Page 169 of Scars Run Deep

She reached the door that led out to the street and paused, turning back to eye me. “You’ve changed it. These secrets, keeping him from me. It’s broken.”

Something squeezed in my chest.

And I hated it, I fucking hated it. I hated that I felt it, I hated that she was making me feel this way, I hated that something I’d done had made her lash out at me in this way.

It… it hurt.

It actually hurt.

And it wasn’t a pain I was used to.

I didn’t know what to do with it.

“No,” I uttered with more difficulty than I would’ve liked.

“No?” she said, frowning, as she opened the door.

“I don’t accept that.”

“It’s not that easy,” she muttered over her shoulder, before she stepped out onto the street with me following at her back, flanking her.

She gave me a withering look.

Fuck, she looked so spent, so exhausted.

Now really wasn’t the time for this conversation.

She obviously thought the same, snapping at me, “Where’s your car?”

I pointed ahead of us. “Two blocks and make a right.”

In my peripheral vision, I caught sight of robes rushing out from the building, from a different exit.

“Shit. They’re like cockroaches.”

“They don’t give up either. Go. Get to the car.”

She managed to push forward with whatever tiny bit of energy she had remaining.

I followed after her, making myself into a barrier and a deterrent between her and them.

As I walked backward, watching them the entire time, I caught sight of movement down a cross street as I was passing by.

What on earth?

I looked to see an unconscious Killian being carried toward a blacked out vehicle by two suited guys with Valerie Carmichael following calmly, like it was the most normal thing in the world. What was happening?

And Jonah? Where was Jonah?

Was he in that vehicle too?

I couldn’t trust that Valerie’s loyalty would be to her son, that her actions would be to protect him. She’d been brainwashed and abused for so many years to do Samuel’s bidding that it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility to believe she’d take his side and wellbeing over her own son’s. Olivia had claimed that she wasn’t lost entirely, but how much of her was still her remained to be seen or determined as yet.

I made a move to sprint across the road, even as the doors closed and the vehicle started pulling away from the curb, but Aurora’s distinctive scream jolted me, and had me bursting forward and heading around the corner where I’d left my Beamer earlier. Off everybody else’s radar down an inconspicuous side street.

Just as I turned the corner, my father’s voice rang out, bellowing out my name, and I shot a look over my shoulder to see he’d tailed me, a half a dozen robes at his back once again.

As I fought to push my body harder, faster, I stumbled, my legs almost giving way.

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