Page 189 of Taming Seraphine
I shake my head. “No.”
“Because I love you,” he adds.
The words hit like a punch to the throat, and I gasp for breath. Leroi can’t mean it. He’s just saying whatever is necessary to save me from cutting open his veins.
“And you love me, too,” he says.
“You’re wrong,” I snap.
“Every man who has ever touched you is either dead or disfigured,” he says. “Yet I’m still here with only a stab wound. You purposely missed my vital organs. That’s your way of showing me love, angel.”
“That’s stupid.”
He chuckles. “Is it? You’re holding this scalpel to my throat and not cutting it. That’s your way of saying you want us to be together.”
I huff a laugh. “You’re delusional.”
“I love you, Seraphine, and you know it. I don’t kill people for free, but I’ve murdered more than I can count just to keep you safe.”
“Four kills is nothing. I’ve murdered over twice as many.”
The corner of his lips lifts into a smirk. “Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart. I owed Anton my life, yet I killed him because he hurt you. I loved Miko like a little brother, but I was ready to put a bullet through his head for trying to reinsert that chip.”
“What about the man in the nightclub?” I ask, my voice wavering.
“He touched what was mine,” Leroi says with a snarl. “And the bum in the gas station deserved what he got for showing you disrespect.”
My breath shallows and my heart beats so hard I can barely sift through my thoughts. His words are unsettling. He’s using facts to prove his point and make me give into his charm.
“That doesn’t explain what you were doing with Mom,” I rasp.
He exhales a long breath. “Anton told me she was alive. There was even an address on his phone. After the assassins blew up the apartment, I decided to track her down and see for myself.”
“Wait.” My fingers tighten around the scalpel. “Someone tried to kill you?”
“Samson put a hit out on me. Rosalind must have shared the location of my apartment with her employer because two of them came to the door while I was cleaning up Anton’s blood.”
The way he says it is so convincing, and he has so much evidence to back up his lies. I saw Rosalind twice, heard her little sister come to the door to ask if she was in the apartment, and then there was that meeting in Alderney Hill to discuss the assassins.
Leroi’s too skilled at lying because everything sounds like the truth.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Mom?” I ask.
“By the time I found out, you and Miko had already left to find Gabriel. Besides, I didn’t want to raise your hopes in case what Anton told me was bullshit.”
“But you were hugging her.”
“No,” he rasps. “I was trying to stop her from running away. All this time, Gabriel has thought you were dead. He yelled at her to tell the truth.”
I flinch, the word hitting like a slap. Leroi is trying to shift my anger to Mom by saying she knew Dad kept me in his basement.
“Don’t change the subject,” I snarl. “We’re talking about you and your lies.”
Leroi closes his eyes and inhales a deep, calming breath the way he does when he’s meditating or trying not to be impatient. The only thing missing is him rubbing a finger on the bridge of his nose. “If you’re so determined to see me as the villain, then kill me.”
“What?” I whisper.
He opens his eyes again, his gaze boring so deeply into my soul that I draw back. “Don’t think I haven’t seen the pictures you drew of me in that little sketchbook. You used up so much red ink, I had to buy you replacement pens. If you’re so desperate to spill my blood, then do it.”