Page 109 of Hide Little Traitor

Once I have everything I think we might need, I check out and step back into the afternoon sun. Despite watching the navigation like it was my job on the way here just to stop myself from turning to watch what was happening in the back seat, I have no fucking clue where we are.

I haven’t been gone for nearly long enough to avoid listening to Kingston and Chloe, but at least I’ve had a few minutes of solace to regather the composure that slips whenever she’s nearby.

Hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I cross the street, and I glance around, looking for whatever set off the reaction.

I’ve always been able to sense danger before it comes, but the street is quiet, not a soul in sight.

I catalog each car in the parking lot, but nothing out of the ordinary stands out to me, and then I check the few shopfronts as if I’ll find someone watching from behind a window.

But there’s nothing.

No sign of life at all, actually.

It’s the late afternoon in a tiny town that probably has a population of twenty people, so it might not be out of the ordinary, but each step I take back to the motel has a feeling of dread settling in my chest.

We’ll just stay the one night and then keep moving in the morning.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

DAMON

THEN

TWELVE YEARS AGO

I’m beginning to think Chloe’s laugh is haunting me, because despite living in a house that most get lost in, I can always hear it.

How can someone possibly be so happy that they laugh this much?

I shake off the question and get back on task.

It’s rare that Dad insists we do dirty work outside the cellar, but I didn’t argue when he demanded I carry this heavy son of a bitch up to the lawn.

Glancing up at her bedroom window, I find the curtains drawn and the lights on, telling me she’s either on the phone with one of her friends, or she’s reading one of those stupid books she always has her head in.

If it weren’t for the fact Ronan is standing beside me as I drop the unconscious asshole into the grass, I would think he was up there.

He’s still finding his footing on this side of the business, and I don’t blame him. Although he wasn’t forced to kill an innocent man on his sixteenth birthday the way I was, Dad’s trials for my brother have been far crueler.

He’s trying to toughen him up, to force the goodness he got from our mother right out of him, but so far he’s failed.

And I can only assume that’s because he has a bright light to run to whenever the darkness threatens to swallow him whole.

I shake off the thought before it can go any further.

I’ve played this game with myself often enough that I know it only leads to me craving that same kind of connection, something I can never have.

And not just because my future wife is one of the most irritating human beings I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting.

I can never have what Ronan has with Chloe because I’ll stifle the goodness. I’ll extinguish the light with my darkness, and I’ll do it without even blinking an eye.

Not because I want to, but because I don’t know any other way to be anymore.

Little by little, my legacy has stolen the humanity from my soul, and there’s no going back to who I was before I was thrust into the darkness.

Ronan crouches beside the unconscious guy and checks the rope holding his wrists and feet to ensure he can’t run if he comes to.

Not that there’s anywhere to go.