Bear,” she says, blurting out the words.

But I know it fucking wasn’t.

Eduardo told me it was Tim when he teleported me in, but the fucker would blame anything on him. He wants him gone. But though Timothy often pushes his luck with me, he never crosses the line. He’d beat her face but not her belly. He’d piss and shit on her and degrade her in every way he could imagine, but he wouldn’t risk giving her V, wouldn’t risk terminating the pregnancy he knows I want. It doesn’t matter how defective the fetus is. As long as it survives, it will give me power when I eat it. As long as he doesn’t cross that line, he knows I don’t give a shit about what he does.

But Digby (Sunny) is too fucking dumb for his own good. He knows the only way out of Eduardo’s experiments is by getting her pregnant with a hybrid, and he can’t do that if she’s already carrying. Given Eduardo blamed Timothy for this mess, I know they were working together to set him up as the patsy – probably because Tim’s been torturing them in my absence.