Page 4 of Brutal Savage

I know he doesn’t. I know he’s hurting. I’m hurting for him.

But this new substitute teacher, she’s good for him. I can see that already.

She doesn’t know what I look like. A pair of sunglasses fixes that. I don’t want her to. It’d be harder to keep tabs on her that way. However, as Brody’s adoptive father, it’s my job to vet everyone he comes into contact with.

Including the alluring Ms. Hill.

My brother Fionn did some digging on her too. Her social media accounts were nonexistent. No trail to go on. She’s a ghost by all accounts, and that has my radar up even more.

What the hell could she be hiding?

Fionn did discover she was once engaged, though. I don’t know who the hell the guy is or why the engagement ended. Said he heard from one of the old ladies in town who knows her grandma. But that’s all she’d tell them. The rest, she kept quiet, and it makes me wonder why.

Is she hiding from him? Is he after her?

Peering at her, I don’t sense danger. I don’t think she’d hurt Brody.

Yet in our lives, no one is to be trusted.

Not even her.

When it’s Brody’s turn for dismissal, she smiles at him one last time as she points to me, her full pink lips moving as she talks to him, probably asking if I’m the one who’s picking him up.

He nods once, looks up at her for a moment, then stoically walks over. Like he’s making his way to the devil from just being with an angel.

He wouldn’t be wrong.

My damn chest squeezes. He doesn’t deserve this. No kid deserves to lose his dad and then come home to his mom’s fucking brain splattered on the wall.

She didn’t even have the decency to swallow some pills. She had to blow her damn brains out in her bedroom while he was at school.

When the teacher called telling me Willow hadn’t shown up to pick him up, I rushed to get him. Once we got to his house, he went calling for her, trying to find her.

Then he did.

My eyelids slam closed. I hate myself for not finding her first. Hate that I’m thinking ill of Willow. She was a good woman. Aiden loved her with everything he had, and look where that got them.

Marriage is nothing but a useless commitment made by fools who don’t realize the mistake they’re making until it’s too late.

My father, unfortunately, doesn’t agree with that. As the head of the family, he gets to make up the rules, like forcing me to find a wife within two months so I can take over as the new head of the Quinn family.

He wants heirs. Lots of them.

It’s not enough that my eldest sister, Iseult, is already married to Gio Marino, or that my younger one, Eriu, recently got married too.

As the oldest, my father’s seat is mine, and he won’t let me officially have it until I have a wife of my own.

That’s going to be a problem since I have no plans to get married.

If I’m lucky, he’ll forget about this bullshit and let me run things like I want to run them.

He’s got two of my brothers and my two sisters who’ll give him all the heirs in the world, so why the hell is he bothering me about it?

Brody heads in my direction, brushing right past me as though I don’t exist. I follow him, glancing at her from over my shoulder.

She pauses, catching my eye for a mere moment, then smiles at the next child.

I’m going to find out everything about you, Ms. Hill. We’re going to become really good friends.

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