Page 87 of Mountain Daddy

I walk in through the bakery.

"Who is it?" her voice is terrified, petrified.

"It's me."

Silence. Then she comes up round the back.

Lilly walks up to me in the doorway, her eyes wide. Her gaze drifts from my face to my clothes to the blood on my hands.

Her face goes pale. "Oh God. What did you do?"

I’m about to explain. To tell her about the threat I saw on the walls. Who those men were and why they wanted to hurt her.

Instead, her hand cracks across my cheek.

20

LILLY

The blood won’t come out.

No matter how hard I scrub, it clings to the grout between the tiles. I don’t know whose blood it is. Just that whoever vandalized my place left it here. A threat. A message. More?

The red's faded to a dark rust, but I can still see it. Smell it. Feel it in my throat.

Chleo could’ve been here. I could have been here.

What could have happened? They could have hurt us. Killed us. That thought plays on a loop. Haunts me like a nightmare.

Chleo’s out back in the pantry. Nikolai is with him, keeping him distracted, helping him draw.

Thank God. At least my son didn't see this. Didn't see Nikolai stroll in here looking like he just walked off a slaughterhouse floor. Didn't see me slap his face so hard my fingers still hurt.

I can’t believe I hit him. Nikolai.

I’ve never hit anyone before—not even in high school when Becky Garrison called me a slut behind the bleachersaftershe hooked up with my boyfriend.

But there was actual blood on his hands and all I could think about was that my son was out back doing his homework.

The memory burns, but what choice did I have? He showed up like something out of a nightmare. Like someone who had just murdered people.

Thank god my son doesn’t know his father. Who he is. What he is.

As for Nikolai? He simply walked in past me, ignored the slap, insisted he was going to help.

I should hate him.

Should have sent him on his way.

But I was a deer in headlights.

And now? He's being so gentle with Chleo. Helping him color between the lines. That kind of tenderness shouldn’t exist in a man like him. It shouldn't reach me the way it does.

I scrub harder. Need to stay busy. Need to not think.

Blood.

There's actual blood in my bakery.

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