Born of Fire

“And just who trained you? Idirian Wade?” she asked sarcastically, using the name of the most notorious criminal who’d ever lived.

His look was as cold as steel. “Yes.”

Shocked, she stared at him. Now that was one fact omitted by both his sheet and her contact.

Could it be true?

Surely he was lying.

But if he wasn’t, that made him even more dangerous. Because anyone spending time with Wade had been spending time with the devil himself.

Syn looked so serious that he was either a consummate liar or he was telling the truth.

Which one was it? Honestly, his story was way too much to be believed.

“Why would Wade train you? Especially as a kid? He wasn’t exactly known for having partners or letting them live once someone made the mistake of thinking he wouldn’t skin them. Literally.”

His look was completely cold. “Why do you think?”

She shrugged. “I can’t imagine how a criminal like him would have any interest in a snot-nosed kid.”

He rolled his eyes. “C’mon, seax. You’re not this dense or that stupid. Your father was one of the greatest smugglers ever born and what was the first lesson he taught your brother?”

“How to . . .” her words broke off as she finally understood. “You’re telling me Wade was your father?”

He gave her a sarcastic salute. “Give the woman a hero cookie.”

Shahara couldn’t breathe as those words sank in. Dear God, she was sitting next to a man descended from the most psychotic killer ever known? Someone who was notorious for killing hundreds, if not thousands of people—men, women, and children. And he didn’t just kill his victims, partners, and friends, he tortured and mutilated them.

He’d even cannibalized some of the bodies.

Wade was a man so evil, that even decades after his death, decades after his ashes had been scattered in space and every possible trace of anything that might contain even a micro hair or skin cell from him had been seized and destroyed, governments were still terrified someone would use his DNA to bring him back.

And she sat next to the son he’d trained . . .

For a moment, she thought she’d be ill.

Syn tensed as he saw the look in her eyes that he despised most. It was the one that said he contaminated her air with the filth of his past. That if the car wasn’t in motion, she’d be running out through the street to get away from him. Not for anything he’d ever done.

But because he’d been unlucky enough to be fathered by a psychotic animal.

Just once couldn’t someone surprise him and separate the truth from their fears? Only Nykyrian had ever really accepted the fact that his genetic link to a madman hadn’t corrupted him, too.

What did you expect?

Nothing, really. It was the same reaction Kiara Zamir had given him. But what killed him most was the knowledge that if he really were his father, he’d have butchered them over those looks and then kept their eyes as trophies.

Provided he didn’t eat them.

Disgusted, he looked away.

Shahara sat perfectly still as she came to terms with the fact that she was sitting next to the devil’s spawn. No wonder he was so good at what he did. His father had eluded custody for decades. Those who’d come close to finding Wade had been gutted, skinned, and pinned to walls as a warning to anyone else who had dreams of bringing him in.

In fact, he would have never been caught at all had someone not . . .

She licked her lips as a shot of hope went through her that said Syn might not be quite as corrupt as his father. “You’re the one who turned your father in, aren’t you?”

Syn cringed at a question only one other person had ever asked him. No one but Nykyrian had ever figured that out.

He started to lie to her, but why bother? It wasn’t like her opinion of him would change. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.” If only he’d known then what hell was going to rain down on him, he might have reconsidered. But at the time, he’d wanted to get away from his father’s brutality so badly . . .

He’d had these stupid dreams of the authorities giving him to a family where he could go to school like a normal kid and have a life like everyone else.

Even at ten years old, he should have known better. He’d seen enough of the darker side of human nature by that point . . . but the kid in him had been dumb enough to believe in happy endings and rainbows.

“So how much money did they pay you to betray him?”

He loved the way she phrased that. Like he’d betrayed the father who’d never done anything for him except make him suffer. Yeah, his dad had given him a certain set of criminal skills that had served him well over the years, but that benefit was far outweighed by the rest of the damage the bastard had done to him physically and mentally.

“I was a kid, Shahara. They didn’t give me shit for it. It was my civic duty.” He almost choked as he repeated the words the overseer had said to him right before they put him in cuffs and hauled him to jail.