Page 41 of The Piece You Stole

“His car door was wide open, his car keys on the ground. Was he taking you somewhere?”

No, he was giving me a safe place to go.

The interview room wasn’t cold before, but minute by minute, goosebumps pop out all over my chilled skin. Lowering my head, I focus my attention on the scar I cut into my left wrist, as I try to pinpoint the exact moment I stopped wanting to die.

Was Nathan right that I never wanted to do it at all? Or did he just want to prove he knows me better than I know myself? Control is his kink. Is this his new way to control me?

“If you don’t want to talk about Simon Trevor, maybe you could explain how a Porsche, which had been serviced weeks before, suddenly veered off a bridge and into the river?”

I close my hand into a fist.

Felix.

I should’ve known they’d be looking to question me about him, too.

“Felix Bristowe, a known business partner of Rylan Treveiler, and an incredibly wealthy individual. What were you doing in Felix’s car, Miss Leo?”

As if they don’t know already.

“Witnesses reported seeing you on that bridge before. They claim you were in his lap. Facing him. Did you drop something?” Detective Bradley pauses, and in his silence, I can feel his amusement. “Perhaps he was looking to give you something?”

I bet he thinks he’s fucking hilarious.

“Nothing? No explanation about why we fished a dead man out of a river?” Detective Ferdinand takes over, dropping his attempts to cajole me and going right back to demanding.

Felix was a predator who liked nothing more than to whip me because that’s what got him off. He deserved to die, and if I could have made him suffer first, I would have.

“Then let's move on to another body we found.”

Tension dances up my spine. Cold and jittery, like that feeling you sometimes get when someone stands too close behind you at the station right when a train is approaching. They haven’t done anything to you. But they could.

What dead body?

Detective Bradley tuts in disapproval. “They just keep piling up around you, Miss Leo, don’t they?”

I twist my wrist around to study the faint blue veins running up the back of my hand.

“We can’t do anything if you don’t let us help you.”

Help?I mentally scoff.Was that the reason you were threatening to give me another more thorough examination when I ruined your photograph? Because you wanted tohelpme?

The burned, black coffee scent faded hours before, but when it teases my nose again, I know Detective Bradley just moved his plastic coffee cup aside.

There was no offer of coffee for me when he shoved himself to his feet at two a.m. to hunt out liquid refreshment to keep this interview going. Not that I’d have taken him up on it. At nearly three, I’d have needed to use the bathroom by now, and something tells me the request would have cost me more than I was willing to pay.

A moment later, paper rustles, and then a photograph so horrifying I tell myself not to look at it enters my line of vision. I scream at myself to close my eyes and pretend I haven’t seen it.

But I can’t.

Some things you can never unsee.

“Now. Let’s talk about a three-year old cold case. We believe he’d been dead for some time before the couple in the neighboring apartment smelled something rotting.” Detective Bradley’s gaze burns through the top of my head. His tone is casual, but he’s watching me for a reaction.Closely.

I squeeze my hands into tight fists, willing the tears burning my eyes not to fall.

Think of something else. Something not…that.

I think of Dad’s neighbors. Clara and Derrick spent almost as much time as Dad did fucked out of their minds. For them, it wasn’t the contents of a bottle that forced them out into the streets in rain, snow, or sleet.

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