Page 144 of The Piece You Stole

At the top of the staircase, I stop. A clean, fresh lemon scent makes me turn. Dariel. He’s standing just outside his bedroom door, shirt unbuttoned and untucked from his pants as if he were getting ready to shower or sleep. He’s been up all night, but there’s no trace of exhaustion tightening his face.

Dariel raises a dark brow. “Problem?”

I shake my head. “No problem. I got this.”

But Dariel doesn’t move. “Kade…?”

A door creaks open. The back door. Where the fuck is Saige going?

I turn away from Dariel. “Go to bed. I’ll be back.”

I continue down, but his eyes follow me until I’m closer to the bottom than the top.

A whisper drifts toward me.

“Am I broken? Is that why?”

I halt.

Yeah, I don’t got this.

Saige will want reassurances. Comforting. I can promise to kill the thing that hurts her, but that’s it. That’sallI can do.Thisis Aden’s skill set. Even Dariel would do a better job at answering a question that feels like someone just gutted me.

What the fuck did you do to her, Kade? You and your fucking need to—

“You won’t ruin this,” she whispers, her tone vicious. Angry. “I won’t let you.”

I stare at the back door.

She’s alone out there. Talking to herself. But then who…?

The answer is so fucking obvious I can’t believe I didn’t see it until now. Rylan. There’s a reason she doesn’t talk about what he did to her—or about the scars—some fresh, some years old. There’s a reason she will crawl into bed with either me or Aden. A reason she will whimper in the middle of the night, grab me tight, and burrow into me.

Do we silence the pain?

I hope we fucking kill it. At least until we kill the source of it.

She doesn’t talk about what he did to her, but the shadows—the pain is right fucking front and center.

Now she’s out there in the garden. Alone. Sure, we’ve got cameras set up with motion sensors set up on the side gate and back gate, but she shouldn’t be out there alone. And especially not now.

But what the fuck do I say to her? How do Ihelpher?

Aden would know.

I’m turning to go wake him when her steps move away from the door. She’s heading deeper into the garden, and that’s not a good idea.

“You’ll think of something,” I mutter under my breath. “But she needs you now.”

I go to her with no idea what the fuck I’m going to say to ease the shadows lurking in her mind, shadows that chased her away from me and Aden when I know we gave her pleasure.

We made her feel good.

She wouldn’t have cuddled us so hard after.

And then I hear it.

A male voice that shouldn’t be anywhere near here. Garrett. Mona’s older brother, and the man who likes to turn up to accuse us of killing his little sister.

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