Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“But I have a feeling I won’t be able to sidestep being recalled to the Tower much longer—Dmitri keeps threatening to haul me in kicking and screaming.” A scowl marred his expression. “Each time we meet for a drink, I warn him I’ll insult everyone and cause a war, and he tells me he doesn’t believe me.”
“Neither do I.” Aodhan could see the angel as the calm head of the negotiating table instead. “Thank you for agreeing to dissemble for Giulia. She’d never accept jewels touched by her son’s blood, but I think she’ll accept a gift from an angel who valued him. Even then, she’ll likely not accept the entirety of it.”
Navarro considered that. “Perhaps I will buy her that luxurious apartment when she attempts to return the jewels. I will say that it is what Marco wished to do, and I feel it my duty as the angel who failed to protect him.” His expression was grim. “I do feel that responsibility. All that time, all those gifts. I thought it a foolish old angel with too much money and not enough sense, and didn’t treat it as seriously as I should have.”
“Did Marco tell you about a possible assault from the air on Tanika?”
A sharp glance. “No. When did this occur?”
“In the lead-up to the war.”
Navarro sighed. “He likely didn’t want to distract me from battle planning. Regardless, he should’ve been safe. He was to remain in the underground weapons repair area during the war—as safe a location as there can be in a conflict of that size. He had no real skills at repair; he was tasked with organizing the movement of weapons in and out, and doing anything else required by the armorers.”
“Something drew him out. A threat to Tanika?”
“Yes. I can think of nothing else that would’ve caused him to abandon his post—Marco was the kind of man who kept his word. His mother had already evacuated. I believed his young woman had as well, but I think now that she must’ve never gotten the chance.”
Taken, Aodhan thought, used as leverage. “The notes and letters? I would see them.”
“I am truly sorry, Aodhan. I destroyed them when I believed Marco lost in the war.”
23
Aodhan had steeled himself for disappointment for this very reason, but the confirmation hit like a blow nonetheless.
“I recall the general timbre of the messages,” the other man added before Aodhan could respond. “She called Marco her beloved, and said she intended to be with him for eternity. Generic inanities. Not an original thought in the bunch.”
“Did she ever threaten Tanika?”
Navarro paused for a long moment, his wings held with warrior motionlessness—an act so innate that even an injury couldn’t halt it. “I recall only two mentions of Marco’s young woman. The first was contemptuous. She said she understood he needed a blood donor and that things might go too far during a feed, but to never get emotionally attached to his food.”
A tic in his jaw, Navarro began to walk again. “Marco was angry. He never wanted Tani—that’s what he called her—to feel like she was only a blood donor, and would often drink bottled blood so their every date wasn’t about him feeding on her. From what he said of her, I don’t believe she minded but it was important to him.
“Now, the second note…it held more vitriol—and I did put one of my senior staff onto tracing that one because it struck me as crossing a line, but she had no success even though she’s my best tracker. There was simply no trail to follow—the letter was hand-delivered by being dropped onto the drive during a high-traffic time in the sky. And I have none of the recording eyes of mortals.”
Whatever Navarro might believe, it appeared to Aodhan that he’d done all he could to get to the bottom of what had, to that point, appeared a disturbing but not dangerous infatuation. “What did it say?”
“It was written in a jagged script, the fountain pen pushed so hard that it had broken through the thick parchment in places. She referred to Tani as a ‘blood whore’ who should know her place, and intimated that if she didn’t, it wouldn’t end well for her. That was where the writer betrayed herself another way, too—she said, to the best of my memory: ‘I am the caliber of woman you should call lover.’ Until then, we had suspected but hadn’t categorically known the gender of this person.”
Navarro’s boot landed on a fallen branch, the crunch loud in the greenery-draped landscape. “That is the last contact of which I’m aware, and it came some month and a half before the drums of war began to sound. I believed the writer had flounced off.”
Pain scored his features. “When Marco’s and Tani’s remains were found at the shop, I believed he’d met her there after she missed the evacuation, that it was a temporary shelter while he worked out how to get her away from the fighting.”