Page 207 of The Sinner's Bargain

“Blue?”

She met me halfway up the steps. Her arms swung around my shoulders.

Over her shoulder, keeping a discreet distance, Cyrus met my gaze. His solemn expression mirrored the weighted one in my chest. He didn’t say a word when moving silently past us and heading downstairs.

“You should be sleeping,” I told her.

Her head tipped back. The light caught the tears dampening her cheeks.

“I saw you and Oliver by the lake.” She touched my cheek gently. “I saw you go into the gardens and...” Her bottom lip quivered. “I am so sorry, Thoran.”

I didn’t want to talk about it.

I didn’t want her to know about it.

She shouldn’t have to live with that in her head.

I scooped her up into my arms and carried her back to our bed. I washed her feet and wiped her tears. I kissed her deeply as I liberated her of my shirt. Then I made us both forget everything, except the other.

It was days later before I could sneak away to visit Brixton in his newly built prison I created exclusively for him. It was a cage, a neat little box of pain and misery to make him remember a similar cage he’d put Naya in her entire life.

I watched him from the other side of the bars, contemplating the worth of his life. I could kill him. Maybe bury him alive in concrete. I could keep him alive until summer. Cover him in honey and nail him to the ground under the hot sun. The options were limitless.

“Why are you doing this?” he kept asking. “I have done nothing wrong. I paid for her. She rightfully belongs to me.”

It was always the same thing.

“Did you touch her?” I asked, the question popping into my head unexpectedly.

I told myself I would make it simple. If he bought her and never touched her, I would make his death short and simple. But if he touched her. Hurt her...

The jerking freeze of his body.

The quick avoidance of his eyes.

He didn’t say a word and yet it was spilling out of him.

“How old was she?” I pressed.

“Her parents said it was okay!” he exclaimed. “Her mother said I could. She said I should wait until the rest of the house was sleeping. She said it was fine.”

That was different information.

I probably should have asked Malcolm before he left. I could have asked Naya, but I didn’t want her thinking about those days if my suspicions were true. The only person I could ask was behind bars I erected. His answers weren’t going to get him freed. The only thing with that power was a bullet and he wouldn’t be seeing one of those for a long fucking time.

I pulled a chair over and sat. “Tell me about her parents.”

I was too late finding Joseph Blackwell. His body was dragged from the river, beaten, bloody, and in mangled pieces. It was ruled an accident, but the people who knew, knew. The missing eyeball was Ripken’s signature trophy. My old friend was always painfully predictable.

Christabel was another matter.

She was harder to find. She had learned about the hit on her husband and fled on the first bus out of town. It took me a week to track her down in a flop house, renting a corner room clustered with moldy furniture and rat droppings. I told Naya I had to check on something and would only be gone for a few hours.

She didn’t ask any questions.

She didn’t ask if I was going to hunt down her mother like a dog.

She didn’t ask if I was going to kill the bitch who hurt her.

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