Page 78 of Diary from an Inked Throne

She paused. Stared at him.

Indecision that hadn’t been there a second before suddenly flickered all over her face.

Matish saw it, clear as day, and had no problem doubling down. “Your mother and I have prayed every night for the safe return of our grandson.”

I wanted to vomit in my mouth. “For fuck’s sake, the lies just roll off your tongue as easily as they rolled off my father’s. Are you all the same? You. Enzo. MacGregor, but fuck, at least he has an accent. You’re all just pathetic, Carlos clones, aren’t you?”

Matish stared at me. “And what does that make you?”

I grabbed the bars, squeezing them tight, glaring through them at Nyah’s father on the other side. “Oh, I know what I am, Matish. I know I’m a piece of shit. That’s exactly what makes us different. Because you’re still trying to pretend you’re not.”

Nyah’s voice cut through the cold air. “I’m so fucking sick of this! Just admit what you did,” she shouted. “Take some responsibility for the fact I’m standing here in front of you, your own flesh and blood, without my child in my arms.”

I saw the little girl in her. The one inside the woman who was so desperately trying to be strong. And I wanted this for her. Wanted her to have the full power she deserved.

But Matish was never going to give it to her.

He stared at her, dead in the eye. “I did those things. Stole you. Took your men from you and kept them in the church basement. Made deals behind your back to get what I wanted. But I didn’t kill Virginia, and I don’t know where your baby is.”

Her fingers trembled.

She needed my reassurance.

So I gave it to her. “Kill him.”

She glanced at me sharply. “What if he’s telling the truth?”

Matish reached for her, his panic escaping again. “I am, Nyah! I swear it!”

I shook my head, seething on the inside over everything this man was. He’d kept me from her. He’d kept me and Dax and Lynx locked in a fucking church basement, waiting for the right time to execute us.

I would lose no sleep over doing the same for him.

Nyah squeezed her eyes shut.

“Nyah, you aren’t a killer,” her father pleaded. “You aren’t like him. Just let me go. I didn’t do this.”

“Liar,” I spat in his direction.

“I’m not.”

Nyah looked at me miserably then turned to her father again. “If it wasn’t you, then who?”

But I’d had enough. I’d made Nyah a promise that night we’d stood outside the Slayers’ clubhouse.

She’d promised to kill my father.

And I’d promised to kill hers.

Because when it came down to it, when it came down to pointing a gun at the forehead of the man you’d called Daddy your entire life, I’d known neither of us would have been capable of it.

I didn’t need her to kill my father.

But she needed me to kill hers.

I took the gun from her so easily it was like she had offered it to me on a silver platter.

And put a bullet through Jeremiah Matish’s brain without so much as a second thought.