“I will stay here.”
I stepped out of the limo. Jessica turned and saw me; her face screwed up in anger. She opened her mouth to shriek, then hesitated, obviously thinking better of it, and stalked towards me on her six-inch heels. “You,” she hissed, as she got closer. “Where is my daughter?”
I arched an eyebrow. As bad as I felt about Audrina getting abducted, I would not let her monster of a mother walk all over me. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Who are you?”
“Don’t play games, Susan Moore,” Jessica hissed. “You know who I am, and I know who you are. You’re the psycho who went crazy and tried to kill her husband. Now you’ve gotten involved in some sort of shady underworld mafia mess, and you’ve dragged my daughter into it.” Her big blue eyes glittered dangerously. “Now where is she?”
A prickle of unease shot through me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My skin buzzed at my own lie.
“Don’t play dumb,” Jessica spat. “I’ve heard you talking to my daughter from your little bathroom window, you know. I’ve got security footage of you talking to her right here the night she disappeared.” She stabbed a finger towards the ground. “Then, Audrina went into your building with one of your mafia goons, and she never came back out again.”
Oh, shit. This was bad. This was very bad.
Jessica wasn't lying; I didn’t even need any powers to know that. She had the resources to bully any of the neighboring buildings into giving up their security camera footage. It wouldn’t have taken her long to find images of Audrina leaving her apartment and coming over here. Jessica obviously hadn’t dug any deeper, though, or she would have seen Audrina leaving with Bart the next morning to get ice cream.
With a little effort, I kept my face blank. “Jessica, you’re insane. I don’t have any mafia goons.” Ugh, it felt slimy to accuse someone of being delusional. She was misguided, but not altogether wrong.
She tilted her head back, sneering at me. Those heels gave her too much of a height advantage. “Don’t lie, Susan. Everyone saw you at the Professor’s manor house with some overpowered mafia boss. Juliette told me everything. She said you disappeared with him halfway through dinner, and the Professor came back all shaky and nervous. You’re up to your neck in something, and you’ve dragged my daughter with you.”
Goddamn Juliette. That slithering snake used gossip as a form of currency. Donovan had been introduced as an Italian prince at dinner, but Juliette wasn’t stupid. She would have done everything she could to find out more about him. And when she found absolutely nothing, she would have jumped to the next logical conclusion—he was an underworld crime figure.
I took a deep breath. This was bad, but nothing I couldn’t handle. That’s what I told myself, anyway. “I don’t know where Audrina is, Jessica,” I said truthfully. “Yes, I talked to her the other night, and I let her come to my apartment to cool off.” I met her furious stare calmly. “She was trying to run away, and I offered her sanctuary. I understand you humiliated her in public and finally managed to crush her spirit completely. She was upset and wanted to get away.”
“Listen here, you bitch.” Jessica took a menacing step closer. “You don’t know my daughter. You don’t know what I’ve been through, having to deal with her. I know you’re childless, Susan, so you’ll never know. You have no idea of how hard it is to be a mom.”
Ouch. That one hit me right in the heart.
Jessica saw me flinch and leaned a little closer, her big blue eyes narrowed. “You don’t understand the sacrifices you have to make for your children. You have to give up your body, your time, your soul, your whole fucking personality.” She bit the words out. “You don’t know the shit that I’ve had to put up with. And that’s not even taking into account what happens when you have a difficult kid like Audrina.”
My mouth fell open. “Audrina’s not—”
“You don’t know her,” she hissed. “You don’t know how much trouble she’s been for me and for the boys, too. Audrina’s not normal.”
“She is perfectly—”
“You’re going to give me some shit about how autistic people are totally normal. Well, they’re not.” Jessica’s over-inflated lips curled in a sneer. “You can save the woke speech for someone else.”
I frowned. “She’s autistic?”
“I have no idea. None of that shit is real, anyway, so I’m not dragging her to a doctor only for them to tell me that Audrina’s just a bit weird.”
“She’s not weird,” I protested. “And even if she is autistic, then it’s working in her favor.”
“She’s hyper-fixated, she’s overemotional, she’s stubborn and difficult, and she can’t be reasoned with.”
“She’s a typical seventeen-year-old girl! Her singing—”
“Is absolute garbage! She’s embarrassing herself, you idiot! Letting her loose in the world to let her do whatever the hell she wants is going to make everything worse for her, can’t you see that? That girl lives in her own little fairytale world, sitting out there on her balcony and warbling nonsense to herself!”
“She hides out there on the balcony because she knows that you despise her,” I snapped. “There’s nothing wrong with Audrina, not one thing. Just because she doesn’t like the same things as you do, that doesn’t make her weird.”
“What the hell would you know? You have no idea what it’s like having to deal with your own kid being like that!” Jessica paused and arched her brow. “Oh, of course you do. You have mental problems, too. No wonder you managed to get your hooks into Audrina.”
I gasped.
“Of course.” Jessica let out a mirthless snort. “I bet you already knew how messed up Audrina was. That’s why you targeted her for your little human trafficking scheme. You might have sold yourself to some mafia don for some cash, but you crossed the line by taking Audrina.” She drew herself up, looking down her nose at me. “I will not be humiliated. I won’t let her be seen paraded around on the arm of some… some two-bit gangster. You will bring her back to me, and you’ll do it now.” She poked me in the chest.
Hard.
Fire built in my core. The heat spread. Little rumbles, tiny vibrations tingled up from the pavement beneath me.
Suddenly, Jessica’s narrowed eyes flicked towards a sound behind me, then widened in shock.
The slow footsteps came closer. “Chosen.” Donovan moved beside me, subtly putting himself a little in front of me, his movements relaxed. He stared down at Jessica, almost lazily. A menacing aura spread out from his massive body, dousing the flames of my power. He arched his brow. “Do you need me to take out the trash?”
Breathe, Susan. Just breathe.
After a long moment, the rumbling underneath my feet faded to nothing. “I’m fine, Donovan. She’ll take herself out.”
A low growl came from behind him. My gaze shot downwards, where a giant dark-gold bullmastiff stood to attention next to my fae prince, hackles raised, teeth bared. Cecil’s eyes glowed red.
Jessica’s eyes snapped back to my face. She took a step back; the hatred in her expression didn’t dissipate. “You’ll get what you deserve, Susan Moore. You just wait.”
Chapter
