The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

Maybe once that decision would have been easier. After all, there was a time Harte had done exactly that, and his decision had left a trail of pain and tragedy in its wake. But Harte Darrigan wasn’t the boy that Benedict O’Doherty had been. He’d made himself into something new—and he’d done it in spite of everything he’d come from and despite everything Samuel Lowe might have bequeathed to him in blood. Harte had to believe that his reluctance to take his revenge wasn’t softness, as Seshat might think. He had to believe it was something else.

“I didn’t come here to eat,” Harte told his father, taking control of the situation. “And I don’t have time for a pleasant visit. I only want the crown. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

His father glanced up with a look of satisfaction as he dipped a prawn into a cup of melted butter and then, his fingertips slick and glistening, popped it whole into his mouth, but Harte didn’t care that he’d lost this particular pissing contest. He’d stopped caring about this man’s approval years before. All that mattered was retrieving the Dragon’s Eye. For Esta.

His father wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “The fact of the matter is that I don’t have the item you’re looking for.”

Harte had been watching for the lie, but as his father spoke, he found only truth. “But you must know where it is?”

“It’s gone,” his father told him with a wave of his hands. “When my mother died, I found the headpiece among her things. I didn’t know why she had it, but I could tell immediately that it was valuable. About a year ago, I sold it to William Cooke and took the profit to buy my shop.”

“Did you buy that piece of gold as well?” Harte asked, gesturing to the ring that glinted on his father’s finger. He was close enough to see it more clearly now—its surface was etched with the image of an open eye that held a piece of onyx as a pupil.

His father’s hand fisted, and without so much as blinking, he covered the ring with his other hand.

“I’ll need an introduction to this William Cooke,” Harte said. “If he doesn’t still have the crown, he’ll know where it went next.”

His father shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”

“I’m a quick study,” Harte told him.

His father couldn’t hide his irritation, but then he relented and began to explain. “Cooke is a high-ranking official in the Vigilance Committee. He didn’t keep the piece for himself. He used it to gain the highest-ranking office in the organization. They have the crown now, so you can just forget about getting it back. I won’t allow you to go mucking around in things you can’t understand. You could destroy everything I’ve built here, and I’m not about to let that happen after all I’ve been through to get where I am.”

“I don’t particularly care what you went through,” Harte said. “As far as I’m concerned, you can keep your life and whatever it is you think you’ve built, as long as I get what I’ve come for.”

Samuel Lowe considered him, and the calm intensity of the older man’s stare made Harte suddenly uneasy. This man looked like his father, but the man Harte had known had been predictable in his violence—it had been a saving grace to be able to read Samuel Lowe’s moods by the look in his eyes. But Harte couldn’t tell what this man was thinking, and that felt more dangerous than his father’s fists had ever been.

“You’re very much your mother’s son,” Samuel Lowe said finally, but his tone made it clear that his words were not meant as a compliment.

“That’s true enough,” Harte agreed easily.

“You take pride in it?” his father asked. “Being the bastard of a whore. An abomination.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m your bastard as well,” Harte said, clenching his teeth around the word.

Before his father could answer that charge, a waiter arrived with a pitcher of water, and an uneasy silence descended over the table while it was being poured. Harte’s and his father’s eyes remained locked, and after the waiter left, his father spoke again. “It’s clear you don’t even care about the hell you put me through.”

“I certainly wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for an apology,” Harte said coldly.

“I would never expect one from the likes of you,” his father said. “You know, I understood what you’d done the second you touched me that day.” It confirmed Harte’s suspicions about why he’d been keeping the distance between them. “I knew exactly what was happening, how you’d cursed me. I didn’t want to leave New York. I wasn’t ready yet, but I couldn’t stop myself. Because of your evil spell, I was ranting like a madman when I crossed the bridge out of the city. The compulsion to keep moving didn’t stop until I reached Brooklyn, but by then I’d already caught the notice of an officer, who thought I was drunk.”

“You were,” Harte reminded him. “In case you’ve forgotten, you’d passed out in your own vomit, a glass of liquor still in your hand.”

His father ignored this fact. “They put me in jail rather than into a sanitarium, and they left me there for weeks.”

“If you ask me, they should’ve left you longer,” Harte said, unable to dredge up any sympathy at all.

His father glared at him. “You have no idea what I suffered in that place, how terrible it was to come off the drink with no help and no comfort. But by the time I was sober, I realized I was no longer compelled to return to your mother’s side as I had been for years.”

“My mother didn’t compel you to stay and torture us.”

“Didn’t she?” Samuel gave a dry, ugly laugh. “Go on and tell yourself stories about what a saint she was, but Molly O’Doherty was nothing but