“Give me the room,” he said to Ellie and the Reaper who’d escorted her into the throne room.
The Reaper immediately turned to go. Ellie’s face fell. “But—”
“You said you wanted to be part of this. Part of my operation,” Hades reminded her before she could finish. “Best learn not to question my orders.”
His point was valid. But Ellie was a hothead on her best days, and she wanted this bitch dead almost as bad as he did. He could tell frustration had her close to the edge of the insubordination he’d already told her would get her kicked out of his underworld faster than oil down a gator’s back.
But she must have read the serious look on his face. In the end, she snapped her mouth closed and left out without another word.
The woman on her knees didn’t watch her go. She continued to stare up at him. Trembling, but otherwise still.
“We were planning to kill you, but you look so pretty down there. How about this?” Hades proposed with a genial smile for his special guest. “You give this chok a good suck, and I let you live one more night.”
Silence. And he wondered if she was so fussy she actually didn’t know the Cajun French for dick.
Fear flared in her eyes, and she glanced at the camera they’d set up by the throne, as if just now seeing it for the first time. “Are you asking me to suck your dick in exchange for my life?”
“Smart girl,” he answered. “You catch on fast.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Why? Why are you doing this?”
Hades had to tilt his head and ask, “Cho, did your père really not tell you why you were being handed over to me as a virgin sacrifice?”
It didn’t matter, Hades decided before she could answer. He did not hit women, but he was more than willing to punch the naïve little princess in the face with the story her father withheld.
“You’re aware your mother fired mine after she outgrew her usefulness?”
The Perreault Virgin blinked. “So this is about revenge for your mother’s job? I begged Mom not to do that. I loved Mama Fairgood, and it broke my heart when she refused to answer any of the texts I sent her after—”
Mama Fairgood. He couldn’t bear to hear her call his mother that, and he cut her off before she could finish spouting her excuses. “My mother came to get her check while you and your mother were on vacation in Saint Tropez—you know, getting over your grief about losing your favorite servant.”
“I didn’t even know my mother had fired her until we got back—” she started to protest.
Non, non, he still couldn’t stand to listen to her. Hades continued on like she hadn’t even spoken. “Unfortunately, she walked in on him and some Bulgarian associates he was entertaining with his family out of town.”
Memories flashed through his mind, dark and bitter as he recalled ferreting all of this information out of her murderers. “Men who decided it was better to chase my mother down and shoot her in the back than let her live to tell the tale of what she had seen.”
She stared at Hades, her face a work of absolute horror, her mouth fell open, but no words came out. Finally, he’d earned her silence.
“The two men who shot her are dead. So are their first-born sons. But your father only has daughters.”
She expelled a breath she appeared to have been holding since Hades told her his mother was dead. “My father…he…should have reported your mother’s death to the police, but—”
“He didn’t just not report it, ma belle,” Hades pointed out, his voice icy with derision. “When my godmother called to ask where she was, he made up a story about her telling him she wanted to be free and asking for money to run away.
“When I got back stateside to look for her myself, I did find out he’d made a large withdrawal. But ironically, it was to pay the police officers who refused to even open a missing person case file for my mother. If I hadn’t put all my efforts into figuring out what really happened, your father and his buddies would have let my sister grow up thinking her mother had abandoned her. Luckily, I knew better. I just wish I’d figured what a cowardly hypocrite your père was before I returned to my unit.”
“Oh, no. I can’t believe she died like that. How awful.”
To his surprise, tears started rolling down her face. Not because of her impending death but because of his mother’s terrible one.
“Poor Mama Fairgood. If I had known, I would have talked to my father. I would have made him—”
Hades cut her off with a barking laugh. “Made him? Non, non, non, do not act as if you had any power in that relationship. I told him I wanted his virgin daughter on her twenty-first birthday or I’d kill him right then and expose his crimes to the world. And do you think he begged for your reprieve?”
A mocking smile lifted his lips. “Non, he drew up a contract to make sure nobody touched his little hothouse flower before she was ripe and ready for me. And you just went along with it. He’s a pathetic coward, and you’re his clueless daughter.”
Hades almost felt sorry for her as he spoke.
