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“Here you go. Look through it all and make sure you’ve got what you need,” I say, handing over the new clothes and then leaving her for a second to go grab a trash bag.
Riley’s set all the shopping bags on the bed when I get back, but it looks like she hasn’t opened them yet. She’s got her back to me, standing at the window looking out at fuck knows what. She doesn’t turn around when I come into the room this time, and I leave her be for a second while I start picking up pieces of tattered material off the floor and shoving them into the bag.
Logan really did a number on them. The colors are gorgeous, the fabric feels nice, but I can’t even tell which scraps were part of what from the way he sliced them up so fine. This level of carnage must’ve taken him a while. I have no fucking clue what set him off, but that sense of concern I felt when he was so withdrawn this morning comes back tenfold.
Except this time, it’s weirdly mixed up with some feelings for Riley too.
She’s still got her back to me, and I frown as I grab another handful of her former clothing and shove it into the bag.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” I ask as I methodically clear it away.
“No,” she says, still staring out the window.
I nod even though she can’t see me, accepting her answer.
No,respectingit.
Everything about this girl pulls me in a little more. Sure, part of me is curious about what went down between her and Logan. It was obviously intense. But a bigger part of me is impressed that she’s not letting it break her. She hasn’t begged us to let her go or tried to flee in the night. She’s seen the darkness in all of us by now, and she hasn’t run from it.
“What do you think West Point is doing to Chloe?” she asks out of the blue.
I pause, hand outstretched toward a shiny piece of black fabric. I’ve got no fucking clue why those weasels snatched her sister in the first place, much less what they’ve been up to in the time that they’ve had her, but I can think of dozens of possible answers that might be true.
None would be kind, though. True or not, thinking too hard about that shit when Riley can’t do anything about it—not at the moment, at least—isn’t something I have any interest in putting her through.
“You can ask her when we get her back,” I say, then bite my tongue before I say the second part out loud.Or avenge her if we don’t.
That’s another thought Riley doesn’t need on her mind right now… especially because I know damn well how unsatisfying revenge really is in the end. Necessary, of course, and I’ll make sure she gets vengeance for her sister if it comes down to it. But even though I made my dad’s killer pay dearly for what he took from me, the memory of the man’s screams over the long days it took to end him is never gonna be enough to make up for the way it gutted me not to have been able to save my dad in the first place.
I shove that memory aside, focusing on Riley again. She’s still looking out the window, and I have a feeling she’s still thinking about her sister. Worrying about her.
I should probably just leave it alone and let silence fall between us, but I don’t. Instead, I say, “Tell me about Chloe. What’s she like?”
“Did Maddoc show you her picture?” she asks, finally turning around to face me.
“Nope.” I grab another handful of scraps. “She look like you?”
“More like our father,” she says, grimacing. But she does what I asked, telling me a few stories about her sister as I finish cleaning up the shredded clothes. She sits on the bed after a while, the towel still wrapped around her, and by the time I’m done, she looks a little more relaxed.
“She sounds like a good kid,” I say. “And smart too. You did a good job raising her, and that’ll serve her well.”
“Thanks, Dante,” Riley says with a tentative smile as I bag the last of the shredded clothes. “You really are the nicest of them, aren’t you?”
I chuckle, shaking my head, and toss the bag out into the hall. “Best not to judge a book by its cover, princess. None of us are the nice one.”
“How long have you known Maddoc and Logan?” she asks, fiddling with the edge of the towel. It barely covers her ass the way she’s sitting on the bed, and she looks sexy as fuck with nothing but that fluffy piece of fabric hiding her athletic curves.
“It’s been a few years,” I say.
Riley smirks. “That’s really all you’re going to give me?”
I chuckle at the way she called me out, clearly noticing that I glossed over the details on purpose. The less anyone knows about you, the less ammunition they have to use against you, so it’s just old habit at this point—which is why it makes no fucking sense at all that a part of me wants to tell her the whole story of how I came into Maddoc’s orbit.
I don’t, of course. That would be fucking stupid. But I decide to give her something else that I know will be of interest to her.
“You catch that conversation we were having in the kitchen this morning?” I ask.
She instantly leans forward, looking alert. “I heard something about West Point when I walked in. Was it about Chloe?”
