awkwardly by the door, wanting to run but pinned in place by Dean’s bizarre atavistic reaction. Though his shirt is only marred by one or two tiny spatters, he rips that off too, a button pinging against the window as he flings the shirt into the corner.
Only once he’s stripped to his boxer shorts does he turn to face me, chest heaving with anger, every muscle standing out on his frame.
He looks like a furious god, like Zeus in all his anger, pale and shaking with eyes like churning storm clouds.
“How fucking dare you,” he seethes.
“That was your fault!” I squeal. “You pushed me and pushed me!”
He crosses the room in three strides, seizing me by the throat right under my jaw, so his thumb forces my chin up to look at him.
“And I’ll keep pushing you,” he hisses. “I’ll twist you and stretch you and bend you till you break. And you’ll do as I fucking say, or you’ll suffer the consequences.”
“I don’t care!” I cry, my voice compressed by his hand on my throat. “I won’t sit at a table with Jasper! I hate him! And I hate you!”
“You’ll sit on his lap if I order it,” Dean says, his face close to mine.
He has to bend down to my level. His eyes are terrifying at this proximity, long and narrow with pinpoint pupils, like a beast. Heat radiates off his bare chest.
“I own you, Cat. Don’t you ever fucking forget it.”
I shove Dean with all my strength. It barely moves him a millimeter.
“I’ll throw you off that same fucking wall if you keep pushing me!” I shout.
Dean lets out a long, slow breath.
“Now we’re coming to the truth of it, aren’t we, Cat?” He releases my neck, but he doesn’t step back. He stands very close, looking down at me. “Are you planning to kill me, too, little kitten?”
“N-no,” I stammer, guiltily digging my fingernails into my opposite arm. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I think you did.”
“No! I just . . . you’re so fucking unreasonable!”
“And that’s what you meant, isn’t it, kitten? You spoke in anger, and it’s supposed to sound like a joke. But the implicit threat is there underneath. You’re reminding me that you did in fact kill Rocco Prince, and you’ll do it again if I make you mad enough. If I make things hard on you. If I scare you, if you think I’d spill your secret . . . I’ll become a threat that has to be eliminated, just like Rocco.”
There’s a difference between someone insulting you with lies, and someone peeling back the cover over an ugly truth. One is much more unpleasant than the other.
Dean has found my deepest, most painful place, and he’s driving a spike into the aching flesh.
My sister thinks I’m a good person. Anna and Chay do, too.
Dean knows the truth.
“No,” I say numbly. “That isn’t true.”
“We both know it is,” Dean says softly, his eyes fixed on mine.
“No!” I shake my head until my curls are a dark whirl in front of my eyes. “I wouldn’t do that. I had to kill Rocco. I had no choice!”
“You don’t have to defend it to me,” Dean says. “I agree with you. Zoe never would have done it. Miles might have, but he hesitated. He wanted to find the more humane way. Only you saw what had to be done. You murdered Rocco. I would have done the same.”
Dean believes we have something in common. He thinks I did something admirable.
It makes me want to vomit.
“No!” I cry, backing away from him. “I’m not like you.”
Dean laughs quietly.
“You think there’s a difference between you and me, because you did it for Zoe? There’s no fucking difference. All mafia crime is committed on that premise. We’re all doing what we think needs to be done for the good of the family. It’s the core ideology of our world. You can justify each individual action any way you like, but the difference between a civilian and mafiosi is that we put the good of our family above the law.”
Dean is advancing toward me again. I keep trying to retreat, until my back hits the wall.
My stomach is churning.
I hate what he’s saying.
I’m not like my father, or Dean’s father, or Dean himself. I’m not like the Chancellor or Professor Penmark. I may have come to enjoy Kingmakers, some of the time, but that doesn’t mean I belong here! It doesn’t mean I’m one of them.