Starlet: A Dark Retelling - Cora Kenborn Page 0,116

know where this is going. This bitch is about to tell her kid to shoot me. “No more counting; remember? No pennies. Just give me the gun. You don’t want that, little one.”

“Alexandra! Shoot him!” Out of the corner of my eyes, I see her fling a diamond encrusted finger toward me. “He killed your sisters! Your brother! Your father! Kill him! Kill him now or their blood is on your hands!”

Fuck, even I flinch at that one.

“I did not!” I don’t dare advance toward the little girl. Instead, I try and seek out that connection we just shared, speaking in words she understands to counteract the bullshit her mother is spewing. “Alexandra, I didn’t touch them. I hurt the bad man who made you smell pennies.”

“Pennies?” Katerina screeches. “What the hell are you saying? Shoot him!”

There’s no emotion on Alexandra’s face. No tears, no fear, just stone silence. Her hands aren’t shaking anymore as they wrap clumsily around the grip, her finger curling around the trigger.

I can’t hear anything. My pulse is thundering too loud in my ears.

Then, as if in slow motion, this tortured child who is scared of six, thinks blood smells like pennies, and believes tears are for the weak, turns the gun on her own mother and pulls the trigger.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Angel

Present Day

“No!” I stumble off the lounge chair, backing up as far as I can go until there’s no place left. There’s just a wall, and even then, I still crash into it, my spine scraping against the unforgiving stone. I want to crawl inside it. I want it to make me bleed.

Pennies. Pennies. Everywhere.

“Angel…” Dominic takes a step toward me then stops, exhaling a hard breath. “Alexandra. It’s true. I was there. It’s me. It’s been me all along. I think part of you has always known that. You’ve felt it. You’ve said it for Christ’s sake. How safe you feel with me. How you can’t explain it, but it feels like we were meant to be.”

“Lies!” I scream. My head is loud. I can’t make it be quiet, and it hurts. Dominic takes another step, and I push harder into the wall, but it just won’t let me in. “All lies!”

His hands grab me. “I watched you pull that trigger, rook.”

“No!” I fight against him, but the harder I fight the tighter he holds. “It makes no sense! No sense! Why would I kill my own mother to save you? Why, Dominic? Why? Why? Why?”

“I don’t know.” His voice sounds all choppy and rough. “God, I wish I did because that question has haunted me for fifteen years.”

I shake my head. Harder. Harder. Harder, until my ears hit the wall and my face feels wet. No. My face can’t be wet. Tears are a tool not a weakness.

“You’ll stop this crying right now, Alexandra,” I scold myself, words from the past filtering through my ears.

“Baby, you’ve got to stop. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“We all pay prices in life, darling. Now smile pretty and be quiet. Pretty and quiet. Always pretty and quiet.” I slip my finger between us and place it over my lips. “Shhh.”

“Stop it!” he yells, squeezing my face between his hands. “Look at me! See me!”

The whispers in my ear stop, and I see those eyes. Those beautiful, frozen eyes stare back at me. “Dominic…” I collapse against him. I’m so tired, and the static is so loud. My head feels like a balloon ready to pop. “It was you. You saved me.”

He lets out a long exhale and wraps his arms around me. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

“I knew whoever wanted your family dead wouldn’t let you live if I walked away. So, I had to get you out of there.”

“Where did we go?” I mumble against his chest. He’s so warm. I want to stay here forever.

“You know, rook,” he says, kissing the top of my head. “You’ve always known.”

I think for a minute. I think about my first memory. I was eight years old and living in that group home. I asked where I was. The man sucked on his cigarette and said…

“Phoenix,” I whisper, and Dominic’s chin brushes against the top of my head in acknowledgment. “You took me to a group home?”

It takes him a few minutes to answer. “No,” he says, cursing low under his breath. “I took you to my aunt.”

His admission feels like a bomb. More lies. More truth. I don’t know what’s real anymore. Rearing back, I break our embrace. “You have