Page 10 of Heart of Stone (Dark Billionaires)

Prick.“And his current whereabouts?” Warren prompted.

“No one has seen him since.”

Warren’s mind drifted to the night of the crash. To begin with, he hadn’t realised what was happening when Graves arrived on the scene, the blue lights of his police car flashing. He’d just been relieved to see a police officer, reassured that the emergency services were beginning to arrive.

He’d weaved in and out of consciousness. At that point, he hadn’t even realised that Aaron was dead, flung through the windscreen in a spray of glass and blood. Warren had seen the distant figure lying in the road but, in his confusion, had assumed they’d hit a deer.

“Let me know if anything changes,” Warren said, his mind a decade away.

Brax took his leave with a short, “Will do.”

Eventually, Rhys spoke up. His arms crossed over his chest. “What’s your plan for Graves?”

“I intend to take from him what they took from me.” A simple answer for a simple question.

“Do you not think your plan is atadgruesome?”

Warren countered his friend with a derisive laugh. “Did they not earn it? They tookyearsfrom me, Rhys. What should have been some of the best years of my life. Instead, I spent it rotting in a prison cell. I’m not surprised you don’t understand—you actually committed the crime you were imprisoned for. As did Jensen.” He raised his hands as Rhys opened his mouth. “I do not blame you. Fuck, if I’d have been there I’d have helped you do it, but neither of you understand what it feels like to see your life slipping away before your very eyes, knowing there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Rhys gave him a long, unwavering look. “Given the friends you made in prison, I’d say it hasn’t turned out too badly.”

“No.” This time, his laugh was genuine. “No, it hasn’t.” The four of them—Warren, Rhys, Jensen, and Aldous—had all been dealt shitty hands by life, one way or another. “If someone had said to me on the day I entered prison that a decade later the four of us would own a company worth billions, I’d have laughed in their face.”

“True,” Rhys’s smirk was crooked. “I was nothing but a mouthy little prick from a council estate and yet,” he spread his hands, “here we are.”

“Wasa mouthy little prick?”

“Don’t give me that shit,” Rhys aimed a kick at Warren’s good leg. “I’m a reformed man compared to what I used to be.”

“Mm,” Warren threw a pen in Rhys’s direction, snorting when it hit him right between the eyes. “What not living in poverty does to a man.”

Rhys was picking up the pen to launch it back in his direction when his face fell, his eyes focused on a point over Warren’s shoulder. “Are those tablets?”

Warren swivelled round on the office chair, sucking in a panicked breath. Kate sat on one of the armchairs in his bedroom. Small boxes were strewn across the floor next to her. He recognised the packaging as the painkillers he’d received after his last surgery.

The boxes weren’t what had him panicking, however.

What had his heart stopping was the pile of tablets on the table in front of her.

He leapt to his feet, stumbling as he raced from his office, skidding around the corner slightly too quickly and smashing into a framed photograph on the opposite wall. Glass shattered behind him, but Warren didn’t stop. Rhys wasn’t far behind him as he leapt up the stairs, taking them two at a time in his desperation to reach his kitten.

The look of despondency on her face this morning had cut him deeply, knowing it had been inflicted by him. Knowing he’d shown her those fucking photographs.He’dtaken her into the room in which he’d beaten her father black and blue.

Warren shouldered into his bedroom, barely bothering to use the handle.

Kate jumped a foot in the air as he burst through the door, the glass of water in her hand slopping over her lap.

Skidding to his knees before her, Warren shoved the table away. The tablets scattered across the floor. “How many have you taken?” he croaked, taking her face in his trembling hands.

She looked away with red-rimmed eyes. “Go away.” Her voice cracked.

“How many?” he shouted, hearing Rhys moving behind him. “Tell me!”

“It’s all right,” Rhys whispered softly, a balm to Warren’s bite. “We’re not angry at you. We just need to know how many you’ve taken.”

Kate shook her head as much as she was able to within his grasp. “I haven’t.” Tears ran down her cheeks, tracking salty paths underneath her chin.

The relief was so heady that Warren felt light-headed. He pulled her into his lap, holding her with a vice-like grip as she wept into his suit. Blood pounded through him, furious and relentless. “I have you, kitten,” he chanted into her hair. “Everything will be okay. I have you.”

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