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“I wish… I wish things could have been different. He didn’t rape your mother, though. And I did things I’m not proud of. I fell in love with the wrong woman and had to watch my child grow up with him.” Dale chokes on a breath. “I tried to help your mother. Gave her money.”
“But you didn’t actually help her, did you?” I study him. He’s trying to make himself the hero and he’s fucking not. He’s still a piece of shit. How the fuck he ended up with someone like Scarlett as a daughter, I don’t know.
Dale paid my mother to go. There’s a ragged memory of him, one that’s been twisted by time. And now I remember more clearly. There’d been another man, one who said horrible things to my mom. And this one… he gave her money. Told her to go. Leave them alone.
Fuck.
“I should kill you for that.”
I drop the gun to my side, my pulse punching a hole in my throat. “Orion?”
“Yeah?”
“Take Scarlett.”
He comes in and gently pulls her from the room.
I raise the gun again the minute we’re alone. “You destroyed her and left her to the wolves. With two kids.”
“It wasn’t my?—”
“Responsibility? A man takes care of shit. And your brother fucked her over. How much did you give her? How much?”
“Five thousand dollars. It was enough with her own money.”
I laugh. “Hush fucking money? My fucker father cut her off, took all her money. She disappeared, did you know that? Me and my sister went into the system. Because of your fucking family.”
Dale looks at me. “But you agreed to help protect us?—”
I swivel around and shoot the fucking wall. Then I turn back to him. “You don’t get to speak to me. You don’t get to ask questions. You might not have touched my mother, but you played a part in her downfall.”
“Hate me all you want,” he says. “But I didn’t touch her. Maybe I could have given her more. I didn’t. And I’m?—”
“Shut up,” I say, shoving the gun back into the waistband of my pants. “Shut the fuck up. You get to live. Be fucking thankful. You and your scumbag brother both fucking survive.”
And with that, I slam out the back door.
I haven’t been back to the Obsidian Knights HQ in three weeks. Well, apart from the trip to the debrief.
I haven’t been in fucking New York.
Why bother? The job ended well.
Grant Hanlon’s rotting somewhere in a jail cell. Amelia Hanlon’s traumatized, but her virtue’s untouched. So there’s that silver fucking lining.
Scarlett…
Fucking hates the ground I walk on.
But now I’m back.
I rub my eyes as I open my actual apartment door. This three-story home in Greenwich Village is an old, converted carriage house, and I used to love the fuck out of it. Now? It’s a little empty inside.
I’m a little empty inside.
Turns out, fucking Scarlett got the other half of the list, hidden in those receipts she grabbed from the office. They were at the SoHo place. Her father sang like a bird about what he knows, which isn’t much beyond a few different people. He doesn’t work with Dark Desires, that UR Fantasies wanted information about.
But his asshole brother Grant does. Or did, anyway, before he was sent to the clink. Jones is keeping that job going, forcing Dale to work with the Knights to get intel on Dark Desires. We’ll be keeping an eye on their comings and goings.
