Bad Influence (Seven Deadly Sins #2) ✅ Completed

Chatper Twenty-Four: A Southern Favor

I flew over the counter and into the wall of shelves just behind it with enough force to feel something inside my body crack. I struggled to refill the air in my lungs, wondering when someone had jabbed me in the side with a hot poker. It was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie only worse because it was actually happening to me.

I got to my feet and took a deep breath. Big mistake. I was back down quicker than I could spit. Holding tightly to my side I took a few shorter breaths until the worst of the pain receded enough for me to see straight again. Groaning, I got up a little slower this time, being sure to take small, half breaths.

"You okay, Eliza?" Dante called out.

"I think I broke a rib or five," I replied, looking back across the counter. Dante had Jackson by the throat. The rest of what I had planned to say dried up in my mouth as I realized what Dante was about to do.

"All I have to do is break your neck like a chicken bone." Dante was eerily calm as he lifted the white-suited Southerner right off the floor. The light streaming in from the windows reflected on his highly polished shoes.

"Wait!" I gasped, holding onto the glass counter for support. The pain was immediate and intense. After a second I was able to make my way around it, keeping a tight grip on my right side as I stumbled back over to where they stood. "We need Andy..."

"I know." He didn't bother to look back over at me but kept his sight clearly on the collector he was holding. "But we don't need him to find her. I know where he's keeping her."

"How?"

"He let it slip."

"I didn't hear him say anything."

"That's because he didn't say it. He thought it."

"What makes you think it's the truth?"

Dante glanced over at me on that one. "As if I couldn't tell? Who do you think invented lying, Eliza?"

For the first time Jackson seemed really nervous, suspended above us waiting for Dante to do something permanent. His eyes darted around to each of us as he spoke, his words quick and somewhat garbled, "Without me she dies..."

Dante didn't seem put off by the threat but that was fine since I was more than worried for the both of us.

"Dante..."

"He's lying, Eliza."

"Can we really afford to take that chance?"

Dante didn't look my way as he answered, "He's one of Asher's lap dogs. We can't trust him."

I trusted Jackson about as much as I could juggle three of his goons in the air but I couldn't shake this nagging feeling in the back of my brain - like a niggling sensation only more urgent. If Lust was still talking to me I would imagine her shouting the answer to me but she wasn't so all I had was this really dire feeling that we needed Jackson intact if we wanted to get Andy back.

Never letting up on Jackson, Dante turned and finally looked at me.

"What is it?" he asked as if able to pick up the conflict happening inside my own skull.

I shook my head not really sure. "I don't know. I just have this feeling. I don't know why but I don't think we should kill him. Not yet."

"We don't need him," he reiterated, his grip tightening around the collector's throat. I knew Jackson had plenty of magic at his disposal but it wasn't near powerful enough to stop someone like Dante.

I looked up into Jackson's eyes. Immediately I was assailed with images, one after another, like a freak slideshow that flashed by too quickly for me to make any sense of all at once. I yelled and clutched my head, going down to one knee.