Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Ivan didn’t correct him. The only people who knew the reality of his childhood and what it meant for him were Grandmother, Dr. Raul, Silver, and Canto. Canto because he’d been fourteen when Ivan came into the family—plenty old enough to know that something was wrong with his newest cousin. And Silver because she was Ena’s successor.
Grandmother had asked Ivan’s permission regardless before informing Silver. “I won’t take the choice from you.”
“Tell her,” Ivan had said at once. “She needs to know of all possible weaknesses in the system.”
“When it comes to sheer willpower, Ivan, you are the strongest of my grandchildren,” Ena had said. “I have stubborn grandchildren as a rule, but you push it to the nth degree. I have every faith you’d rather cut your own throat than ever again taste Jax.”
Silver had brought up the topic with Ivan only once—after Ena first told her of Ivan’s history. “Ivan, Grandmother says you consider yourself a weakness in the Mercant armor. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard—you and Canto built our current security armor.
“As for mental strength? It’s not even a question. You stood up to Grandmother even as a child—if that’s not a sign of implacable will, I don’t know what is.”
That was it. The end of the discussion as far as his cousin was concerned. Even when someone had tried to hurt Silver, no one had looked at Ivan with a jaundiced eye. He’d been investigated and cleared per the same checklist he’d have used himself against anyone else in the same position. Soon as he was cleared, he’d been fully briefed on the investigation with the—correct—assumption that he’d want to do everything in his power to eliminate the threat.
Silver didn’t, however, know about Ivan’s habit of eliminating hostile Mercant enemies who didn’t play by the accepted rules—or his tendency to take out Jax dealers. He only targeted the utterly evil for the former, was far broader in his approach when it came to the latter.
“Plausible deniability,” Grandmother had said, then given him a penetrating look. “I don’t suppose you intend to stop anytime soon?”
“They’re vermin.” Ivan felt no guilt whatsoever for his actions. “I’ll make sure it never touches Silver.”
An arch look. “Dear boy, Silver would fillet us both if she knew we dared keep this from her.”
“But we protect her,” Ivan had murmured. “Her, and Arwen, and even Canto. They all have a shot in this new world. I’m not going to bring them down with me.”
White lines around Ena’s mouth, a rare sign of tension. “You are my grandchild. I did not raise you to be a shadow in bloody service, and none of your cousins would want that for you if they knew of it.”
“I know.” She’d given him every advantage, tried to channel him toward paths far less dark, but Ivan had never wavered. He knew who and what he was.
A prowling cat in his mind, the memory of fingers against his cheek.
What would Soleil think of his murderous little hobby?
“Is it worth it?” he said, asking Clarence the question he’d never been able to ask his mother. “All the destruction the drug’s done to your body, and to your relationships with others?”
“What relationships?” Clarence snorted. “I have deeper relationships with the leopards and humans who run the halfway house than I ever did with my own family. Cold as ice they were, took Silence real seriously.”
A sudden heaviness to his features, the folds of his face drooping. “If only I’d been born a few decades later …” Looking up, he pinned Ivan with a gaze far too powerful for a man this emaciated and tired. “Don’t waste this chance, young man. You have what I could’ve only imagined—the freedom to build bonds, to be more than a lone star in the dark.”
With that, the old man—who wasn’t so old after all—shuffled away, going to sit in a lounger next to someone who was clearly still addicted. With her layers of clothing and her treasured cart of belongings next to her, the woman looked like any of the homeless. What gave her away as Psy was the obsidian of her eyes.
Most Psy eyes only did that in the throes of a huge use of power—or under great emotion. But with the Jax-addicted, it could become a permanent state. It wasn’t common, and it didn’t appear to affect their vision, but it was a strange and eerie thing even for a man who’d seen his own eyes do that while looking into a mirror.
No light would ever again fill the addict’s eyes, not even if the therapists managed to wean her off the drug. From what he’d learned since he’d found out about this place, that was unlikely to happen. Another resident had told him that ten people in the local population had eyes of permanent black. Only one had been open to rehabilitation—and though he’d gone through the full program and was holding on to his sobriety, his eyes remained obsidian.