Tall, Dark & Heartless (Pyte/Sentinel #3)(19)

Greg shrugged. "Then I guess you won't mind if we have a little fun with Danni while you make up your mind?" he asked casually as he watched him from the corner of his eye, probably hoping for a reaction.

He wouldn't get one.

"Do whatever you want," he said, closing his eyes and settling in for a nap. He hated sleeping with the light on, but he didn't have much of a choice since these bastards refused to shut them off. When he got out of here he was buying a place with metal shutters for his windows so that he could block all light out of his room.

He hadn't always been this way, but living in his subbasement Sentinel quarters for the last twenty-five years had spoiled him. He liked waking up without the sun blinding him. It didn't matter if it was day or night he could always see everything clearly so the last thing he needed in the morning was sunlight damn near blinding him. Maybe he'd get a place in the mountains, near a town of course. He wasn't about to go f**king nuts and live off of squirrel blood, but he wouldn't mind a little privacy and the shade the trees could provide. It would be nice to finally-

"You don't care what we do to your precious little Danni?" Greg asked in a taunting tone.

Caine sighed heavily, but didn't open his eyes. He really could care less. "Do whatever the hell you want, just be quiet about it. I'm trying to sleep."

A moment of stunned silence followed and he couldn't help but feel a little offended. Did the dumb bastard really think he was going to break him by torturing Danni? That was just f**king sad.

They could do whatever the hell they wanted to her and he wouldn't break. Not only had she been raised knowing that one day she could be captured and tortured, but he also knew they wouldn't do anything too horrible to her.

Maiming and killing her wouldn't exactly aide their little cause so he knew that they'd probably rough her up a little bit. It wouldn't be anything that she couldn't handle. He'd trained her at an early age and taught her the importance of pushing through the pain. She was probably the best human soldier he'd seen working for the Sentinels and there was a good reason for that, the job was her life.

If she wasn't training, she was reading up about training, watching others train, and doing everything she could to make sure her job went smoothly. A few times over the years he'd fought back the urge to take her aside and have a word with her about wasting her life, but it hadn't been his place. He also hadn't wanted to make her think that there was a place for her in his life.

Because there wasn't.

He might watch her from a distance and do whatever he could to limit the bullshit in her life, but that didn't mean he wanted her to be a part of his life. Having her around would be a complication he didn't need or want. He'd made a mistake all those years ago when he took her under his wing and although there was nothing he could do about it now, that didn't mean he would make it worse.

They needed to learn real fast that hurting her wouldn't change anything. She was just another human who would die one day, leaving him behind. In a hundred years from now, he'd probably forget all about her. Hell, give him a month away from her and he'd probably forget what she looked like.

"Hold her down," he heard Greg order, but he was too bored with the whole thing to even bother opening his eyes. He knew she could take whatever they dished out and then some. She was a tough girl, had to be the way she was raised.

A surge of anger shot through him before he could stop it. Even after all these years, regardless of the fact they'd died years ago, he still couldn't forgive Aaron and Susan for the way they'd treated Danni. While Danni had been growing up he had to stop himself time and time again from throttling the oblivious Sentinel couple.

Most Sentinel parents would have dropped everything and come running back the moment they heard their young child was caught in the middle of a standoff between a Sentinel army and a Pyte, not Aaron and Susan. They hadn't rushed home. In fact, it was a good two months before he actually met them and when he did, the need to rip their throats out had almost been too much to ignore, but he managed.

For Danni.

She'd been such a cute, sweet, funny as hell little kid that entertained him on so many levels. She was the one that made him smile and laugh for the first time in centuries. She was one of the very few people who didn't kiss his ass out of fear or greed. He couldn't understand how her parents could ignore her or forget about her, but they did, often.

He lost track of how many times over the years they simply took off without a word, leaving Danni to fend for herself. Each and every time he'd been pissed, but Danni simply shrugged it off like it was no big deal. Maybe he'd been spoiled by having his aunt raise him. She hadn't been an affectionate woman, but she'd made damn sure that she took care of him and her ten children.

Danni's parents couldn't be bothered with simple things like meals, baths, bedtimes, or to even know where their small child was. With Danni's tendency to wander off for adventures they should have made it a point to know where she was or at the very least, slap a GPS unit on her ass. He didn't even want to think about what could have happened those hundred or so times she'd wandered off into the woods or away from her school.

Just thinking about the time she left her school group in New York City when she was ten years old and on a field trip had the power to make him break out in a cold sweat. Six hours the police searched for her before someone from the compound found out that she'd gone missing.