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A pained smile stretches across her lips. “She did that a lot when she was little. She hated being told to go to bed, so she’d sneak downstairs and listen in on whatever my parents were doing or try to watch whatever they were watching. Sometimes I’d find her asleep in the hallway and I’d carry her up to bed before my parents found her.” A quick smile flashes over Emily’s lips then vanishes. “That night, I was out with my friends, so I wasn’t there to find her and tuck her into bed.”
“Wait a second. Are you saying she saw your parents get…”
“Murdered.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “When they shot my mom, I think…” Her voice trails off, but she sweeps her hands toward her face, silently explaining how the blowback left Libby covered in blood.
How the fuck is Libby so…normalnow?
“She ran and hid in my closet,” Emily continues. Her lips twist with sadness and pride. “But first she opened the window, so if they came looking for her, they’d think she ran away.”
Jesus. Christ.“Smart thing to do at such a young age.”
“I know,” she whispers.
“Did they find the guys?”
“One was dead in our living room. Sohewas easy to find.” Dark humor laces through her words. “The other one wasn’t too bright. They caught him a few days later.”
“Where’s he now?” I growl.Please let it be a prison where my club has a connection.
“In prison.” She casts a suspicious glance my way. “Don’t even think about trying to get revenge on my behalf or anything. Iwanthim to spend the rest of his life rotting right where he is.”
Already, she knows me too well.
“Why did they do it? Was it a robbery gone wrong?” I’ve done a lot of bad shit but shooting a mother and father in front of their little girl—that’s straight up fuckingevil.
She laces her fingers together and squeezes, like she’s praying for strength. Pink colors her cheeks and she drops her gaze to her lap. “I…don’t even know…” A harsh sob tears out of her throat.
“It’s okay.” I curl my arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer, and kiss the top of her head. “It’s okay,” I murmur. “That’s enough.”
“No.” She pushes away and pulls her leg up, turning to face me. “It’s still hard to believe sometimes, that’s all. He was dirty. My dad. A dirty cop. I guess he was working with these guys and they thought he stole money from them. So they broke in to get it back. They must not have expected my dad to be locked and loaded in the middle of the night.”
Something about her assumption doesn’t sound right. I don’t think Emily’s lying, though. It hurt her to admit that her father wasn’t a good guy. But the story still feelswrong. Only the dumbest fuck of a criminal would show up to a shady cop’shomeand fuck with his family. The smarter move would be luring him somewhere remote and torturing the information out of him. Or so I’ve heard.
“Who told you that your dad was a dirty cop?” I ask.
Emily chews on her bottom lip, clearly uncomfortable with the question. “His best friend. His partner. They went to the academy together. He told me at my parents’ funeral.” She lowers her voice. “He said he covered for my dad so Libby and I would still be entitled to survivor benefits.”
I’m certainly not an expert on the law, but that sounds shady as shit. What kind of man says that to a grieving daughter? At her parents’ funeral, no less. “Why the fuck would he sully your father’s memory at their funeral?”
She blinks. “It was such an awful time. At first, I chalked it up to grief over losing his friend. Or that he just wanted to assure me that we’d be taken care of. But later when I thought about it, I wondered.” She closes her eyes for a few seconds. “I never told my aunt. It would’ve killed her even sooner to learn her little brother was a criminal.”
My gut says her dadwasn’ta criminal at all. But I have no basis for that theory and what’s the point, anyway? This happened years ago. So, I keep my opinion to myself.
The father’s friend, though. Maybe itwasgrief talking. Or maybehewas the dirty cop, and he pinned his crimes on Emily’s dad. No wonder she thinks her dad killed the guy who cut her.
“He wrote to me a while ago,” she says. “That’s the last time I had a nightmare.”
“Who? Your dad’s partner?”
“No. His killer.”
A lightning bolt of rage splits my vision in half. I take a breath, willing calm into my body. But it’s not easy. My fascination with Emily hovers like a violent cloud, ready to rain terror on anyone who threatens her or Libby’s safety.
Fascination? No. What I feel for Emily is more than interest or affection.
Deeper, in a place I thought I’d buried under concrete, I recognize it’slove.
And that’s the only thing in this world that scares me.
