She was about to open her mouth, but a look from her father
silenced her. The expression in his eyes was so dark it went
beyond fury to something cold and horrible that stabbed
Cassia in the gut when she saw it. “You remember your
mother, no?”
“I…yes, of course.” She’d died in a car accident when
Cassia was seven years old. She didn’t remember most of the
details, but she did remember her mom’s smile. The white
blonde of her hair, her flashing blue eyes, the yellow dress
with tiny white flowers that she adored.
Antonio’s lips twisted up in a snarl and his eyes were so
dead and hard that Cassia shivered. She’d never seen her
father’s eyes look that way. Inhuman. “You always thought her
death was an accident, but it’s time you learned the truth. She
was trying to leave me—leave you girls—for another man, a
younger man. An artist of all things. I made sure she never got
the chance to humiliate me. It was a wreck, but it was no
accident.”
Cassia couldn’t move. She could only suck at the air in the
room, trying to inflate lungs that were filled up with sulphur
and fire. She couldn’t blink even though her lashes fluttered
wildly, and her eyes burned. Her belly heaved and bile
splashed up into her throat. Her throat worked convulsively to
push back the sickness with a swallow so thick it was loud in
the room around her, echoing her horror back to her own ears.
“Wh-what are you going to do to me if I don’t obey you?
Kill me?” She couldn’t believe what she’d just said. That she
was able to speak at all.
Was this man leering at her with undisguised delight in his
black eyes really her father? She’d always known what kind of