41. Riley
It’s beena long time since I woke up feeling at peace, and for a moment, before my eyes open, it’s such an unfamiliar feeling I’m not even sure I actually am awake. But then someone stirs beside me, all muscle and warmth and strength, and I snap my eyes open, trying to remember where I am.
Maddoc’s room.
I smile, that peace settling back around me like a warm blanket after my initial moment of disorientation. I can’t remember the last time I woke up next to a man the morning after, and it’s… nice.
Maddoc’s arm is draped over my hip, heavy and secure, and the way my body is tucked up against his is something I could probably get used to. I try to tell myself it’s a dangerous way to feel. He’s still the leader of the Reapers, and his world will never be a safe place to live.
And then there’s my sister.
Chloe will always be my first priority. She’s off the streets, which means she’s safe for now, but she’s not safe forever. Not with that inheritance hanging over her head.
I sigh softly, rolling over to face Maddoc and letting my eyes roam over his strong features. They haven’t quite softened in his sleep, but slumber seems to give them a hint of that same languid peace that filled me when I woke up. It makes me feel close to him.
No. I reach out, lightly skimming my fingers over the healing gunshot wound in his shoulder, a hairsbreadth above the skin. It’s not seeing him sleep that makes me feel close to him.
It’s not even this peaceful feeling of safety I’ve found in his bed. It’s because the connection I’ve felt with him almost from the beginning, the one that made his betrayal cut so much deeper and his change of heart mean so much more… is real.
I bite my lip, nibbling on it as I try to wrap my feelings around that, and my fingers come down, feather-light, on the wound I gave him.
Maddoc’s eyes spring open. Then they turn warm.
“Riley,” he says, his voice rough with sleep as he reaches up to cover my hand with his, holding it against him as he holds my gaze.
“Good morning.”
He smiles, a small but sincere-looking one, and leans forward to kiss me. It’s soft and intimate in a way I’m not at all used to.
“How did you know where to find Chloe?” I ask when he pulls away, partly because I truly want to know, and partly to recover from how open and vulnerable I feel in the wake of all this.
“I remembered a place McKenna has used before, one he set up specifically to keep things on the down-low.” He brushes some of my hair back from my face, letting his fingers trail over my cheek. “It’s just outside West Point territory, so not where we had any eyes.”
“Did one of your allies tip you off?”
“No. It’s a safe house he’s got in a residential neighborhood, away from typical gang activity.” He hesitates, then adds, “It’s where he used to meet up with Sienna.”
I almost ask if he means “meet up with” when the bitch was cheating on him, but of course he does. The flat look in his eyes tells me so.
For a split second, I wonder if he still cares for her… and I hate her a little bit for that. Loyalty is everything to Maddoc. But then I decide she’s not worth it, and since Maddoc seems to shake off the memory just as fast, his eyes warming for me again as he goes on with his explanation, I figure he feels the same.
“I figured it would be stupid of him to still use the place.” His lips quirk up a little. “Which just made it all the more likely he might have her stashed there. So I thought I’d go check.”
“On your own? In the middle of the night?” I ask, turning my face a little to press my cheek into his palm. “You should have woken one of us. Hell, all of us, Maddoc. You got shot.”
He runs his thumb over my lips, his eyes following the motion before lifting back up to mine. “Not the first time.”
“But why would you take a risk like that?” I whisper.
Maddoc goes still, looking at me in silence. Something passes between us that makes my stomach flutter.
“I didn’t like seeing you hurt,” he finally tells me, making my heart squeeze.
It’s too simple, and yet it’s true.
He means it.
I lean forward and kiss him, losing myself in it in a way that has nothing to do with wanting his cock again. I do, but not now. That’s not what this is about. And the way he holds me so carefully, making me feel treasured, tells me more than any words that things have changed between us. And the way he came through for me with Chloe—
“I need to check in with my sister,” I say, pulling away from him before the way his touch is heating me up leads to something more.
He nods, and I place a final kiss, butterfly-soft, against his jaw, his early morning stubble deliciously rough against my lips.
“Thank you for getting her back.”
He gets out of bed when I do, his eyes raking over me appreciatively, and it’s harder than it should be to leave his room. Until I refocus on Chloe.
I go to her room—my room—and get a lump in my throat, the hot prick of tears stinging the back of my eyes, when I see her lying there safely.
“Oh god,” I say, covering my mouth to hold in a sob. Or maybe a laugh? Then I realize I don’t have to hold in anything at all, and I rush to her side and gently wake her.
“Riley?” she asks, blinking at me blearily for a moment before she shakes off the grogginess of sleep and the aftereffects of whatever those fuckers drugged her with, bolting upright and coming alert all at once.
Street instincts.
She looks around, tucking a lock of dyed-blonde hair behind her ears.
“You’re safe,” I reassure her, hugging her hard. “Are you okay?”
I brush her hair back and kiss her forehead, and she nods. “I think so, yeah.” She melts against me. “Riley.”
This time, it’s not a question. It’s pure relief.
I murmur nonsense to her just like I did when she was small, content for a moment to just exist in the moment. In this perfect one, where we’re together again and, for now at least, totally safe.
But then Chloe stiffens, pulling out of my embrace and looking around the room until a spark of recognition appears in her eyes. “Is this the… the Reapers’ house? Oh god, I thought I remembered them from last night. Shit, Ri. When you didn’t come after me, I didn’t know what to think. They… they caught you?”
“No, it’s fine. We’re safe here.”
“How? You said they were going to betray you! You told me to run!”
“Yeah.” I bite my lip. “Things have changed.”
“How? Why?” she asks, looking up at me with big eyes that remind me that, for all that she kept herself alive out there and has had to grow up way the fuck faster than I wish she had, she’s still my baby sister. She still looks to me, trusts me, to reassure her that everything will be okay.
Which I can, I’m just not sure how to explain it.
I know what I feel for the guys. For all three of them. I know what’s happened between us, and what they’ve given up to help me this time. I just don’t have the words to talk about that kind of thing.
And maybe I don’t have the courage to trust it—to trust myself—quite yet, either.
But mostly, I don’t want to confuse Chloe. Not after all she’s been through.
“The Reapers are on our side now,” I tell her, brushing her hair back again and leaving it at that. “They helped me find you, and they’re going to help us… help us stay safe.”
Chloe searches my eyes for a minute, then nods, her shoulders relaxing. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Chloe,” I say, a lump growing in my throat. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find you sooner.”
She shakes her head. “No, Riley. I’m just glad you’re okay. I was—” Her voice hitches, her eyes welling up. She swallows it down, blinking before she allows any tears to fall, and lifts her chin defiantly. “I was scared. For you. I wasn’t sure what they did to you. I thought…” She swallows again, and this time her voice is a cracked whisper. “I thought I heard a gunshot from the house when I was running away.”
“You did, babe,” I say, grabbing onto her hand and holding it tight. “I shot Maddoc.”
Her eyes go wide. “Maddoc Gray? The leader of the Reapers?”
“Yeah, but he understands why I did it. He even respects it.” I squeeze her hand again. “I was scared for you. I hated the idea of you out there on your own. And fuck, I’m so glad you were able to keep yourself hidden for so long.”
“Not long enough,” she says, looking away. Looking a little lost.
I turn her face back toward mine. “You did good,” I say firmly. “Those West Point fuckers had people everywhere. It’s amazing you managed to stay off their radar for as long as you did. We figured out you’d been staying at that abandoned place over off Alameda Avenue. Was that where you were the whole time?”
She shakes her head. “No, only for a day or so. I moved around a lot.”
“Good girl,” I murmur, running my hand over her hair.
“I tried to move mostly at night and found places like that one to stay out of sight during the day. I used that cash to pay for things… mostly.”
She ducks her head.
“Hey now, it’s okay. Whatever you had to do.”
“I know,” she says, raising her head and pinning me with a gaze older and a little harder than it should be. “You taught me that.”
“Yeah.” And part of me hates that for her, but the bigger part of me is damn happy that I taught her enough about how fucked up the world can be for her to realize that taking care of herself out there had to be her only priority.
She tells me a little more about her time on the streets, ending with—
“I had to steal a few things, break into one place when I thought I was being followed the second day, but I was doing okay.” A tremor in her voice tells me that “okay” is a bit of a stretch—probably why she reached out to Frank when I took too damn long to find her—but then her chin firms again. “I figured you’d, um, you’d find me eventually.”
“Always. You did good,” I repeat, hugging her tightly. “Now come on. Let’s go downstairs and get you something to eat.”
All three of the guys are in the kitchen when we go down.
“Hey, princess,” Dante says with a lazy smile. He raises his coffee cup in greeting to my sister. “Chloe. Good to see you again.”
“Hi,” she says cautiously, inching a little closer to me.
“Are you feeling better?” Maddoc asks her, leaning back against the kitchen island with a cup of coffee in his hands too.
My sister raises her chin, showing all the spine that kept her alive out there as she decides not to let her nerves get the best of her. “I’d feel better with some of that coffee.”
Dante laughs.
“You really are her sister,” Maddoc says with a hot spark in his eyes as they flick toward me that warms me from the inside out.
Logan, in typical fashion, just acts. Preparing her a cup efficiently and with the kind of precision only he can pull off. “Did you overhear any of West Point’s plans for you?” he asks as he hands it to her, foregoing pleasantries.
Also typical Logan, but that’s okay. Actions speak louder than words.
Chloe nods, the way her hands tremble a little as she lifts the cup to her mouth the only sign of her nerves. “They wanted money from me? But that’s stupid.” Her eyes dart my way for a second, flashing with guilt. “I had to spend almost everything in that envelope you gave me, Ri.”
“That’s fine.” I accept a cup of coffee of my own from Logan, taking a stool and pulling Chloe down onto the one next to me. “It wasn’t what they were after.”
Her eyes widen. “Then… then how were they going to get more money out of me?”
“Not that,” I say sharply, seeing exactly where her mind went. She doesn’t know about the inheritance, but she obviously knows Austin McKenna is a brutal, sadistic shithead who wouldn’t be above using her, pimping her out, or worse to fund his gang. I take a deep breath, knowing she’ll have feelings about the truth, then give it to her. “Our mom… um, Heather Sutton, she wasn’t actually your birth mother, Chloe. Frank had an affair.”
“He… what?” she asks, sounding like a lost little girl.
I press my lips together to keep from blurting out what a fucking piece of shit he was on every level. It’s better that he’s gone. He deserved what he got. But Chloe always hoped he’d be better than he was, and this is one more piece of evidence that he never had been.
“He had an affair,” I repeat. “Mom knew and she wanted you. But you—”
“I wasn’t hers.”
“You were,” I insist, gripping her hand tightly. “Not by blood, but by everything that matters.”
Chloe stares at me blankly for a moment, then inhales sharply and nods. “Okay.”
I smile, squeezing her hand. She’s trusting me to make this okay, looking to me to make sense of a shitty world even when nothing feels like it makes sense.
This time, though, I don’t have to explain it all on my own.
“The woman your father had an affair with was a Sutherland,” Logan steps in crisply, his pale eyes warming almost imperceptibly when I throw him a look of appreciation for taking some of the burden of telling her such life-changing news off my shoulders. “Your real grandfather, her father, was a man named William Sutherland.”
Chloe stares at him for a second. Then—
“Was?” she asks in a small voice.
I understand. We never knew either set of grandparents and are all alone in the world. It might have been nice to have had someone else out there who cared.
“It’s why McKenna wanted to get his hands on you,” Dante says, conveniently leaving out the part where the Reapers had started out with the same idea. “Sutherland was a wealthy man, and you’re the heir to his estate.”
“The money West Point wanted was your inheritance,” Maddoc adds.
Chloe is shaking her head. “I don’t have an inheritance. I didn’t even know him!” She whirls on me. “Did you know? Did you know we’re not…” Her voice breaks. “Not really sisters?”
“We are really sisters,” I say fiercely. “We share blood. We share DNA. We share everything. You’re my sister, Chloe. You always were and you always will be.”
The “half” I leave off is meaningless, at least to me.
“Okay,” she says after a minute, her voice still a little shaky.
I run my hand down her hair, cupping the back of her head and looking into her eyes. “We will always have each other.”
“Okay,” she says more confidently this time, squaring her shoulders. She looks around at the guys. “So what happens now?”
“Now, we help you claim your inheritance,” Maddoc says. Something raw passes over his face for a split second, but it’s gone when he adds calmly, “And then we help get the two of you out of town.”
Of course.
Of course we have to leave.
I stuff all the feelings I have about that down deep enough that they won’t hurt right now, because this is about Chloe. Always.
“How do I claim it?” she asks.
Logan taps a small white box in front of him, one whose corners are precisely aligned with the edges of the counter. “DNA. I’ll swab you for it and send it in as proof.”
“Proof?” She looks back and forth between us all in confusion. “But… but I thought he was dead?”
“The estate had a DNA sample taken from the grandmother. They’re holding it to match against the heir, as proof.”
He opens the little box efficiently, laying out each piece and instructing Chloe in what he needs to do to obtain a proper swab. As he takes it, Dante murmurs quietly into his phone, arranging to have a Reaper come pick it up and, presumably, deliver it to whoever it is who can confirm that Chloe is William Sutherland’s granddaughter and heir.
Chloe snatches her coffee back up as soon as Logan’s done with the swab, holding it with both hands and staring down into it. “So, once we get the money…”
She looks up over the rim, her eyes seeking out mine.
“We’ll have to leave Halston,” I say, a lump in my throat. “The way we talked about.”
She nods.
“West Point still wants you,” Dante says to her, sounding a hell of a lot more subdued than he usually does, which just makes my throat feel even tighter. “They’re dangerous.”
Chloe snort-laughs, then shakes her head. “I know.”
“I killed some of McKenna’s people,” Maddoc says flatly. “We were already at war—”
“But shit’s about to get even worse,” Dante finishes for him.
Chloe nods again, then takes another drink of her coffee. She’s not going to argue because she’s smart enough to know this is what has to happen. She doesn’t ask to stay, or complain about needing to leave behind everything she’s known.
She also doesn’t ask about Frank.
“Chloe?”
She looks up from her coffee.
My sister has the biggest heart of anyone I know, and I hate to be the one to bruise it. But even though Frank doesn’t deserve how much she cared for him, how much she always hoped, she did care. And she deserves the truth.
Not that it makes being the one who has to tell her he’s gone any easier.
I clear my throat. “I know you tried to get in touch with Frank. Um, we went there afterward, and he’d been—”
“I know,” she interrupts me softly, sadness washing over her face. “I heard it happen.”