Sinner's Revenge (Sinner's Creed MC #2)(63)

I shake my head, drawing my eyebrows together in confusion. “You’re asking? What the f*ck is wrong with you?”

She rolls her eyes and a disgusted look crosses her face. “I don’t know,” she whines, putting her hands on her hips. “I think it’s all this emotional shit. I’m losing myself. I can feel it.” She rambles on a little longer before closing her eyes and putting her hand out. “Forget I asked. I’m going to take a shower. Why don’t you make yourself useful and order us a pizza or something.” She spins on her heels, mumbling to herself.

“You know who makes a great pizza?” I call, just as the bathroom door closes.

“Who?”

“Monica,” I say as I walk down the hall.

“I f*cking hate you.”

There’s my girl.

“Monica didn’t really make this pizza, did she?” Diem asks, three slices in. We’re piled on the couch in the living room, in the same position Dirk and Saylor sat the last night they spent together. The memory doesn’t ache like it used to, it actually makes me feel pretty damn good.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Monica sucks at cooking. Remember the girl with the big tits that was in front of me when you walked in? She’s the cook.” Diem’s pointy little elbow finds my ribs and I groan.

“I was married once,” she says, just out of the f*cking blue. I could stab her for ruining my good mood.

“What?”

“I didn’t stutter. I was twenty-two. We were in love.”

“Horseshit.”

“We were!” She laughs, but I know that if any man ever had Diem’s heart, she never would have let him go . . . unless she killed him, of course. Thinking back, she did tell me once that she was married. And that she’d killed her husband.

Now I’m curious. But I don’t want her to know that. “Okay. I’ll bite. What happened?” I ask, bored.

“It didn’t work out. He was in it for my money. But what he didn’t know was that I was in it for a different reason too.”

“What reason was that?” If she says sex, I’ll kill her.

“I needed to get close to his uncle. It was my first job. I had to make him fall in love with me, which wasn’t hard by the way, get him to marry me, then convince him to take me to Paris to meet his uncle, who was hiding out from my father.” She takes another bite of pizza. Clearly, she isn’t upset at all about any of this.

“So, he didn’t know who you were.”

“No. He just knew I was rich.”

“Well, how did you convince him?” She shoots me a look that has me wanting to growl. Sex. Of course. “That’s very trashy of you.”

She shrugs. “Call it what you want. But he did take me to Paris, and I did meet his uncle. He was even kind enough to take us on a fishing trip. Sadly, his uncle never made it back.”

“What about him? How did you convince him not to tell?” She starts to say something, but I cut her off. “If you say sex, I’ll shoot your left tit off.”

She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t have to convince him. He never made it back either.” What an evil bitch.

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, confused as hell. Is she trying to prove how badass she is? Or is she just trying to push me away?

Turning to face me, she puts the pizza box on the floor and stares at me long enough to make me uncomfortable. “This isn’t the life I chose. I did what I did because I had no other option. I’ve never been asked if this is what I wanted. I don’t want you to not know who I am. Like today,” she starts, pulling her lip between her teeth and looking away from me. “I want you to know that who I was today is who I was trained to be. But it’s not who I really am. I’m sorry you had to see it.”

Pushing her hair back from her eyes, I run my fingers down her cheek before grabbing her chin. Forcing her to look at me, I offer her a smile. “Don’t say you’re sorry. I get it. Trust me.”

Fidgeting with her hands, she lets out a breath that sags her shoulders. “I’m struggling, Zeke.”

“With what?” I ask, ready to offer her any advice I can. I hate that she was forced down this path, but if she’s going to do this, I want her to know what she’s doing.

“People keep testing me. They undermine me and defy me and force me to do something I really don’t want to.”

“Like what?”

She looks up at me from under her lashes. “Like murder.” Oh. That’s impressive. My face shows it and she rolls her eyes. “I can’t kill everybody. No matter what Dorian thinks,” she adds.

She’s confused, upset, and the guilt is quickly catching up to her. And she’s just getting started. “You’re right. You can’t kill everybody. You have to be smarter than that, Diem. Smarter than your enemy.”

Narrowing her eyes in confusion, she shifts to a more comfortable position—ready to absorb whatever knowledge I throw her way. “How?”

“People like me hold little value over their own life. So threatening them won’t do any good. You have to dig deeper—find their weakness.”

“What’s your weakness?” she asks, and I don’t hesitate to answer.

“You.”