Page 126 of Power of Shadow

A flood of tears streams from my eyes as I watch Eli follow her. I’m the one who should be comforting her right now, but she hates me, and rightly so.

I’m a shitty sister.

Arms wrap around me and pull me close to a hard chest. The warmth radiating from Ryker is soothing. I feel his hands tangling in my hair and his lips tenderly kissing the top of my head.

“Shhh...” he comforts me. “Everything will be fine. Everything will be okay, my love.”

“Zoe’s right. It’s my fault, and I’m not surprised she hates me...”

“She doesn’t think that at all. She can’t see the world beyond you, Ash. She loves you. Once the dust settles, you’ll talk, and everything will be fine.”

I doubt his words whispered into my hair. “How did this happen, Ryker? We were talking to him just a few days ago,” I ask, pulling my head back and looking him in the eyes.

He still doesn’t let go of me.

“I don’t know who killed him. His body was dumped in the basement of one of my warehouses. The security guard called me to the scene.” A strange note is in Ryker’s voice. Fear? Maybe something else entirely.

“Wait a minute. You found him in your warehouse?” It doesn’t add up. Why a place connected to Ryker?

He nods in response, and I again see that strange something in his eyes.

My stomach turns upside down.

No, it’s impossible.

“Ryker—I’m only going to ask you this once, and I’m asking you to answer me honestly. Did you kill my father?”

First he sighs, then he shakes his head. The thing that resembles fear in his eyes turns into undisguised sadness. “No, Ash. I didn’t kill him.”

“But—” I can’t believe what’s happening. It can’t end like this!

Doubts, like a sneaky snake, begin to creep into the recesses of my soul.

“Ash, baby?”

I have two choices. Either I can let doubt cloud my judgment of the man I’m head over heels in love with, or I can bet on honesty.

Watching him closely, I bet on the latter.

“Then—the last time we saw him alive, you said that the next time you met, he would be dead.”

“I know, my Little Killer. I said that, but not because I was going to kill him. Fuck, I don’t even know what I was thinking. I wanted him to leave, to hide. It was for your protection because if we didn’t do it, others would come after us and try the same thing. My hope was that he would understand the gravity of the situation and that our next meeting would be when he was old, wrinkled, and a grandfather to our children.”

My breath catches in my throat.

Children? Our children? My imagination has never wandered this far.

Ryker often jokes that one day I’ll be his wife. But those are just jokes, right? At least, I think so.

To my surprise, Ryker’s face remains serious. When he talks about these things, he doesn’t seem to be treating the subject lightly. He doesn’t seem to be joking.

“On the way here, I was thinking about it, Ash. I was afraid you’d blame me for it, afraid you wouldn’t believe me. After all, we both had a job to kill him... By all that is holy, my Little Killer, I swear I had nothing to do with it.”

For a split second, something inside me hisses: What if he’s lying? But it’s just an echo of fear, not intuition. I believe him. I know he’s not lying. I can see it in his eyes. I can see it in his soul.

“Someone else thinks something completely different, though,” I add, trying to solve the mystery. “It’s no coincidence that you found him in your warehouse. Can I see him?”

He scrunches his face as though he has eaten something sour. “That’s not a good idea. I know you’ve seen much worse things. Hell, you even take part in creating them. But this isn’t the same. This is your father, and I don’t want this to be your last image of him. You don’t have to decide now, but very soon we’ll have to decide what to do with his body.”