Page 97 of Caged Bird

But he trusted me.

It had been me who’d held him on the stairs that night, his mom screaming while his father hurt her. It had been me who’d rocked him to sleep, his head on my chest.

It was me who loved that kid with all my fucking heart, even though he’d been in my life for such a short period of time.

It didn’t matter. I’d loved him from the moment I’d set eyes on him. Because he was a part of the woman I’d never been able to forget.

And never would.

Even though I knew, when all this was done, she was going to walk away from me.

I shouldered my way past Vincent and dropped to my knees in the doorway. “Otis.”

His brown-eyed gaze slid to me, and all the anger and fear disappeared in an instant. He ran to me.

Eddie reached out to block him, and Fawn’s brother issued a single, chilling threat in a voice I hadn’t heard him use yet. “I wouldn’t.”

It was enough to give Eddie a second of pause, and Otis was small and fast enough to dodge around him. He threw himself into my arms, his little body trembling with fear and sobs bursting from his chest.

“I got you,” I whispered in his ear, plucking the gun from his fingers easily and pointing it at my brother, even though I wasn’t done with his kid. I pulled back, the gun never moving, but I needed Otis to know one thing before anything else happened.“You’re safe.” I kissed the top of his head, one eye on his father. “Your mom is downstairs. Go.”

He went without questioning me. His trust in me so absolute it broke my fucking heart. He was just a kid, desperate for a man in his life to be just that.

A man. A role model. A father.

I stood, raising the gun in my brother’s face.

Ophelia and Vincent at my back, all three of us facing the demon who’d taken Fawn from us for way too long.

Eddie laughed bitterly. “Didn’t think you had it in you, little brother. Didn’t think you had the brains.”

I shrugged. “I don’t. This was all Fawn.”

He snorted on a laugh. “The sniveling bitch who’s too afraid to even face me?”

Ophelia breathed out a long, slow breath and cracked her neck. “You’re making it so fucking hard not to kill you, Eddie. I swear, it’s taking every ounce of my self-control.”

He sneered at her. “Not as tough as the rumors about you make out then, huh? You a scared duckling like your sister?”

Surrounded, it was clear my brother had a death wish. Or he was just that arrogant. Or maybe he actually thought that little of anyone who wasn’t him.

The latter seemed most likely.

“And you?” Eddie sneered in Vincent’s direction. “Fucking kill me if you’re going to.”

Vincent turned his blade over faster in his fingers. “I want to. Every part of me is burning to thrust my knife so deep inside you I get to watch your blood spill slowly all over this floor.”

“Then why don’t you, you pussy? We both fucking know you would have by now if you were going to. But you’re all as weak as she is. Fucking pathetic. The lot of you.”

Fawn’s voice spoke up from the back of the crowd. “They aren’t because I told them not to.”

Eddie’s eyes flared, focusing past us on the woman he’d spent the best part of a decade obsessed with. “I knew you’d come crawling back. You learned your lesson yet?” He sat on the bed like he didn’t have a care in the world.

But I knew his tells. Saw the slight shake in his fingers and that he was covering it by clutching them into his undone jeans.

Because Fawn wasn’t alone anymore. Not only had Guerra walked in behind her, but she had all of us.

And Eddie knew it.

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