Page 148 of The Piece You Stole

I halt, my eyes on the staircase, a smile twitching my lips. “It wasn’t a bribe.”

His snort is full of amusement. “A woman brings me cocoa with marshmallows and grated chocolate for no reason? It’s a bribe. Bring it here.”

Sighing, I cross over to him, my gaze drifting over his unmade bed, the rumpled black sheets and a pillow hanging off the edge. “You’re the only one who doesn’t make the bed.”

Aden makes his perfectly. Me… I try my best, but I can never do it as well as Aden does. It doesn’t matter how many times he tells me that my hands are still healing, and he’ll do it, but he does so much for me already that making a bed is the least I can do.

He’s mostly right. My palms do still ache a little, especially when I’m holding something hot. It’s why I waited until Aden was in the bathroom this afternoon, before I snuck into the kitchen and made the cocoa bribe that I’d hoped would get me some answers.

Not about Monica. Those can come later—ifwe survive Rylan.

Lifting his eyes from the screen long enough to snag the mug which he places on the table beside him, Kade slides his arm around my waist and draws me into his lap crossways before he returns to his typing.

It’s warm and comfortable in his lap, so I’m happy to stay put. I spare a glance at his laptop. He’s not monitoring the cameras the way he always does, but is studying a long string of red, white, and green numbers running across a black background.

“How do you know Dariel makes his bed?” he asks, pulling my attention from his screen.

For absolutely no reason I can think of, my cheeks burn. “I’ve walked past his room. He doesn’t close the door.”

I didn’t have to look inside, but I was curious. Instead, the lack of anything in his room made me more curious because there was nothing in it other than a bed and a bedside table. Just a nail hanging on the wall. That’s it. I’d imagined a monk would live with more belongings around him than Dariel has in his room.

Kade snorts his amusement. “And what were you doing loitering outside his room, angel?”

“I wasn’t loitering.”

While I might not like the guy, there’s nothing wrong with being curious.

Kade raises his eyebrow.

I look away, pretending to scan his room, when in reality, I’m watching him out of the corner of my eye as he lifts the cocoa to his lips and takes a sip. He hums in pleasure before taking a longer draw from the mug.

I’ve never cared about serving up anything to anyone. Not Rylan and his pack, not my dad, and not rude customers at the Stationers Diner. But after seeing Kade’s reaction, I want to bring him something else just so I can hear him make that same sound.

“You know how to make cocoa, angel.”

Mom used to make it for me. Mine will never taste as good as the way she made it, but I think it comes close.

I shrug as if his praise means nothing to me when it means everything. “It’s just cocoa.” Finished with my pretend perusal of his room, I return my gaze to his. “And it wasn’t a bribe.”

He stares.

“It wasn’tonlya bribe.” I nod at his laptop. “What are you doing?”

He sits back in his seat, his one hand stroking my hip with a firmness that makes me breathless. A faint dusting of chocolate on his lip tempts me to lick it away, but it isn’t the chocolate I want a taste of, but him. “Earning my keep.”

Back in the Cerberus, Aden said Kade dealt with the financial side of the club. I’d assumed it meant dealing with the banking, not playing the stock market as the black screen with reams of numbers suggests. Just looking at it is enough to make me go cross-eyed.

“Rylan played the stock market,” I tell him. “It’s how he made his money.”

He takes another sip of cocoa before lowering the mug to the desk as he snorts. “Is that what the crook told you?”

I freeze. “What?”

Kade darts a glance in my face, his expression shutters, and I get the sense he just told me something he wasn’t supposed to. “Nothing, angel. Just thinking out loud.”

My eyes narrow. “You said he was a crook. That implies you know he was doing something he shouldn’t have been. Something illegal.”

“No, it implies that I think he’s a crook.”

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