Page 7 of Siccitas

Chapter Four

The next morning isthe easiest morning that I’ve woken up to in years.

I have a purpose again, and it starts with Dalton securing the safety of Skylar and her brother.

He lifted the end of every nightmare we ever had off his shoulders. removing a weight that crushed our very souls.

Opening my eyes, I shove my hair off my face, then sigh.Today is a good day to go hunting,I think as I swipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

I’m lucky to have stayed off Luke’s radar for as long as I have. Granted, I’ve seen him from behind, walking through town from time to time, but I never had the courage to wait for him to turn around and look at me.

It would give up the ghost before I have the chance to make one out of him, and the children—Darby’s children—would be the ones to suffer.

Edging my body to the side of the bed, I let one foot find the floor, then push myself up by my elbows before I allow the other to follow suit.

He’s going to be so shocked when he sees me,I think with a grim happiness settling over me.Angry too. Damn angry.

I reach for the cane that’s still resting where I left it, and then stand up. I don’t have much, save for the clothes on my back, the food I’ve managed to steal, and the abandoned home I’ve claimed squatters’ rights on...yet he has so goddamn much.

Children.

A home.

Money.

He thought that Darby’s youngest was his biggest failure, simply because she showed so prominently the signs of what can happen when the Greene line becomestoopure, but if he only knew that I had been living like a fucking gutter-rat waiting for the day to invade its master’s home, he would more than likely bury me alive for being such an embarrassment.

“Soon enough,” I murmur out loud as I start to make my way toward the bathroom. “If there’s any justice, it’ll be the both of us.”

A nice, hot shower and a scrub of my teeth, then I’ll be able to tackle whatever today brings me.

___

Raising the cup of coffee to my lips, I inhale the fragrant, fresh smell. I found a few dollars in the room that Dalton had boarded up in his home.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I spent most of the morning prying the wooden beams off until I could step in.

It smelled like death and sex.

Something that’s a bit of a Greene Family fragrance, so it didn’t bother me in the least.

If anything, I quickly realized that it had never beenhisroom, but probably his mother’s.

She was strange.

I’d watched her for a few years, leaving my vigil over her home when the boys became old enough to go to school.

Setting the cup down on the small saucer, I reach for the fork and quickly begin to carve off a small piece of the stack of pancakes sitting in front of me.

I did wonder sometimes what became of them—Hailey and her boys—but I don’t want to pry either.

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