Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)(73)

complete lack of compassion or feeling up close jarred me much more than I’d

expected. I had to keep reminding myself that this was the real Deirdre Shaw—

and exactly what Fletcher had warned me about.

“Useful for what?” I asked.

“Once I realized that Fletcher was an assassin, it was easy enough to wait,

plan, and set things up. I went ahead with the pregnancy, even though it was

the longest, most miserable nine months of my life, pretending that I was

excited about the baby.” She rolled her eyes. “But Fletcher never even

suspected what I was really up to. Not until it was too late.”

Deirdre started walking up and down in front of the cage, trailing her long

red fingernails over the metal bars like a cat sharpening her claws. I made

sure not to look at the padlock, even though I was holding my breath the whole

time, hoping that she wouldn’t jar it loose and make it drop to the floor. If

that happened, I was dead. Deirdre and her Ice magic were dangerous enough,

but Dimitri, Santos, and Tucker were still here, standing behind her. One of

them could easily pull a gun and put a bullet in my head while I was battling

her.

She ran her nails along the bars a final time, then stepped away from the cage

and faced me again. “After I had the baby, I told Fletcher that I wanted to

reconcile with my parents. So I said that I was taking Finnegan to see them.”

“What did you do?”

“I took the money I got from the diamond in that pathetic ring and paid a

homeless bum to slap me around. I also ripped up Finnegan’s clothes, as if he

’d been attacked right along with me. Then I rushed over to the Pork Pit,

crying my eyes out, and told Fletcher that my father had hit me and that my

mother had tried to take the baby away from me. He never even questioned me.”

She let out a dark, satisfied chuckle. “As for what happened next, well, you

knew Fletcher. You knew all about his savior complex and exactly how far he

would go to protect his family.”

My heart plummeted into my stomach. “Fletcher killed your parents.”

“Just like that.” Deirdre snapped her fingers, the sound as loud as a

gunshot. “With my parents dead, I got my trust fund and what was left of the

Shaw fortune. I wanted to leave right away, but of course, I had to wait for

the estate to be settled. Three months was better than a lifetime of waiting,

though, so I stuck around and pretended to be the grieving daughter and doting

new mother. I’ll admit that the thought of all that money made me a wee bit

impatient and that I didn’t play the parts as well as I should have. I think

that’s when Fletcher first suspected that I had set him up. But I didn’t

care. He was nothing but a tool, and I was done with him.”

“What happened?” I asked, wanting to hear the rest of it, even though I

could guess how bad it was going to be.

“As soon as the estate was settled and all the money was mine, I went to that

monstrosity that Fletcher called a house and packed up my things. I’d been

planning to disappear without a trace, but he came home and caught me right

before I left. He was devastated at the idea of my leaving him. He begged me

to stay, if you can imagine that.” She laughed again. “Told me that he knew

how much I was hurting over my parents’ deaths but that Finnegan needed me,

that he needed me, and we could work things out. What a blind fool he was.”

“What did you do?” I whispered.

She looked at me, her blue eyes colder than I had ever seen them. “I told him

the truth. About how I’d used him to get my money. You should have seen the

look on his face. It truly was priceless. One of my fondest memories.”

My heart dropped again, like an elevator that just kept plummeting down, down,

down. I’d once killed an innocent man, been tricked and manipulated into it

much the same way Fletcher had been, so I could imagine how he’d felt. The

anger, the guilt, the shame at how completely Deirdre had fooled him. The icy

sting of her betrayal would have eaten away at him the rest of his life.

“Once he’d realized what I’d done, Fletcher actually tried to stop me.

Pulled one of his little knives and came at me as if he thought he had a

chance against my Ice magic.” Deirdre shook her head. “He put up more of a

fight than I expected, and we beat each other up pretty good. Fletcher even

had a chance to kill me.”

“So why didn’t he?” I muttered.

She shrugged. “Because I grabbed hold of Finnegan’s cradle. I threatened to

freeze him to death if Fletcher didn’t let me go.”

Despite all the bad things I’d done, all the people I’d killed, all the

gruesome torture I’d endured and dished out in return, even I sucked in a

ragged breath at that. Dimitri and Santos both winced and shifted on their

feet. Tucker kept messing with his phone, as bored as ever. Fletcher had