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She was a frumpy middle-aged white woman with nondescript brown hair. Nondescript everything, really. I caught on instantly why she’d taken such exception to an exceptional girl like Nova.

I was dressed in teacher business casual, my expression blank and professional as I asked, “Are you Laura Monroe?”

Her brows raised. “I am. And who are you?”

“I’m Carter North. I’m one of Nova’s teachers. May I come in?”

She didn’t look pleased about it, but she moved aside and said, “I guess, if you insist. You know, she doesn’t even live here anymore. She ran off again. Not our fault.”

I felt my blank expression slip as contempt filled me. “Is your husband around?”

She sneered. “He’s unemployed, as usual, so yeah, he’s usually around. I’ll go get him. He should handle this. She’s not even my blood.”

She disappeared and I hoped that was the last I ever saw of her because I wasn’t sure I could be civil to that awful woman for even one more second.

She was gone for a while, which was curious because their rundown house was tiny. She couldn’t have had a hard time finding him.

As I waited, sounds drifted to me. It sounded like there were at least a few small children in one of the three closed doors.

A man in a dirty white tank with a beer belly hanging out stumbled out of that room at one point.

I eyed him up. Something about him set me off immediately. Somehow I instantly knew this was not her uncle. Perhaps he was just too disgusting to be a blood relative to her, perhaps it was him coming out of the room with the crying children, but somehow I knew.

He almost flinched when he caught sight of me, and I didn’t like that either. He felt instantly threatened by me, and he should have.

“Who are you?” I asked him bluntly.

“Erm, I’m Laura’s brother. Who are you?”

“I’m Carter North, one of Nova’s teachers.” His flinch at her name made my fists clench.

“Is she in trouble?” he asked.

“Not at all. This is a welfare check. I’m here to see why her relatives put her out on the streets when she’s still in high school.”

“She’s eighteen,” he said defensively. “And it was her idea to leave. You know, she just took off one day without a word.”

I stared at him until he started fidgeting and looked away. “And why, I suppose, would she do something like that?” It was an accusation. Every instinct I had told me this creep had something to do with her feeling the need to leave. “Where did she sleep while she was here?” I asked him.

He wouldn’t look at me now. “On the sofa. My family has the spare room. Listen, I’ve got to go. You looking for Ed? I’ll go get him.”

He took off but went right back into the same bedroom so I knew he was just avoiding me now.

I couldn’t seem to help myself. I was knocking hard on that door before I even made a conscious decision.

He opened it, looking more scared than ever. I grabbed him by the collar, gripping it into a handle, and shutting the door behind him so his family wouldn’t see.

He wasn’t a small man, but he was small enough, and I had him up against the wall, my face close to his, without even a struggle.

“If I find out,” I gritted out at him slowly, making deadly eye contact the entire time, “that you laid one fucking finger on her, I will make you pay for it, do you understand?”

He was so terrified, he was drooling, and I knew I’d hit a target square on. My instincts had been screaming at me since the second I set eyes on him. “And if you ever think of so much as glancing in her direction in the future, it will be considerably worse than that. Are we clear?”

He managed to nod.

I let him go, and he sagged against the wall. “Stay the fuck away from her,” I snarled at him. “And get out of my sight.”

He had some sense because he disappeared with impressive speed.