Because I’d chosen this path, with my eyes wide open, knowing I would become a monster.

“I deserve it all,” I whispered. “Everything that’s happened.”

CHAPTER 11

“That’s enough of that bag of Cerberus shit,” Ernie barked at me. “I mean it. Whatever you’re thinking you deserve, you’re wrong.”

I wiped my eyes and turned to him, wondering how he’d gotten in the car when I’d not even heard the door open. “You don’t know anything, Ernie.”

“I do. Let me guess. You think that the way you were raised defines everything you are. It doesn’t. You have to figure out who you are. Who is Alena? Once you figure that out, everything else will fall into place.”

“Figuring out who I am won’t bring Tad home! It won’t bring those I killed back to life, or make me human again!” I yelled at him, and then slapped my hands over my mouth. “Look at me. I’ve never yelled in my life. Never wore clothes this tight. I’m doing everything I was always taught was wrong. Terrible. Things that would make me a bad person. Things that would damn my soul.”

“Defending yourself and your family isn’t wrong,” he said softly. “Come on, let’s go to the bakery. You owe me, and we’ve got time to kill before Zeus will be at the club.” He settled back into the seat and closed his eyes. Not unlike how Yaya rode in the car.

I turned the key and shifted the car into gear, the engine purring nicely like some large jungle cat, which made me think of Remo again.

I pushed him out of my mind. The last thing I needed was to add the feel of him kissing me to the tumult of emotions and fears tumbling in my head.

The smell of his cinnamon-and-honey, hot-and-sweet kiss. I groaned and shook my head, did my best to push that away.

I gripped the steering wheel. Barbie might not have the greatest taste in men, but her taste in cars wasn’t half bad.

Damn it, and now I was back to comparing Roger to Remo. And really, there was no comparison. I had a feeling Roger would fall short in every category. My mind went straight into the gutter as I contemplated Roger’s small endowment. And how he’d said it wasn’t the size that counted, but how you used things. And my mind rolled over to the size of Remo’s hands as he’d cupped my bum. If there was any relation between size of hands and size of—

I turned the radio up, as if that would drown out my wildly inappropriate thoughts.

“Hey, why is your face all red?”

“I wasn’t thinking about him,” I blurted out.

Ernie laughed. “I didn’t ask who you were thinking about. But I think maybe I should. Who you thinking about, girlfriend?”

I glanced at him, considered telling him. “I . . . that mob boss.”

“Oooh, yeah, he is a dish, isn’t he?” Ernie flew to the dash and sat so he faced me. “Seriously, he’s got the whole bad-boy vibe going on.”

“He kissed me,” I blurted out.

“Oh. My. Gods. Tell me, was he any good?” He clapped his hands together like an excited little girl.

I wasn’t sure if he was mocking me or not. I went with mocking. “Stop it. Don’t tease me. I’m a married woman and I kissed—”

“No, you aren’t married.” He pointed a finger at me. “You cut ties with the human world. Now give me the deets.”

“Deets?” What was he talking about now?

“The details. Was he any good? I mean, I think he would be good. I’d kiss him.”

My eyes widened. “You would kiss him?”

He grinned, “Alena, something you should know about most of the Greek pantheon . . . we aren’t picky. Beauty is to be honored in all forms, appreciated however it is shown to us. That vampire is the boss with a capital B, and there is more than one Greek god or goddess whose eye he’ll catch. You’d best watch over him or he might get stolen from you.”

“He’s not mine.” The words came out far more sullen than they should have. Because Remo was not mine in any way, shape, or form. Not mine.

Bad Alena.

I cleared my throat and changed the direction of the conversation. “Ernie, why are you really helping me?”

He slid off the dash, his face thoughtful. “I thought you were going to be another throwaway monster, Alena. Someone for Achilles to use as a stepping-stone.”

I flinched at his choice of words, the echo of my own thoughts about Roger coming home to roost. “And now?”

“Now, I think you’ve got it in you to show the world not all the monsters are . . . well, monsters.”

A flush of warmth spread through me, some of the cold fear hounding me chased away by his belief. “Thanks, Ernie.”

“Anytime. That’s what friends are for, right?”

I smiled. “Yeah, it is.”

The rest of the drive back to the bakery was quiet. Uneventful. Which was good and bad. Good because I wasn’t sure how much more upheaval I could handle without completely losing my mind. Bad because my thoughts were all my own and I couldn’t escape them.

Could my whole life have been . . . wrong? Could Ernie be right and everything my mother presented have been skewed?

I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel as I tried to come to grips with the tiny epiphanies as they rolled through me in rapid-fire succession.

I would always defend my family, and Ernie was right about that. Protecting my family would never be wrong. If I were put in the same position again, I would fight with all I had even knowing the outcome. I felt bad for the deaths I’d caused. But I wouldn’t let it eat away at me. I straightened up in my seat like a weight had slid off my shoulders.