Page 68 of Heart of Stone (Dark Billionaires)

On her laptop, Kate hadn’t closed the tab since the last time Saf had asked, but her answer remained the same. “Not yet. I’m sorry.” She shared a worried glance with Rhys when Saf lowered her head to her bent knees.

Warren had barely walked through the front door before he’d been squirreled away by Brax, but Kate didn’t begrudge his changing focus. Saffron’s presence in the house was a constant reminder that there were real people behind Graves’s trafficking operation.

“I can’t remember her name,” Kate realised. “Your sister, I mean.”

“Evie.” Saffron’s anxiety cracked for just a moment, long enough for a gentle smile to appear, like a ray of sunshine appearing behind the clouds. Kate blinked, and it was gone. “They’re not even going inside the property. They’re just checking it out. Iknowthat. But… I can’t help…”

“Hoping,” Kate finished for her. All her life, she had been the younger sibling—up until Aaron’s death had made her an only child. What would it have been like to have had a little sister to look after whilst working to put food on the table?

A nightmare. Kate had barely managed to keep herself alive some weeks.

And to have to do that in the centre of a human trafficking organisation…

A shiver went through her.

“Exactly,” Saf said sadly.

“Tell me about her,” Kate asked, watching Rhys jog to the front door to collect the food they’d ordered.

Saf’s grin was a little crooked. “You know I told you about my mum always wanting a koi pond?”

She nodded.

“Well Evie decided when she was about five that we’d have to call all the fish Bob, regardless of gender.” Kate’s bewildered expression made Saffron laugh. “Because it’s the only word they can say. Five-year-old logic for you.”

Rhys came back in with the food—Japanese food, which Kate had never tried before. “Aldous had some of the best one-liners when we were kids.”

“Oh?” Kate accepted her bowl of ramen.

“Once he saw Mum without her make-up on and cried out ‘Bleurgh! What’s wrong with your face?’”

Saffron covered her mouth with an expression of horror. “Oh god, what did your mum say?”

“She burst straight into tears. It was, like, the week after my dad walked out on us as well.”

“Your poor mother.”

“It’s okay though,” Rhys grinned, “because Aldous offered to call her an ambulance to get her face fixed.”

After her first clumsy attempts at using chopsticks, Kate settled for a fork. “How much younger is he than you?”

“Six years,” Rhys answered, using his chopsticks like a pro. “Which meant I was old enough to corral him away from Mum and make him promise never to say anything bad about her face ever again.”

Saffron followed Kate’s lead and picked up a fork. “And did he?”

“Well not long after that he walked in on her getting changed and said that her boobs were much longer than he thought they were.”

Kate choked on her noodles. “Jesus Christ.”

“How did your mother not murder him?”

Rhys shook his head. “I genuinely don’t know. What do you think?”

Kate’s brain came to a standstill. “Of your mother not murdering your little brother? I mean, I’d like to give her awell donebut—”

“Of the food, you eejit.”

“Oh! It’s great. What about you, Saf?”

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