Page 30 of My Cruel Salvation

“Yeah, well if you won’t tell on me, I won’t tell on you.”

Alex shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded. “I won’t.”

For a moment, they both stood in silence. Then Marco said, “She was a sweet girl who grew up into a kind woman. She deserved better.”

Alex tilted his head, studying the older man. Beside him, Marco shrugged. “Just saying the truth in front of you and Aurelia and God. But it stays here, right? Just between us.”

“Just between us,” Alex said. He drew in a breath. “I meant what I said. I didn’t protect her from him because I couldn’t. But someday, I’ll avenge her.”

“And I meant what I said,” Marco retorted. “That’s a big promise to make. But I hope it’s one you can keep.” He nodded at the grave. “Say your goodbyes and get home before someone sees you. And for the record, I wasn’t ever here.”

“Okay,” Alex said. As he watched Marco walk away, he saw someone else standing behind a nearby gravestone. A short, heavyset boy he recognized immediately—Manuel Espinoza. Manny. Aurelia’s brother.

He waited, expecting Manny to come over, but the boy just turned and walked the opposite direction. Alex frowned, but brushed it off. Manny had always been a strange kid, and he seemed to have gotten stranger after Aurelia’s death. Not that Alex saw him much. After Aurelia died, The Wolf had sent Manny away to live with one of his second cousins, a quiet, skinny man named Romeo Duarte who ran “errands” with Joseph Blackstone, an ass-kissing creep who was also one of the up-and-comers in The Wolf’s operation.

Manny had cried and cried, but Alex would have given anything to move out of his father’s house. Manny didn’t have a clue that he’d been blessed with the only good thing that came from Aurelia’s death.

With a sigh, he blinked away the tears that threatened as he once again looked at Aurelia’s grave. “Goodbye,” he whispered, then added, “I’ll keep my promise.”

He would never speak of it again, but Alex knew he would always remember that promise. One he’d silently made to all the women in his father’s life. His own mother. The wives who would come after Aurelia. The girlfriends, too. Because The Wolf would devour them all.

His father thought there was no price for hurting women and scaring children.

But there was.

And now that Alex was no longer a child, he relished the day when he could teach his father that lesson in person.

Chapter Thirteen

The present…

Devlin stood in the condo unit’s entrance hall, his body numb. It was a crime scene now. No longer Tracy’s home. Now it was the place she’d died.

The place where she’d been murdered.

And, dammit, the place where Ellie had been threatened.

He realized his hands were clenched at his sides and forced himself to relax. This wasn’t a time for emotion—that could come later. Right now, he needed to assess the situation. To learn what he could.

And to start to plan his next steps.

Centered again, he looked down at the chalk outline in the tiled entryway. Adhesive tags on the wall identified the single bullet’s impact. It had gone through her skull, killed her instantly, then lodged in the wall. The ballistics team had retrieved it last night.

They’d also retrieved Tracy’s eye. It had been gouged out after she was dead, then placed in a small gift box by the sick fuck who’d killed her.

An eye for an eye.

Now, the entire Laguna Cortez police force was working round the clock to get to the bottom of the murder.

Devlin drew in a breath, then moved toward the living room where Ellie’s friend, Detective Lamar Gage, sat tense beside her. A large man who had once been a child star, he tended to carry himself with confidence, filling whatever space he occupied. Not today. Today, he seemed lost inside himself, and his dark skin had gone ashen with grief.

When Devlin and Ellie had arrived less than an hour ago, well after dark, Lamar had been pacing. He’d been on the scene for hours, and he’d still been barking orders, a river of motion churning with manic purpose, as if he’d fall over if he had to stand still. Then he’d seen Ellie, and he’d let the weight of grief bear down on him. He’d collapsed against her. She’d shot Devlin a look filled with infinite pain, then led the detective to the sofa.

“They were getting serious,” Tamra Danvers, his longtime friend and the DSF’s publicity director, had said, stating what Devlin already knew. Grief lined her face, and the one gray streak in her hair had seemed more pronounced. “He feels helpless.”

Devlin had only nodded. What more could he say? He felt helpless, too. More, he felt scared. Not an emotion he liked to cop to, but it was the truth. Because how the hell would he survive if that chalk mark had been outlining El’s body?

He wouldn’t, and as far as Devlin was concerned, that meant that Lamar Gage was one of the strongest men he knew.