Shattered Hearts: A Dark Romance (Bad Blood Book 1) Page 16

  I heard the pain tainting his voice. “I’m sure that’s not true. What about Loretta. She seems to care about you.” Why the hell was I trying to comfort my kidnapper? I should be happy that he was alone and unhappy. But the truth was that I felt responsible for his loneliness. He was a result of what my father had done to his mother, of what he’d witnessed when he’d found her. And my father would never have been able to do that if I’d told the truth and the police had arrested him that night.

  He gave cold laugh. “Loretta doesn’t care about me. She’s only here for one reason.”

  I was grasping at straws. “Because you pay her?”

  “Yes, I pay her, but that’s not how we found each other. Loretta is another of your father’s victims.”

  I felt as though he’d punched me in the chest, winding me. “What?”

  I did the math. Loretta looked to be older—in her late fifties, at least. Had my father seen her as one of his victims? She would have been late forties during his killing spree, which I felt sure was far older than he normally went for. Even Hayden’s mother was slightly older, but she’d been in her thirties, not approaching fifty. It didn’t make sense.

  “What happened? He tried to hurt her, somehow?” I was trying to make sense of it all.

  But Hayden shook his head. “Not her. He killed Loretta’s daughter. She was twenty-six.”

  I felt sick. I lifted my cuffed hands to cover my face. “Oh, God.” No wonder the other woman hated me so much. Did she see my father’s face when she looked at me? I’d protected the man who’d murdered her daughter. Fuck, I would have Tased me too, given the opportunity. I was surprised she hadn’t done worse, but then I realized the reason why she hadn’t.

  “So, she knows about your plan,” I said, lowering my hands to look at him again. “She wants you to kill Patrick Dorman, and she’s happy for you to use me as bait.”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t she be? She knows what you did.”

  Shame flooded through me, and I lowered my gaze to the floor. “I was twelve years old. I was trying to protect my dad.”

  “You were protecting a murderer. There’s no excuse for that.”

  A rush of cold flooded my veins and I shivered. I’d already felt as though I was in a place of animosity, but now I fully understood the reasoning behind it, I felt their feelings as though they were my own. A part of me wanted to stand in front of Loretta and beg her forgiveness and allow her to electrocute me as many times as she liked. I wanted her to give her pain to me, to let me carry that burden. I couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to raise a child and have her grow up to be a beautiful, successful woman, only to have her torn away so brutally. Just as with Hayden, some of the hatred I’d felt toward her seeped away now that I knew her story.

  Perhaps people would argue that I’d only been a child back then. But I wasn’t a child any longer. I’d thought I was trying to do my bit and pay back to society by studying psychology in the hope of eventually helping young people who’d gone through traumas of their own, but perhaps it was all too little too late.

  I stared down at my hands, and my vision blurred as tears flooded my eyes and a painful lump choked my throat. “I’m sorry,” I managed to say. “I never wanted any of this to happen. I wish I could go back in time and speak up when I’d had the chance. I wish my father was never a murderer, and I wish my mother hadn’t killed herself. I wish my brother was still a part of my life, and that you hadn’t decided to kidnap me to use me as bait.”

  But he growled. “Stop it. I’m not interested in your tears.”

  I swiped at my face with the back of my hand.

  “We’re stuck here for the moment,” he said. “I don’t know how long the storm is going to last, but my pilot won’t be able to get back to the island until it’s passed. And I’m still waiting on word to see if that last letter was enough to push your father into breaking out, or if we’re going to need to step things up a level.”

  My heart lurched into my throat. “Step things up a level? What does that mean?”

  The threat in his tone was unmistakable. “I think you know exactly what it means.”

  TO BE CONTINUED! PRE-order book two in the Bad Blood series, Broken Minds, now from Amazon and have it magically drop onto your kindle on the 19th of November!

  Acknowledgements

  Huge thanks to my long time editor Lori Whitwam, for polishing my work, but also for putting up with my changing mind! Thanks to my proofreaders on this book, Karey McComish, and Tammy Payne from Book Nook Nuts, you’re both fabulous!

  I designed the image for the covers for this series myself, but the wonderful Daqri from Covers by Combs was the one who turned them into covers with her amazing typography.

  Final thanks to you, the reader, for continuing to read my books and allowing me to follow my dreams of being an author.

  Thanks for reading!

  Marissa

  About the Author

  Marissa Farrar has always been in love with being in love. But since she's been married for numerous years and has three young daughters, she's conducted her love affairs with multiple gorgeous men of the fictional persuasion.

  The author of more than thirty novels, she has been a full time author for the last six years. She predominantly writes paranormal romance and fantasy, but has branched into contemporary fiction as well.

  If you want to know more about Marissa, then please visit her website at www.marissa-farrar.blogspot.com. You can also find her at her facebook page, www.facebook.com/marissa.farrar.author or follow her on twitter @marissafarrar.

  She loves to hear from readers and can be emailed at marissafarrar@hotmail.co.uk. To stay updated on all new releases and sales, just sign up to her newsletter! https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/g0x9r0

  Also by the Author

  Dark Codes: A Reverse Harem Series

  Hacking Darkness

  Unraveling Darkness

  Decoding Darkness

  Merging Darkness

  The Mercenary Series:

  The Choice She Made

  The Lie She Told

  The Trust She Gave

  The Trap She Faced

  A Vampire’s Thirst

  Nikolai

  Ivan

  The Blood Courtesans Vampire Romance:

  Stolen

  The Serenity Series:

  Alone (free first novel of the series!)

  Buried

  Captured

  Dominion

  Endless

  THE COMPLETE SERIES BOXED SET

  The Dhampyre Chronicles:

  Twisted Dreams

  Twisted Magic

  The Spirit Shifters Series:

  Autumn’s Blood (free first novel)

  Saving Autumn

  Autumn Rising

  Autumn’s War

  Avenging Autumn

  Autumn’s End

  THE COMPLETE SERIES BOXED SET

  The Monster Trilogy

  DEFACED

  DENIED

  DELIVERED

  Contemporary Fiction Novels

  NO SECOND CHANCES

  DIRTY SHOTS

  CUT TOO DEEP

  SURVIVOR

  THE SOUND OF CRICKETS

  Dark Fantasy/horror novels:

  UNDERLIFE

  THE DARK ROAD

  Shattered Hearts

  Bad Blood: Book One

  Copyright © 2018 Marissa Farrar

  Warwick House Press

  Edited by Lori Whitwam

  Cover art by Marissa Farrar

  Typography by Covers by Combs

  License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you
for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.