Page 9 of Burning Bridges

I straighten my shoulders and open the door to find him leaning against the wall in perfectly tailored suit pants and a black shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. It's his usual get-up these days. My breath catches in my throat. He's annoyingly gorgeous in a way that makes my lady parts throb with need. I hate the way he still steals my breath just at the sight of him. After all these years and everything we've been through, you would think his charm would be irrelevant to me. But my body doesn't know how to keep up with my brain, and it foolishly swoons over him.

His eyes meet mine, and for a split second, I see a flash of warmth. A small sign that the boy is still in there somewhere. Then it's gone, and the dark coolness is back. "You look more like yourself today," he mutters dryly.

Every time he opens his mouth, I want to punch him. He's a fucking asshole just like every other male in my life. I can't believe I ever thought I was in love with him. It just proves how young and dumb I was at fifteen, ready to throw my life away because a cute boy paid me some attention. I was so close to going with him that day. Things would have been very different for both of us.

"Funny, I was just thinking you look like the same asshole I have grown to expect." I let the corners of my lips turn up in a catty smile.

“Good to know I’m predictable.”

“Let’s get this over with. I have better things to do with my time than hang out with you,” I snip as I walk into the house to collect the money for him from the side table. As I pick it up, a drop of water hits me right on the forehead. I look up the stairs and realize I can still hear the bath running. A scattering of goosebumps rolls over my flesh. It shouldn't take her that long to run a bath. My eyes flick back to Leo.

He looks concerned. "What's wrong?" he asks. How he reads me so well, I have no idea, and right now, I don't even care.

"I don't know," I mutter, taking off up the stairs in a panic. "Mom!" I shout at the top of my lungs, taking the stairs two at a time. I don't know what's wrong, but something is. I can tell by the sudden pain in the pit of my stomach. My pace increases to a run as I move down the hallway toward her bedroom. I throw open the door, and the running-water sound is louder. I can feel Leo right behind me.

Water soaks through my shoes, reaching my toes as I step onto the carpet of her room. "It's soaked right through," I cry. Panic races through my body. I run through to the bathroom, shoving open the door, water swooshing past me in a rush to escape the confines of the ensuite. My heart nearly stops when I see her. Her limp body is floating in the overflowing bathtub, the spout still streaming at full speed. "Mom!" I scream, feeling like I'm watching a scene from a movie. I'm frozen to the spot. My body is racked with fear, already knowing it's too late.

Leo pushes past me, hauling her body out of the water. "Get the tap," he yells to me.

I follow his instructions, and with shaky hands, I turn off the faucet. Once the water stops, the silence is immediately deafening. I glance back toward them. He cradles her body, checking her vitals, then starts CPR. "Leo," I cry, not able to say anything else. My chest feels like it's going to explode, and I can't suck in enough breath. What has she done?

I don’t know how long he works on her. Everything starts to blur. But the look on his face as he glances up at me says it all. "I'm sorry, Piper," he utters.

I stare back at him, holding her. His hands are visibly shaking. She's in her favorite silk gown, and she looks so frail. Why would she be in the bath in her gown? I search the room, looking for answers. I notice an empty bottle of wine knocked over by the side of the bath and an empty pill bottle.

"Piper, you should call an ambulance," he says, but his words sound so far away.

I can't stop staring at her. I know things are bad, but why would she do this? Leave me all alone. When I was younger, I hated my family. Wished every day I could escape the hold they had on me and start a new life somewhere else. And now they're all gone, despite me staying and trying with everything I have to keep us together. Even after everything I sacrificed to be here, they are all gone now. I heave in breaths, feeling like I'm about to pass out.

"Piper," Leo calls my name loudly. I feel his hand on my arm. My mother is now on the tile floor, and he has a phone in his hand. I have no idea how long I was staring into space. He squeezes my arm. "The ambulance is on their way. Do you want me to stay?" he says softly.

I stare back at him in a daze. He rubs my arm. "Piper," he tries to get my attention. I lock eyes with him, and for the first time in years, I really see it—that little lost boy I left on the side of the road when I was fifteen, he's still in there, looking so scared and alone. Exactly how I feel.

"Can you...?" I stutter out, knowing I can't be alone right now. I don't know what I might do.

"Of course." He pulls me into his body, and I let him. He's my worst enemy. I hate him with everything I have for what he's doing to me, but part of me has always hung on to the moment in time we had together. And when he's here with me like this, at the lowest point of my life, I can close my eyes and let his warm embrace take me back there, to a time where I didn't know what real pain was. Before my life fell apart and my family lost everything. To a time where I thought he could be my savior.

Chapter 6

LEO

AsIwatchRosemaryAcevedo's white coffin being lowered into the ground, I feel consumed by guilt. Another innocent person gone. Every time I close my eyes, I see her body floating in that bath and the devastation on Piper's face. Her strong facade was gone, and she was a broken little girl. She was so distraught she couldn't move, and she took comfort in me when I offered it to her.

Today she's her old self, or at least she's putting on a good act. She sits in the front row next to her daughter Hannah, Axel, Jasmine, and Natalia Stone, the family's matriarch. They present a united front for Piper, but the secrets and lies behind this family's closed doors would surprise most. Piper's face is back to its normal perfectly poised look of disdain for life, but she doesn't cry like the rest of them, who sob into tissues. She rubs her daughter's back and pulls her in close, but I can tell as she looks out over the coffin, she's numb.

When I started working for William Harper and vowed my revenge against the Acevedo family, my fight was with their father Anton. He was the one who killed my father, leaving me with an alcoholic mother who couldn't function and two little brothers to take care of. He was the one who stole my dreams of getting out of this town and making something of myself away from the darkness that surrounds this place.

And he was the one who kept Piper locked away from me.

For years, I despised him and blamed him for all the wrongdoings in my life, until one day when I was working for William, gathering information on the Acevedo family, I overheard something that I knew would bring him undone. It was too perfect not to use against him; his beloved wife and his best friend and business partner had been having an affair for years. Not only that, but his only son Tony was really a Stone, not an Acevedo at all. I took what I knew back to William, and we formed a plan to take out two of the most powerful men in Palm Springs.

And our plan worked. Anton shot Mr. Stone in an alleyway, and that night I watched as he disowned his only son and heir to his fortune, Tony. What happened next shocked even me. Tony turned on the man he had known to be his father his entire life and killed him right there in his study of their mansion. Axel helped him clean up the mess, and to this day, I'm pretty sure the three of us are the only ones who know the truth of what happened that night. It was information that came in handy when I needed my way in with Tony.

The only way I could really destroy everything Anton had built would be to do it from the inside. I made sure Tony knew how valuable my brothers and I would be to him, and it didn't take long before I had a place in the family business. Tony wasn't a smart man; he was hot-headed and impulsive, and it got him into trouble constantly. He needed me around to keep him under control, but even I knew he didn't fully trust me. And he was right not to. I had my own agenda around here, like we all do. There are only three people I trust with my life: Jett, Kobe, and my buddy Brandon. He might have moved to New York with his girlfriend Cassandra Harper, but he will always be one of us. Since the night of the warehouse fire that killed my father, we've all been in this together.

Today has the same feeling as the day my father died. Things need to change. I know I need to walk away from this family now. I have what I wanted: the Acevedo name is destroyed, I'm on top, and they all answer to me, even Piper. But she has suffered enough for the family she was born into. We also have a bigger fight on our hands, with more whispers of Euphoria on the streets.

The proceedings finish up, and people move about. I know I should get out of here. I have better things to do with my time, but I can't make myself look away from her. She's still sitting in her seat, staring at the gravesite. Her hair is out today, flowing down her back, and she wears a fitted black dress that runs to her knees, with a metal zipper running down her spine. Her makeup is heavy and still completely intact, she hasn’t shed a tear, just like at her father's funeral. And that fascinates me more than it should. She's broken, that much is obvious to me, but to the outside world, she's a pillar of strength—the only remaining Acevedo.

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