Stolen Heir (Brutal Birthright, #2)

by Sophie Lark

feet that are battered and beat to shit. She’s got bruises, blisters, calluses, and Band-Aids on several toes. Still, she’s painted her toenails pink, an attempt at beautification so pointless that it almost makes me laugh.

I leave the room, locking her door from the outside. Then I slip the key into my pocket. No one is going in there without my permission.

I feel like I’m in a horror movie, in the part where the girl wanders around like an idiot and the whole audience covers their eyes, knowing that something awful is about to happen. I can’t really be alone.

I have to cling to my optimism. Otherwise I’ll be enveloped by fear.

I don’t usually have a temper. Actually, I can be a bit of a pushover. My brain decides that now is the moment to finally get snippy. Right when it could get me killed.

in our world, the sins of the family are visited on all who share the same blood.

“I didn’t kill your father,” she says. “But I know how people like you think. There’s no reasoning with you. I’m not going to cower and beg—you’d probably just enjoy it. So do what you have to do.”

my little ballerina,”

This girl has no idea how easy she is to read. She’s never learned to put up walls, to protect herself. She’s as vulnerable as a bed of tulips. I intend to stomp through her garden, ripping the blossoms from the ground one by one.

you can watch it all, little ballerina. Because this is a tragedy—and the swan princess only perishes in the final act.”

She looks at me and she sees a monster out of a nightmare. And she’s absolutely right.

There’s no good or bad, no right or wrong. Only my goals, and the things that stand in the way of those goals.

“This isn’t fate. You’re just an evil man, trying to play god.”

In my mind, I’ve been calling him the Beast. Because that’s what he is to me—a rabid dog that lost its master. Now he’s trying to bite anyone he can reach.

Stupid people are not creative. They always resort to violence.

“Mikolaj.” She says it like the name of the devil. Like she wants to cross herself afterward.

No wife to bring along to your dreary old mansion, though. Women don’t like to sleep with snakes.”

I want to dance so badly that I don’t care where I am or who I’m with. This is the only way to escape right now—by losing myself in this moment, recklessly, and irrevocably.

I say again, trying to sound as furious as I feel. My voice is naturally soft. It always comes out too gentle, even when I’m at my angriest. It makes me feel like a petulant child.

“Please.” I’m begging him with my eyes, my face, even my hands clasped in front of me. If he has any soul, any at all, he’ll see the pain in my face. But he has nothing inside of him. He just laughs, shaking his head. “Not a chance,” he says. “That would spoil all the fun.”

I love that they have no idea if she’s alive or dead, or where she might have disappeared. Not knowing is the torture. Death can be accepted. But this . . . it will gnaw at them. Drive them into chaos.

Constant cruelty isn’t how you worm your way inside someone’s head. It’s the mix of good and bad, give and take, that fucks with them. Unpredictability makes them desperate to please.

It makes me almost jealous. She’s disappeared somewhere that I can’t reach her. She’s feeling something that I can’t feel.

She thinks she can float up to heaven whenever she likes? Well, I’ll drag her all the way down to hell with me.

Once she’s gone, I expect to return to my usual state of apathy. Nessa is just a blip on my radar—a momentary jolt that disappears again just as quickly. But not tonight. Her scent lingers in my nostrils—sweet almond and red wine. My fingertips can still feel the softness of her skin.

He used the thing I love the most to get at me, and when I came back to reality, I couldn’t believe how easily I had lost myself. This man is my enemy. I can’t forget that for an instant.

I always try to be cheerful and kind. I can’t stand conflict. It’s practically pathological. I need to be loved.

I wish I were brave and confident. I wish I didn’t care what anyone thought.

Now it’s all been ripped away, and what am I without it? A weak and frightened girl who is so deeply, deeply lonely that I would even sit down to dinner with my own kidnapper again, just to have someone to talk to. It’s sick.

Does she know I’m still alive, because mothers always know somehow?

irritated by the use of the nickname. I wonder how he’d like my name for him. Who am I kidding? He’d probably love it.

“They should have raised a wolf, not a little lamb. It almost seems cruel.”

“I wish you could fight back, moja mała baletnica.” My little ballerina. “This would be so much more fun.”

In a deliciously ironic twist, it’s the Griffins and the Gallos who will pay the fee to secure the alliance against themselves.

I’m certain her parents will recognize that distinctive light-brown shade, and the softness of her natural, undyed hair. I think I could recognize it myself, wherever I might encounter it.

They are gangsters, after all. If I scratch their cultured surface, I’ll find the grit underneath. They’re just as willing as I am to do whatever it takes to get what they want. Or at least, they think they are.

I don’t believe in heaven or hell, ghosts or spirits. The dead are no danger because they don’t exist anymore. I’m concerned only with the living. Only they can get in my way.

Once you’ve lost someone you love, there’s no protecting them anymore.

“This is the problem with you Irish,” he says softly. “Surrounded by enemies and not afraid to make more. You should learn to be friendly.” “You don’t make friends with termites when they burrow into your foundation,”

I picture myself doing it, like a character in the movie. Knowing all along I never could.

“You remind me of Alfred,” I tell her. “You know Alfred, from Batman? He’s good at everything. Like you.”

The music is unlike anything I’ve heard before—haunting, dissonant . . . yet entrancing. It makes me think of this old mansion creaking in the night. Of Klara in her witchy gown, reflected in a dusty mirror. And of a girl, sitting at a long table lit by candlelight, facing a Beast. It reminds me of fairytales—dark and terrifying. But also tantalizing. Full of adventure, danger, and magic.

I’ve always wished there was a ballet of my favorite fairytale of all: Beauty and the Beast. Why shouldn’t there be? I could make one.

I could make a whole ballet if I wanted to, start to finish. One that would be dark and gothic, frightening and beautiful, just like this house. I could take all of my fear and fascination, and pour it into a dance. And it would be fucking beautiful. More real than anything I’ve made before.

Jackson said my work lacked emotion. Maybe he was right. What had I ever felt before? I’ve felt things now. All sorts of things. I’ve felt more emotions in two weeks of captivity than in my whole life before.

I wish I could see what she’s seeing, inside her head.

What I see is emotive, strung with intensity. But it’s just a girl in an empty room. She’s seeing a whole world around her.

And I’m standing in the doorway without any idea how much time has passed. She looks up and sees me.

I feel like I’ve been sleeping for a hundred years, and all at once, in this instant, I’m wide awake.

I want her like I’ve never wanted a woman before.