Red Dreams (The Reaper Duet #2)

19. Layla

19

LAYLA

The sound of a daughter begging her father not to kill her will haunt me for the rest of my life.

That single tear cutting through the gore on Cassie’s face transforms her from villain to child in an instant. Her whispered “Daddy” carries the same desperate need I once felt, crying out for a father who never came.

I should want her dead. After everything Cassie's done—the torture, the mind games, forcing me to watch Kaden destroy Ethan—I should be begging Kaden to finish this so we can go home.

Instead, I'm frozen, watching two broken pieces of my heart tear at each other.

“Sometimes,” Cassie whispers, her voice small, “when Papa would hurt me, I'd pretend you were coming to save me. I’d imagine all the ways the Scythe would make him suffer for touching your little girl.”

Kaden shifts his stance. For the first time since I've known him, indecision marks every line of his body. But I know him well enough to understand that indecision won’t stop him from doing what he thinks is necessary.

I surge forward, my hand outstretched. “ Wait .”

Kaden’s eyes snap to mine, his pupils blown from all the restraint he’s using.

I touch his wrist, feeling the tension humming through him. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

Cassie jerks against the blade, fresh blood welling, directing her next question at me. “You think you can fix this, kitten? Fix me?”

I step closer despite Kaden's warning growl. “There has to be. Because if there isn't...” My hand stays on his arm as if I could funnel all my warmth through my palm and into him. “If there isn't, then what hope is there for any of us?”

“Hope?” Cassie spits the word. “Was there hope when Papa split my fingers one by one? When he made me thank him for teaching me strength?” Her eyes lock with mine. “When I did the same to your friend?”

The mention of Ethan slices through me, but I hold her gaze and deadpan, “There's hope as long as your father's blade hasn't moved.”

Kaden moves into my hand, silently shifting me out of the danger zone, but I squeeze back, begging him to let me keep trying.

“Maybe there’s even a future where you’re more than Morelli’s discarded toy,” I say to her. “Where you get to decide who you want to be.”

“Pretty words,” Cassie sneers. “But we all know I’ll never be anything else.”

I shake my head vehemently. “Your father is here, Cassie. He came for you, just like you always dreamed he would.”

Kaden’s muscles are rock hard beneath my palm, his gaze locked on Cassie. I don’t need to feel his chest to know his heart is hammering, the rapid beat matching my own.

I use magic powers I don’t possess to will Cassie into seeing the truth. To recognize that this moment, right here, is what she’s been waiting for from the second she was taken from her childhood home. A chance to be saved. To be chosen.

I will her to understand that Kaden’s soul hangs in the balance. That if he takes her life, even to protect me, even to save countless others from her cruelty, it will shatter something vital inside him. A fracture that will slowly bleed him dry until the man I love is nothing more than a corpse himself.

Slowly, deliberately, I reach out my other hand to brush a lock of blood-matted hair from Cassie's face. She hisses but doesn't pull away, her eyes darting between me and Kaden.

“Your father loves you, Cassie,” I say. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to have a father who doesn’t give a shit about you, and that’s not Kaden. He’s always loved you. Even when he thought he’d lost you forever. Even as he’s holding a knife to your throat. Especially when he’s holding a knife to your throat.”

It took me too long to realize that Kaden's capacity for violence doesn't negate his capacity for love. Just the opposite. His ruthlessness is born from the depths of his devotion, a willingness to sacrifice everything, even his own soul, for those he holds dear.

It's a darkness I recognize because it lives inside me too. The willingness to blow the world up for the people I love. To raze cities and salt the earth if it means keeping them safe.

Cassie sees it too, her eyelids lowering with tentative understanding.

“You really do love her, don't you?” she whispers. “Enough to kill your own daughter.”

Kaden's voice is rough as gravel. “Enough to die for her. Enough to live for her. Even when living hurts like hell.”

Cassie's lips tremble, a war of emotions playing out across her face. Hope and fear. Longing and despair. The desperate desire to believe wars with the certainty that she's too far gone to be saved.

Her longing is so acute that I almost start crying. I realize that beneath the madness and cruelty, this is what she's always wanted. Not to take Kaden's love from me but to know she never lost it in the first place.

Beside me, Kaden is a statue, every muscle locked tight. But I feel the change in him. The slight loosening of his hold on the knife. The almost imperceptible lean toward his daughter.

I slide my hand down Kaden's arm until my fingers brush the hilt of the knife. He tenses, but I keep my eyes on Cassie.

“Let me,” I say to him.

Kaden's hand spasms once before he releases the blade into my grip. I feel the weight of it, the responsibility. The power to take a life. To spare one.

Cassie's eyes fly wide as she feels the knife change hands. Her gaze meets mine. In the depths of her steel-blue eyes, so like her father's, I see my own darkness reflected back at me. The part of me that understands the seductive call of violence. The twisted pleasure of making someone else hurt the way you do.

I press the knife harder against the fresh cuts on her throat, just enough to make her feel it. To remind her of her precarious position.

“I could kill you,” I say softly. “I could make you suffer the way you made Ethan suffer. The way you tried to make me suffer.”

Cassie swallows, the movement causing the knife to move.

“But I won't,” I continue, my voice somehow steady. “Because that's not who I am. It's not who your father is either, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise.”

I lean in closer until our faces are mere inches apart. Until I can feel the ragged flutter of her breath against my skin.

A muffled sound escapes her, halfway between a sob and a snarl.

“It's not too late,” I say. “You can still choose to be more than what Morelli made you. More than the Ghost Leader’s daughter. You can choose to be Kaden's daughter instead.”

For a long, stretched-out moment, I'm not sure which way she'll go.

“Let us help you, Cassie,” I add, my voice cracking with emotion. “Let your father be the man he always wanted to be for you. Let me be the friend you never had.”

Another tear escapes.

“I don’t know how,” she rasps, small and broken. “I don’t know how .”

“We’ll figure it out together,” I promise. “Because I don’t know how to be part of a family, either. But that was always, always , the most important thing to your dad. So we’ll do it for him. One day at a time. One choice at a time.”

Kaden releases a shuddering exhale, and I pull the knife away from Cassie’s throat. In a movement almost too fast to track, he hauls Cassie into his arms, crushing her against his chest.

“I'm sorry,” he rasps, his voice drenched in torment. “I'm so damn sorry, Cassie-girl.”

I step back, giving them space, my own heart aching. I know this isn't the end, and we still have a long way to go. But for now, at this moment, a father and daughter are reunited.

And that's a start.