Page 43 of The Piece You Stole

Detective Bradley’s tone is intimate—friendly even. “But then a man he’d never seen before came and took you away. Was this photograph the result of Rylan Treveiler meting out a little justice for all the things Dad did to hurt you?”

A long time ago, I think that’s what I would have wanted. Revenge. I wouldn’t have minded at all to see Rylan knock Dad down.

Not now.

I haven’t felt that way for a long time now.

“Because if this wasn’t you.” Detective Bradley nudges the photograph so close to me that it hovers on the very edge of the table, forcing me to confront its horror all over again. It doesn’t fall into my lap because he holds it there. Right where I can’t avoid it. “Things don’t look good for you, Miss Leo. One dead person is an accident. Butthree? All of whom we can tie to you and no one else. If we were in a state down south, Miss Leo, you’d be looking at the death penalty.”

A tiny voice in the back of my mind demands to know why I’m not pleading my innocence. But a louder voice, one that comes from experience, tells me not to bother. Cops don’t care about the truth. They only care about their version of it.

A chair leg scrapes along the hardwood floor. My spine stiffens.

And then a presence moves around the table and behind me, looming over me. I subtly sniff. No coffee breath means it’s Detective Ferdinand.

He doesn’t touch me as he bends over my shoulder. With a camera recording and the possibility his boss is watching from the other side of the mirrored glass, it would be stupid for him to do that. But he’s close enough that his hot breath heats the outer shell of my left ear when he speaks, making me swallow a shudder.

“Three a.m. means time is running out for you, Miss Leo. You see, Oscar, the District Attorney likes to work late. He loves his job, and he’s a workaholic, so that’s not unusual. I have it on good authority that right this moment, he’s busy writing up three murder charges with your name on them. And because he loves his job so much, he likes to hand deliver those first thing in the morning, which means you don’t have long left. Once those pieces of paper hit our desk…well. This is out of our hands. There’ll be no bond, no bail, nothing. The only special treatment a triple-murderess like you can expect is from Big Bertha in the shower of a super-max.” He waits for me to crumble at my looming confrontation with Big Bertha.

That’s the best you can do?I mentally snort.

Detective Ferdinand’s patience must run out because his tone is a little sharper when he gets back to his threats. “But that’s nothing compared to what will happen once the reporters learn about you. They will dig out every secret, every private thing, and share it with the world. By the end of this week, everyone will know what color the vibrator you keep in your bedside table is because reporters are thorough, Miss Leo.”

I guess good cop, bad cop only happens in the movies.

Detective Ferdinand leans even closer and whispers in my ear, “The autopsy revealed he did not go peacefully.”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

Oh god.

“From the puncture wounds in his belly and throat, the defensive wounds on his arms and back, he was in the fight for his life.” A pause. “But I guess you would know all about that, huh?”

It wouldn’t have been Rylan who did it. He would send Nathan.

“You might not know that from the amount of dried blood we found under him, he’d have been alive and bleeding out for hours after the last puncture to his throat.”

Puncture to his throat.

My body trembles as I fight to hold back my tears because I know what Nathan did. He bit Dad. Not because he wanted to turn him, but because he wanted to hurt him.

What would Dad have been thinking in those final moments, aware he was dying, knowing it was only a matter of time before he did? Of me? Or would he be relieved to finally be reunited with Mom?

He could just as easily have spent those agonizing hours believing I’d sent Nathan to kill him for the way he treated me.

“It would have taken him three, maybe four hours to bleed out, and Miss Leo? It would have felt like an eternity to him, choking on the blood filling in his lungs, the lack of air reaching his brain making time feel even slower, counting down the seconds, the minutes, and then the hours until—”

I shove myself to my feet, sending my chair crashing back into Detective Ferdinand, and forcing him to retreat. “Stop it.Fucking stop it!”

Tears splash down my cheeks, and I’m breathing hard, but I’m not getting enough air in my lungs. I feel like I’m the one choking.

Detective Bradley sits back in the chair and eyes me without expression. In the painful silence that follows, Detective Ferdinand rounds the table and returns to his seat. He folds his arms across his chest, a hint of false sympathy creasing his brows. “And we’ll do that, Miss Leo. Once you tell us what we want to know.”

There’s no or. No threats. Nothing but a long look that warns of more hell to come.

“This can stop anytime you want it to, Miss Leo.” Detective Bradley lightly taps the corner of the photograph with one fingernail, drawing my gaze toward it. Forcing me to confront what Rylan—and what Nathan—did. “Anytime at all. Or it can continue. Ball is in your court, Miss Leo. What are you going to do with it?”

CHAPTER 11

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