He nodded stiffly. “I don’t know what her sentence will be, if it will be harsh enough.”
Her brows knitted together. “That’s not your call.”
“She hates me. For no reason, she hates me. She isn’t sorry for what she did. She’s proud.”
“And you, what? Want to inflict upon her every pain that was inflicted upon you?” she asked, clearly dazed. “Yes. You do. It was her hair that you cut that day, wasn’t it?”
A pause before he nodded.
“And you were so angry with yourself, so torn up. Koldo, don’t you see? The longer you keep her, the more likely you are to harm her irrevocably. And if you do, you’ll never be able to forgive yourself.”
He breathed in...out. “She deserves to suffer.”
“Maybe so, but hatred makes you just as much a prisoner as she is. You can’t even see past it.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, I do. Take her to your judge.”
Stubborn female, just as he’d known she was.
Anger beaded in his chest. “You’ve been hurt by someone, too. Hurt horribly, and yet you had no means of fighting back. Well, what would you do if the opportunity to gain revenge finally presented itself?”
Before she could respond, he flashed to the apartment of the man who had killed her parents and brother. Oh, yes. He’d memorized the address. The male sat on his couch, watching TV and drinking beer. Scowling, Koldo materialized. The man spotted him, cursed and scrambled backward. Koldo grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and flashed back to the bedroom in Panama.
Nicola was pacing in front of the bed, and now stilled.
Koldo shoved the male to the floor face-first. “What do you have to say to the one who murdered your family?”
“Wh-what’s going on?” the man in question cried. His eyes were wide, glassy, as they darted between Koldo and Nicola.
Finally, his attention remained on Nicola and he gasped. “You.”
So. He recognized her, despite the years that had passed.
Nicola’s hands formed a tent over her mouth.
“Do you truly have the strength to pardon him?” Koldo demanded.
She said not a word. Her gaze remained locked on the one responsible for her loss.
Tears rolled down the human’s reddened cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he cried. “I’m sorry. But please, let me go.”
“You’re sorry because you were caught,” Koldo yelled down at him.
The male squeezed his eyelids together, his tears falling with more force.
Koldo looked to Nicola. “Remember your brother in his casket and then tell me what you want me to do to this man.”
As the man tried to crawl away, Koldo pressed a foot into his lower back and held him down. “I’m sorry. So sorry,” he repeated.
“Well?” Koldo insisted. Stop. You have to stop this. But he didn’t. He’d started it. He would see it through to the end.
Nicola raised her chin and finally met Koldo’s stare. Her eyes were cold, hard. “After the accident, Laila and I went to his house, intending to kill him while he was out on bail. Yes. That’s right. We actually plotted a cold-blooded murder. We were so angry, so hurt. We figured we were dying anyway, and at that point, we wanted to die. So why not, you know?”
Koldo listened, dread replacing the anger.
She continued softly, “His wife answered the door. She was holding their infant daughter. We realized we couldn’t hurt the pair of them the way he had hurt us.”
The dread left him, too, leaving only despair and desperation. He had to make her understand his position. “I assure you. No one will be hurt by what I do to my mother.”
“You will. You’ll have to live with whatever you do, and we both know you can’t do that.”
This time, he had no response.
She laughed without humor. “All along we thought I was the one in need of healing, but it’s you. You’re wounded inside, and those wounds are festering. You’re filled with a toxin of your own making,” she said, and then she walked out of the room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
KOLDO HAD MADE a grievous mistake. He never should have wanted Nicola to learn about his mother. He should have kept the two women separated now and forever. If he had, he could have continued on with his life, just the way it was.
His mother...his to torment, to feed his need for vengeance.
Nicola, his to taste and touch, to feed his yearning for affection.
Now, he had his mother, but not Nicola. She avoided his gaze. Anytime he entered a room, she vacated it.
While he couldn’t fix the problem he’d created, he could certainly burn the reminder of it. Two days after their argument, he moved his mother to the home he kept in South Africa, and torched the cage in Panama. He couldn’t take her back to West India Quay. Sirena, and now Jamila, knew its location.
When he finished, he returned to the cavern above the waterfall.
He’d chained Cornelia to the wall. Her hair was growing back, her scalp covered by stubble. She spit curses at him, and tried to reach for his wings.
“You shouldn’t have spoken to the female.”
“Aw,” she sneered. “Has she wised up and decided you’re too repulsive for her?”
His blood boiled, but he flashed away before doing something he would forever regret. As Nicola had said.
He spent the afternoon with Axel, hunting his father. They found several sets of tracks but each proved to be a dead end, the Nefas nowhere to be seen. As weak as the Sent Ones had left them, they had to be hiding, licking their wounds. But where?
He wanted this war over with, done.
He wanted to concentrate on Nicola. Nicola, whose heart amazed him. She had been dealt the worst, and yet light still shone inside her. He had been dealt the worst, and had allowed darkness to consume him.
She was right. He was wounded. But he had no idea what to do or how to heal himself.
He just knew he had to make things right with his woman.
“Get your head in the game,” Axel muttered.
Koldo blinked into focus—and realized he was about to slam into Charlotte and her girls, who stood atop a cloud, discussing...Nicola.
“—need the redhead to make me another omelet. So good!”
“I know! Think Koldo would let me borrow her for a few years?”
He angled up and over, avoiding contact. Heard a shouted, “Hey!”
As the wind whipped against him, he looked to Axel. “I must go. I’ll see you tomorrow and we’ll continue this.”