Page 85 of Kept

She looks at me bleakly. “But so is Enzo.”

I hesitate. The line between black and white, that sharp edge of good and evil, has never seemed as thin as it does right now, with Zella staring at me blankly.

“Yes,” I admit finally. “Yes, he is.”

She nods slowly, and I sit back on my heels, contemplating our next steps. Finally, I pull myself up to sit next to her. Her eyes glance at my bare chest, a hint of awareness filtering in as her golden skin darkens in a blush. “I didn’t mean to barge in.”

I clear my throat. “Don’t worry. Will you tell us what you’re thinking?”

Her shoulders sag, and she sighs. Her tone is defeated when she speaks. “I’m thinking… I don’t know. My whole life, Ethan would tell me these things about the world, and it turns out they were all true.”

“No. Not all of them,” Ryder says softly. “There’s a lot of good in the world, princess.”

“But not here,” she murmurs.

Ryder and I share a concerned look. “Zella,” I ask delicately, trying to swallow down the sudden pounding in my chest. “Do you not want to stay here anymore?”

She shakes her head, and the dread tightens my throat, only to relax a moment later. “I want to stay,” she whispers, almost too quietly for us to hear. “I think I’m panicking because… I thought it would bother me more. But… it doesn’t, really.”

She turns her eyes to mine, a question in them. “What does that say about me? If I don’t care?”

She looks so desolate that I wrap my arm around her shoulders, pulling her into me. She comes willingly, and I breathe out a sigh of relief as her head tucks into my side. “Enzo isn’t evil, Zella. At least, I don’t believe so. He likes to pretend he is. Maybe he even believes it. But he only goes after the bad guys. I’ve never seen him hurt someone who didn’t completely deserve it.”

“But why him?” She challenges me. “Why does it have to be him?”

“I… he needs it. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Ryder shrugs when I glance at him for help. “He was brought up in shitty circumstances, princess. Something is broken inside him.”

“Has he ever tried to stop?”

I nod. “Once.”

He lasted three months. Three months before we had to sedate him to make him sleep, the nightmares inside him crawling out, making him a danger to everyone.

“It didn’t go well,” I tell her. “And given our line of work, we were able to work out a way for him to get what he needed.”

“By killing people. Bad people.” Her face is unreadable when I glance down.

“Yes. You asked what it says about you, if you don’t care. None of us care about the people on his table, Zella. They deserve everything they get, and then some.”

I turn her to face me, cradling her cheek.

“What I do care about,” I say firmly, “is my family. There isnothingI won’t do to keep my family together, Zella. Even if we have to hunt down murderers to do it.”

She takes a deep breath. “So you just… look for people to give him?”

“Not quite.” Letting her go, I stand up and move to the closet, pulling out fresh clothes in preparation for our trip tonight. When I turn around, she’s watching me, and her eyes drop down a little too late. “We identify cases where we can help people get out of bad situations, and we try to help them, where we can.”

“Sometimes we’re too late,” Ryder tells her. “Sometimes the bad guys win, princess.”

“So Enzo makes sure they pay for it.” I duck inside the closet, pulling up the jeans and buckling them. “And then Ryder and I finish the job.”

“What does that mean?” she calls out, and I tug the hoodie over my head before I head back into the bedroom. “Why don’t you come with us, and see?”

Ryder makes a concerned noise in the back of his throat, but I hold out my hand to Zella.

There’s a faint challenge in my silent question.

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