Page 54 of They Will Fall

“I guess there’s no easy way to say this.” I purse my lips before continuing. “Maddox killed Cade.”

Lev’s eyes nearly pop out of their sockets before he bursts out in laughter. His hand smacks repeatedly to his leg, as if this is the most humorous thing he’s ever heard. “No fucking way.”

“That seems to be a common reaction, but yeah, he did. He just admitted it to Ridge and me before I came out here.”

“It’s true,” Ridge hollers from where he’s still sitting about forty feet away. “Our boy fucking ended that piece of shit.”

“Nosey bastard,” Lev grumbles, and I laugh.

After filling Lev in on everything he’s missed, we sit outside and talk for what feels like hours. Ridge even brought us out food, while being respectful enough to let us have our privacy, of forty feet. Eventually, though, he did go inside with Maddox.

The sun is completely set now, but there’s two yard lamps lit beside us on the small patio.

Lev reaches across the table and he takes my hands in his. Butterflies swarm through my stomach as I relish in the way his skin feels against mine. His mouth opens, then closes, and I watch intently as he struggles to get out the words he wants to say. “I…um. I don’t know where we were headed before everything went to shit, but I’m hopeful that maybe we can get back to that place at some point. The truth is,” he pauses for a beat, “it’s been a long time since I’ve been scared to lose someone and that might be because I really don’t have anyone to lose besides the guys. But the thought of losing you terrifies me, Trouble.”

Grazing his thumb with my forefinger, I smile in response as I say, “I’m not going anywhere.”

CHAPTER18

RILEY

Lev ran backto the apartment and grabbed his stuff after deciding to stay here at the house for the remainder of our stay in Glendale.

Maddox and Ridge have been working hard on putting together some puzzle pieces, so we can move to the next phase of our plan. But first, we need to get inside Cade’s house.

“Maddox,” I call out as my bare feet pad through the kitchen, into the living room. “Where are you guys?”

“In here,” Ridge responds. I follow the sound of his voice to an open door off the living room and a familiar scent floods my senses.

I poke my head in the door to see Maddox on the floor beside a desk with a stack of papers while Ridge shuffles through folders in a file cabinet.

“Find anything?” I ask, still unable to shake that scent. I wander into the room, sniffing it out to see what it is.

“Not a damn thing.” Maddox clenches his fist as he slams a closed notebook onto the stack of papers. “There’s nothing here. Maybe my dad just takes his job as a Guardian very seriously.”

I hear Maddox, but I’m not paying him any attention as I approach the desk. My eyes land on a half-smoked cigar sitting in a black marbled ashtray. Without any thought process behind it, I pick up the cigar and inhale the scent. “Does your dad smoke these?”

“Oh yeah,” Maddox grumbles. “Nasty fucking things.”

“I don’t think there’s a day I’ve seen your dad when he wasn’t puffing on one of those tobacco logs,” Ridge adds.

I set the cigar back in the ashtray but can’t seem to take my eyes off it as memories of yesterday infiltrate my mind.

“Maddox,” I say with hesitation in my tone. “Do you have a picture of your dad?”

It may seem like an odd request, but something in my gut tells me I have to see what this man looks like.

“Um, I think there's a family picture of us in the living room on the fireplace mantle.”

I don’t even say anything before turning around and leaving the room.

“What was that all about?” I hear Ridge ask Maddox, but I keep walking.

Slow, cautious steps lead me to the fireplace, while my heart is nearly jumping out of my chest, seeming to already know what I’m going to find. It’s a crazy thought, and I hope I’m wrong, but the minute I lay eyes on the five-by-seven picture, set in a gold frame, my stomach drops.

“No,” I mutter under my breath, my knees nearly buckling under the weight of this revelation.It can’t be.

It’s as if the man in the picture is staring straight back at me. Those bluish gray eyes—the same ones that watched me in the rearview mirror while I was bound in the back of his car.

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