Page 50 of The Villain

“He wouldn’t have?—”

“You are deluding yourself if you believe that. Your father was a ruthless man.”

“He loved me.”

“Well then you got off easy.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me. What does that mean?”

“You don’t want to know. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” I let out a harsh laugh. “You’re fucking unbelievable, do you know that? You just want to get in my head and fuck with me. My family would not use me, pawn me off. My father wouldn’t have, and my brother wouldn’t and he wouldn’t allow Malek to either.”

“Alaric’s dead so I’ll let you hold on to your delusion if that’s what you want, but at least don’t fool yourself about the others. Burying your head doesn’t make reality any less real.”

“I don’t bury my head?—”

“Malek tried to sell you to me, and your brother would have done the same if he was in control, but Malek Lombardi is in charge now. I think he’s been in charge for a while. You do know that don’t you?”

“Why don’t you worry about your own family and leave mine to me. I mean, you’re the one with the missing brother and all.”

His eyes narrow. I’m pushing his buttons, I know I am. And I know I should stop, but I can’t.

He cocks his head and something cold settles around us. “Are we doing this?”

“What? You don’t like talking about reality, Cassian? Not talking about it doesn’t make it any less real.”

He snorts, gives a nominal shake of his head. “Okay then. Tell me what happened when you were fifteen, Allegra.”

“What?” This is not what I’m expecting.

“After your mother’s death, your father pulled you out of school and you pretty much only reappeared years later at a handful of classes at the college and then only under guard.”

I feel my face grow hot and anxiety bubbles at my core. “How do you know that?”

He shrugs a shoulder casually. Too casually. “Not hard to find out.”

“Why were you digging around my life? It’s none of your business.”

Without looking away, he closes his left hand over my right one and takes the nub of my pinkie between his thumb and forefinger. “You know what else I know? You had all ten fingers before you disappeared.”

Blood roars in my ears. I try to snatch my hand back, but he holds tight. Sweat collects under my arms, between my breasts. “I didn’t disappear.”

“Your mother died in a fire,her body conveniently charred to ash. And you never returned to school after that.” He studies me, but I have nothing. “There was a rumor she’d been kidnapped andI’m starting to think it wasn’t a rumor at all,” he says.

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” I say, my voice sounding weird, too thin, too high, my brain trying to think of a response that might shut him up, but my mouth spitting nonsense.

“There’s video footage of you leaving school that day, did you know that?”

I didn’t. “And?” I say, shrugging my shoulders as if it couldn’t matter.

“I recognized the driver.”

I just stare up at him because I don’t know how to respond. My father told me the kidnapping had to be kept a secret. Not that there was anyone I could tell. If it wasn’t kept quiet, then more of our enemies would come after us and maybe I wouldn’t survive the next attack. It was one of the reasons he took me out of school, not that I’d been able to go back anyway. Not after what happened.