Page 122 of Brutal Ice

“Sweetheart, you’re worried?”

“Yes.”

“We took out the killer. We’re still standing.” He motioned toward the closed interrogation room door. “What could be worse than that?”

She reached for his hand. Her fingers squeezed his. “You might not like your past.”

Oh, he pretty much hated it, no doubt.

“That man in there isn’t your family. I don’t care if he has your face. Beau is your family.”

Beau was waiting for him in Curran’s office.

“I’m your family,” Violet told him fiercely. “If there is pain waiting for you in there, then I say just forget it. Look forward, not back.”

His lips brushed over hers. “I like the way you protect me.”

“And I like the way you’re ready to kill for me,” she murmured in return. “I like the way you fight for me, and know that I will always fight for you, too.”

He knew it. Something else he knew with all of his being? “I fucking love you.”

She kissed him again. Soft. Promising.

And part of him did want to just grab Violet. To turn away. To run with her and just keep going toward the beautiful new life that waited. But some chapters needed to be closed before you could look forward. This one chapter had haunted Royal his entire life. Time to shut the door on it.

“Doesn’t matter what you hear in there.” Violet’s lilac scent teased him and reassured him. “You’re strong. You’re sexy. You’re brilliant. You’re mine.”

He was also dangerous and manipulative and predatory, but he liked that she focused on the positives.

“I’ll be with you. Every second.” Her gaze searched his. “I’m not going to leave.”

She kept saying those words. Did she realize that, to him, they were just as special as when she told him, I love you?

It was time to face the past. Time to put another monster to rest. He opened the interrogation room door. Two men waited inside at the narrow table.

Curran.

And the stranger with Royal’s face.

The stranger glanced down at the watch—a Rolex—on his wrist. “About time. I thought you were going to let me die of boredom in here.”

Well, well. Someone thought he was funny. “Had the little matter of a dead body to handle.”

The stranger grunted. He rose from the table and turned to fully face Royal. Royal hadn’t entered the room yet. He stood on the threshold with Violet just behind him.

He weighed the stranger.

The stranger weighed him.

Royal had about an inch on the guy in height. Similar builds. Similar features. Eyes the same swirling hazel.

The scar was different, of course.

And while Royal was wearing his battered jeans and a black t-shirt—items that Beau had brought him because Royal’s other clothes had been stained with blood and perhaps some brain matter—the man before Royal wore an expensive suit.

Like money could hide a monster.

“Can Violet and I have a chat with him?” Royal asked as his attention shifted to Curran. “One that the rest of the police station doesn’t hear?”

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