Severed by Vengeance (The Severed Signet, #1)

by Elle Maldonado

She was fucking devastating.

The man I knew was a fraud and a liar. How could he have been so heartless?

But fuck me; I was gone, captive to the devilish grin tilting the side of his mouth.

“I’m staring because I never thought you’d be this goddamn beautiful.”

“As far as I know, your father is exactly who you think he is.” I lied again.

She had a fire to her. And I liked it.

She looked away, all traces of her smile gone, and I realized I missed it.

There wasn’t a woman alive capable of breaking me. And Evangelina would be no different. I’d take what I wanted from her, and she’d let me. And that’s all she and I would ever be.

“Eva. Everyone calls me Eva. Evangelina was my grandmother. I love her, but it's just a mouthful.” “I’m not like everyone else. And it’s a beautiful name. It suits you.”

And I had just doubled down on the fact that her dear Uncle James was a certified piece of shit, and she was more concerned with his treatment of me.

She was enraged on my behalf.

“He was a flawed man—” I started, trying to sound conflicted and sympathetic. “He was a deadbeat. And a liar.” Well, this was certainly an unexpected turn of events.

The sentiment came off as genuine, not made to feed egos or fill an awkward silence, as Evangelina had grown up wealthy and accustomed to luxuries. And, of course, the love of two father figures while I got fists and the ends of cords and sticks.

“There’s something to be said about tragedies and how they shape the core of who we are. We either overcome or fall victim to our demons.”

And the game had just leveled up—one where we silently took part in who was the better liar and keeper of secrets.

Fuck, I wanted her.

My face hurt from smiling so much, and I didn’t know how I felt about that.

Perhaps she thought she’d been too forward, yet she was utterly oblivious that she no longer had a choice. She was mine. Better she understood that sooner than later.

I said nothing else and prepared to clean her wound, fully aware she could do it herself. But the need to touch her was a beast with a mind of its own.

I hated the way she made me feel. I hated that I felt anything at all.

I dipped my mouth close to her ear, lips brushing the soft skin there, and whispered, “Liar.”

She had to feel it. She had to know I was death incarnate. The ink on my body was a road map, a graveyard, and an altar to the dead.

He chuckled and leaned against the vanity, looking better than a man had any right to in just a plain white shirt.

Ronan hadn’t just adopted us. We’d been fucking recruited. Through the years, he fed the demons he’d seen reflected in our eyes and turned us into depraved monsters with no moral compass. We’d been bred to kill, the fiery tendrils of hell shackling our souls, keeping us chained and bound to this existence and the next.

Ronan’s scrutinizing glare speared through me from behind a haze of smoke. And I briefly toyed with the idea of shoving the goddamn cigar through one of his eye sockets. How loud would he scream until it seared all the way through?

Two unlovable, broken bastards to fulfill a sole purpose. His methods brutal and unhinged.

Her eyes were back on me. And I suddenly wished I could read her thoughts. Could she see the darkness that lived and breathed beneath my painted flesh? Or worse yet, did she only see that frail boy abandoned so many years ago? Would she want to save me too?

A grave expression moved across her face. “I guess I’m on their hit list now too.” “Bullshit.” Her eyes snapped up to meet mine, surprised at my sudden outburst. “No one touches you, Eva.”

But she needed to know who she belonged to. And no one touched what was mine.

“I don’t give a fuck about those guys or this car. Number one. And two, whatever you do when I’m not around is one thing, but when you’re with me, I’m not going to sit by like some pussy while you risk your safety.”

Intimidating people was not how I operated, but damn it, if his defending my honor wasn’t sexy as hell.

“I don’t make threats.” Instinctively, I knew the conclusion to that statement. Promises. He made promises.

“But you on your knees, Evangelina—now, that’s something I would never forget.”

“Explain yourself then, because I know one thing with absolute goddamn certainty, and it has nothing to do with having an ego.”

“And what’s that?”

“You and I would be so damn good together.”

I clenched my fists as I fantasized about using his severed hand as a chaser for his teeth.

“This doesn’t concern either of you.” I couldn’t have agreed more, but the way Eva was positioned protectively in front of Carmen let me know walking away wasn’t in her plans.

I couldn’t afford to kill this man in broad daylight and, worse yet, in front of Eva.

And while every fiber of my being wanted to crack his skull open for even breathing in the vicinity of what was mine, there were far too many witnesses for the amount of damage control needed to match my rage.

There was an obscenely short list of people I’d die and kill over. And by short, I meant one.

“Did someone hurt you, angel?” His voice was strained, spoken between clenched teeth, as if he knew why I panicked. “Tell me. Who?”

I missed her. I fucking missed her.

Swiping at her tears with my thumbs, it was like the pieces of my life suddenly fell into place when I realized I’d give anything at that moment so I’d never see her cry again.

Leni’s excitement was unabashed this time, splitting her pretty face with a bloodthirsty grin.

Fuck every single one of them. For Eva, I’d go to war with the whole goddamn world.

“That’s my girl.”

Why would I trust you, of all people, with my daughter’s life?” “Because I would never hurt her.”

She was wholly unaware of the lengths I was willing to go to, the people I’d kill without so much as a second thought if it meant she was safe.

The fabric of my very existence had been unraveled. The code I lived by. All of it, in shambles. She’d turned my world upside down and inside out.