Page 111 of Heartless Sinner

“You have two choices,” Brooks said.

I gawked at him.

“Your father’s life or Sinclair’s.”

Anger swallowed my fear.

I wanted to deck the bastard.

I opened my mouth, but no words came. I couldn’t sentence someone to death.

Sinclair was a cheating, predatory piece of shit. I hated him.

I hated the way he’d touched me. Hated that he’d made me feel dirty when he was the disgusting one.

But hating someone and ordering their murder were two different things.

I wasn’t Brooks. I wasn’t the Night Sons.

I couldn’t say a name and watch someone die because of it.

“Fuck you,” I spat. “I’m not choosing.”

“You sure?” He held the remote up and tapped a finger against it.

My eyes immediately filled with tears when my dad appeared on the screen. He sat at a table wearing a prison uniform, eating a muffin and talking to another inmate.

He looked thinner than I remembered. Tired.

The cheap uniform hung strangely on a man I’d only even known in expensive suits.

For the first time, my father looked old.

Old and worn-out.

“There he is,” Brooks said like he’d just introduced the next contestant on a game show. “The man who tried to murder my father.”

The camera shifted.

A few tables behind my dad, another inmate held a shank under the table.

Dad laughed at something the guy behind him said.

He has no idea.

“Brooks.” His name broke in my throat.

“Choose, or we kill them both.”

“No.” Tears spilled down my cheeks as I shook my head. “I can’t.”

Brooks gestured toward Sinclair with the remote. “You have ten seconds, or I kill them both.”

“Please!”

“Ten.”

Dad lifted the muffin to his mouth.