Blood Ties (Dinero de Sangre #2) - Lana Sky Page 0,14

do you? God, you’re pathetic, Ada. Just give me my fucking diary back, and we can forget this ever happened…

But it was too late by then, of course.

I’d already given it to my father.

And I’d already read every word.

Chapter Four

This time, I don’t read a single page of the diary.

Maybe I’m just not brave enough. Or the avoidance is more an act of defiance than anything else. As much as he pretends not to, Domino badly wants me to help him decipher whatever mysteries his sister left behind. He’s desperate enough to hope that the answer to her supposed death lurks within those pages.

Though why should I help him? My own self-interest aside, trusting him would be foolish. If my father did kill Pia, and I lead him to her body, only God knows what he’d do to me in retaliation.

He’s already claimed to have killed my parents as well as Tristan.

Using the past as a predictor of the future, he’ll more than likely shoot me himself and bury me in Pia’s grave.

If there even is a grave.

A part of me still can’t buy it—which makes the revelation that Domino might be her brother even harder to stomach. He would know, wouldn’t he? If his sister were alive. She would have tried to contact him at least once within the past ten years?

Or Pia turned out to be the same old Pia, as selfish and cruel as I remember.

Though, even as a part of me desperately wants to cling to that belief, I can’t. Pia may have hated me, but she loved her brother. His name dominated the pages of that diary, from what I can recall. Her entire justification for stealing the amount of money she did was for him.

His surgery.

I have to wonder if, indirectly, Roy Pavalos paid for the transplant he inevitably received. That would make his betrayal far, far worse, I decide. To betray the man whose fortune saved your life, no matter his supposed crimes.

Only a monster would do that.

Though, to be fair, Domino doesn’t seem to have any idea as to who his sister truly was. Can I blame him? For the longest time, she had me fooled as well.

I loved her like a sister.

But to her, I was nothing but an obstacle to overcome.

The painful thought spurs me as far away from the diary as possible. Thankfully, he didn’t lock the door to the balcony. As I escape into the warm, mid-morning air, I find that Jaguar—and his posse—is gone. So is Alexi from her position on the terrace. An image of her and Domino fucking somewhere else, in some distant room of the house, sneaks into my skull, and I don’t have the strength to block it out.

I hate that I can’t predict him. Despite five years of knowledge regarding the man he used to be, I’m forced to admit that I know nothing about who he is.

Apart from what turns him on, of course. I know that a smart mouth—literally and figuratively—gets him going. But nowhere near as much as the sight of blood can.

My blood.

Here, in the warm, humid air far from prying eyes, there’s nothing to stop me from reliving those sordid moments. Over and over again.

His touch. His pleasured moans rippling through my eardrum. His breath, hot on my throat. His taste.

His chest.

I keep seeing the stark, surgical line that denotes a past I can’t deny. Whether or not he truly is Navid Inglecias, he’s suffered. Suffering that he seems to blame my father for—and, indirectly, me. It certainly puts an ironic twist on my past attraction to him, anyway.

To crave a man without a heart… His own, at least. It’s why his body can fuck me despite the hatred he harbors inside.

And yet, he’s the only man to truly make me feel…anything remotely close to pleasure during sex.

How goddamn sad is that?

Ines comes hours later, leaving a tray of food for me on the bed.

I ignore it, barely paying it a glance on my way into the bathroom. I strip his shirt, leaving it carelessly over the threshold, and approach the now empty shower stall.

It’s an exercise in clicking through various options on the digital control panel before I manage to get the water running. Safe within this glass cocoon, I lean against the granite wall and force myself to think.

If my father did kill Pia all those years ago, where could she be?

In our backyard? It’s an obvious guess, but one I can easily rule out—my