Page 108 of Riot

The silence stretches, suffocating, choking, like a noose around my throat. Short, sharp, shallow gasps escape my tight chest as terror claws at me.

“I just wanted you to acknowledge me, but we don’t always get what we want, do we? I sent you such nice gifts, and you weren’t grateful for any of them. I found my flowers in the trash, and the beautiful bear I spent hours picking out for Seren was stuffed under your bed like it meant nothing.”

He spits the words through gritted teeth, sinister and veiled in threat.

My heart races as the implications of who he is sinks in.

The why remains elusive.

“I’m sorry.”

“If you had just shown gratitude, I wouldn’t have had to go to such desperate measures to get your attention.”

I slide my gaze to the door he’s blocking. The irony is that help is on the other side of it, but I have no way to alert Riot while my daughter is in his arms.

“You have my attention now.” I don’t take my attention off Seren. “What do you want?”

“The truth.” He says this as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

What truth?

I close my eyes for a brief second, anchoring myself. “Give me Seren, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“It’s too late for that.” He ducks his head and inhales along my daughter’s crown. “She smells so good, just like her mother. I took a little souvenir while I was… poking around. You wear the naughtiest lacy items.”

That feeling of being covered in filth consumes me. I only have lace underwear. Did he… take those?

“I can see why he was so…obsessedwith you. You are beautiful. You must have a magic cunt to wrap all these men around your finger so tightly. Maybe I should find out.”

The room shrinks, my vision tunnelling to a pinprick.Is he going to rape me while Riot is down the hallway?I won’t survive it this time.

“Give me my daughter,” I repeat, my voice sharp this time.

“I don’t think so. You see, you took the last of my family from me, so I’m gonna take the only part of him that’s left.” He rubs his finger under her chin. “Hischild.”

There’s a lot unpack there, but I focus on the only part that matters. “You’re not taking her. I’ll kill you before I let you walk out of here with her.” I step forwards, ready to tear his throat out with my bare hands, but I stop dead.

He drags the flat of the blade over Seren’s onesie, and my stomach churns until acid burns my throat. Pure, undulatingterror fills my veins, and the room spins, my knees almost buckling.

“It would be a shame if I was to get blood on this precious little girl’s clothes.”

“Don’t you fucking hurt her.”

“I don’t intend to touch this precious baby, Ivy, not unless you force my hand.” He kisses her head, and my lips curl into a snarl. “But there has to be a price for what was done. An eye for an eye.” He smiles at my daughter, the unsuspecting monster peeking out from behind the mask. “You see, I spent years looking for my brother, only to find he’d disappeared as if he never existed.”

His words sink into my frazzled brain.Brother.He was looking for Link.

I can see it now, the familiarity—the same face but in different font, the same colouring, the same darkness behind those cold eyes.

The man in the hospital… it was him. I wasn’t losing my mind.It was him.

“Link didn’t have a brother.”

He flinches as if my words slip through the cracks in his armour, then he lunges towards me, holding the back of my daughter’s head with the hand clutching the knife.

“He has a brother!” His grip tightens on Seren as he unravels in front of my eyes. “You should know that. He would’ve talked about me.”

My gut twists like a knot.

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