Dark Obsession (Vampire Royals of New York #3) - Sarah Piper Page 0,32
piece-of-shit Toyota?” Charley let out a bitter laugh, but the look in Dorian’s eyes was dead serious.
“Your mother, Charlotte.”
“My… what?”
In Dorian’s rich accent, the words felt completely out of context. The suggestion that her mother—a woman who’d marched unceremoniously out of their lives decades ago and never looked back—could have anything to do with this demon business was beyond absurd.
But no one else seemed to think so. Especially not Dorian, who looked at her as if his own heart was breaking over the revelation.
The coffee in Charley’s stomach turned to cement.
With trembling hands, she took the tablet and scrolled through the files and photos, each one punching a fresh hole in her chest.
Her mother’s records—aliases, addresses, personal details. Thousands of emails between her and Rudy. Transcripts of online chats—declarations of love, arguments, apologies. Pictures of the woman from the time she was in junior high all the way up to more recent shots—pale and gaunt, cigarette dangling from her mouth, barely recognizable as the formidable mother in Charley’s memories.
There were other pictures too.
Charley’s parents dancing at their high school prom, and then her mother making out with Rudy in the limo afterword.
Rudy and her mom holding hands on the beach a few years later, her father nowhere in sight.
Rudy and her mom snuggling together in the booth at the diner around the corner from their trailer park, years after that.
Her mom in some seedy motel bed, covering her face with her hands, a smile peeking out from between her fingers.
Her mother.
Her uncle.
Holy shit.
They’d been having an affair for decades—starting when they were in high school, long before Charley was even born. Putting this together with what Charley knew of her parents’ history, she figured her mom must’ve bounced between the two brothers for most of her teen years and into her twenties before finally marrying Charley’s dad.
And then, she continued bouncing, keeping Rudy on the sidelines the entire time.
According to a particularly heated email exchange, Rudy had even assumed he was Charley’s father at one point, but a paternity test later proved him wrong.
Thank fucking God.
Charley didn’t want to read the emails. Didn’t want to see the photos. But she couldn’t look away.
The truth revealed itself, one little file at a time.
Rudy had been in love with her mother forever. Obsessed with her. And she strung him along through all of it, making promise after promise, only to push him away again the minute someone better or richer or more interesting came along.
It was still going on; the most recent photos were taken at an apartment complex in Florida—her mother’s place, she assumed—just a few months ago.
Briefly, she wondered if her mother had asked Rudy about her and Sasha.
And in that moment, the faintest pang of sympathy struck her heart.
She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t deny it. Because beneath all the revulsion Charley felt toward her uncle, she understood his pain—the soul-crushing emptiness of a desperate, lifelong chase for the affection of a woman who couldn’t care less.
“He blames me,” Charley said. “Sasha too. He says it’s our fault my mother didn’t choose him. That if she hadn’t gotten herself—and I quote—knocked up with those empty-headed little sluts, she would’ve run away with him in a heartbeat.” Charley set the tablet down. “I can’t believe he managed to keep this secret for so many years.”
“He had some help,” Dorian said.
“That’s what I don’t get. Why does Estas even have all this personal stuff? Why would Rudy give it to the demons?”
“It’s part of his file—his agreement,” Dorian said. “If Rudy made a deal with Rogozin in hopes of winning over your mother, the demons would’ve wanted to know everything about her.”
“Why?”
“Demons can’t force someone to fall in love any more than vampires can compel true desire. They can only force the circumstances that might bring people together. By knowing everything there was to know about your mother, the demons could ensure Rudy was always on her path, one way or another.”
“Someone should’ve clued them in to the fact that my mother is incapable of love. Would’ve saved everyone a lot of time.”
“The demons wouldn’t have cared. They prey on the desperate, and they don’t offer guarantees.”
“So Rudy became a demon host, binding himself to hell for eternity, just for a chance with my mother?”
“The file doesn’t include the specific terms of his contract, but yes, I think that’s a fair assumption. It’s like he also performed other duties for Rogozin as well. Errands, introductions, criminal acts. When it