Page 70 of Sinful Reality

For a year and a half, she was missing.

Eighteen months of worry, then acceptance. Of wondering, and then praying. Endless days and months where death must be acknowledged, but hoping with every cell in your body that it wasn’t painful or scary.

Yeah. There are definitely worse things in life than losing your child.

Gloria Donohue knows how that feels. The first time, more than twenty years ago, and the second, this week. She knows the pain a woman can feel when your child is hurt. Just as she knows how to inflict the pain she felt on another.

Eighteen little girls over twenty-four years, eighteen mothers who spent a year of agony, wondering, worrying, living their own nightmare while their children existed in hell.

To lose a child is pain. Unimaginable and unbearable for most. But to not know what happened is a special kind of torture I wouldn’t wish upon my enemy.

“You think she’ll be okay now?” Fletch leans against the counter in the George Stanley coffee room, his shoulder touching mine, and his eyes plastered to the side of Minka’s face. Though she’s on the other side of a wall of glass, pacing with a phone pressed to her ear, and the mayor on the other end of the line.

Because he worries for her the way any parent worries for his child.

“The case is finally closed,” he continues. “Serena and the baby have been buried. She relaxed a little when she thought the killer was gone, and then turned into a complete zombie when he came back.”

“Closure is good for her,” Aubree inserts, her posture the same as ours, though she’s on my other side. We’re just three people standing in a line, each with a mug of coffee, each of us watching a woman we love because we want to know she’s okay.

Different kinds of love. Different levels of attachment.

But the woman who abhors social gatherings and too muchpeoplingwould be horrified to know she may be the glue that keeps us all sane.

“The first few cases in New York created a kind of trauma. For basically everyone,” Aubree adds. “The lack of answers meant no closure. The fear ofwho will be nextcompounded the damage. Then the breakdown of her parents’ marriage, and later, her father’s suicide.” She sets her cup down and her hands on the countertop, boosting herself up to sit. “It was a perfect storm for the little girl left alone too often. A child on the spectrum whose ability to regulate came only in the quiet. She doesn’t know what to do with allthis,” smirking, she tilts her head toward her pacing boss. “She has no clue how to handle the crowd she lives amongst and the unrelenting pressure of a man she’s not actually related to, checking in to ensure she’s okay.”

“This world isn’t quiet.” I tamp down on the dread that swirls sneakily, like an odorless, noxious gas creeping toward my heart. “Her desire for peace isn’t just a personality thing, Aubs. It’s who she is on a cellularlevel. It’s a medical necessity. Isn’t it possible she’ll rebel someday and go back to the quiet she craves?”

“Sure.” She grins when I glance her way. “But you’re the peace she craves. You’re the quiet she needs. Be you, and she’ll be okay. Leave her,” she exhales, shaking her head, “and watch the world burn.”

“I’m not leaving her.” I bring my gaze around again and scratch my jaw while, twenty feet away, Minka throws her hand in the air and dramatically argues with a man whose entire career was spent in a courtroom. He won’t be bested. “She’s my peace, too.”

“Heard from that cop from New York today?”

And there’s that dread, coiling in my stomach and squeezing just tight enough to make it hurt. “Not today. She swears it’s all platonic, and we already had that big fight that damaged us. So when he calls her every fucking day, there’s nothing I can say about it. Nothing I can do. Because the fear of showing my ass and pushing her into his arms is way fucking worse than the ache of listening to his smarmy voice when he wants to chat like they’re best friends.”

Aubree’s brows furrow in my peripherals, her lips flattening into a long, straight line. “He’s not her best friend. I’m her best friend.”

“He’s called every day since the op. It’s always about work. Always professional. But still?—”

“But still,” Fletch sighs. “Hurts, huh? She’s done nothing wrong, but theideathat it could go bad is like being stabbed with a fucking ice pick, over and over and over again.”

“You’re not helping my anxiety, you know that?” Scowling, I sip my coffee and hiss as hot liquid rolls across my tongue.Still feels better than thinking about my wife and another man. “She’s a good girl,” I decide, my voice firm. My trust, complete. “She doesn’t lie or cheat. If she wanted out, she’d say so.”

The elevator dings, so all three of us lazily look left and watch as the doors open.

I expect an autopsy tech to step out, or a white coat from the lab, or fuck, a dead body, brought back to life and having fun on a pair of roller skates. Nothing could surprise me as violently as the smiling Detective Gilbert who strides out, his eyes instantly zeroing in on Minka. He’s tall and broad, his jeans tight around the thighs and his shirt, two sizes toosmall. Though I suppose that’s the look he intends, considering the way his chest leads the way.

He wears a black leather jacket with a red racing stripe along the arm, his NYPD shield hung from a chain and resting on his chest.

“The fuck?” I straighten my spine when he walks to her office door and steps in. No invitation. No pause to make sure he can. He strides through like he fucking owns the place. So I shove away from the counter, ready to remind him what happens when a Malone’s boundaries are crossed.

And fuck him. He knows where the line is.

But Aubree places her hand on my arm, her grip like steel and drawing me to a stop. When I turn to meet her eyes, panic lancing through my blood, she merely shakes her head.

“You need to leave this one alone.”

“She’s my wife! I have a right to be in there.”

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