Page 108

Whoever had sent this had been at my front door. While we slept inside.
The doorbell rang, and I screamed. Burning-hot coffee sloshed over the rim of the mug, cascading over my hand onto the floor tiles.
Vaughn came thundering down the stairs so quickly it was like he’d been shot out of a cannon. “Roach!” he shouted at the bottom, before spotting me in the kitchen. “Shit! Are you all right?”
He rushed into the room, took one look at my hand, and cringed. He gently led me over to the kitchen sink and turned the water on, so he could hold my hand underneath the cold stream. “What happened?
The doorbell rang again, and Vaughn glanced over his shoulder at it, then back at me. “Keep that hand there, okay? That burn doesn’t look too bad but still worth keeping it under the water for a bit.”
My skin was an angry red color.
I’d barely even noticed the sting. All I could do was stare at the card, sitting innocently on the countertop.
But before I could tell Vaughn about it, he had the door open, and there was a buzz of conversation from the entryway. When he didn’t immediately let them in, I assumed it was a salesperson and went back to tending to my burn. It wasn’t bad enough to need a dressing, but a bit of burn cream might take the pain out of it. I rifled through a couple of cupboards, wondering where Kian had stashed the first aid kit.
“Roach.”
I pulled my head out of the cupboard. “Yeah?”
Vaughn’s mom stood beside him; a clear glass baking tray filled with lasagna in her arms. She bit her lip worriedly, glancing up at the policeman standing next to her.
“Detective Richardson,” I practically sang, voice full of fake sunshine. “Otherwise known as Detective Dickhead. I was thinking you’d forgotten all about me. But no, here you are, ready to ruin my day with your scowling presence. How lovely.”
My nickname taunt didn’t bother the cocky prick. “I’d like to have a word with you, Miss Kemp.”
I didn’t know where to look. At Vaughn, who had panic in his eyes. At Riva, who was probably wishing her son had never met me. Or at the detective, who was as smug as the cat who’d got the cream.
“I just wanted to drop off these leftovers…” Riva’s sharp-eyed gazed moved from her son to me. “Should I call a lawyer? I have a good one.”
I shook my head quickly, trying to downplay the entire situation, even though my gut knew this couldn’t be good.
There were so many reasons a cop could be on my doorstep right now. I didn’t even dare open my mouth for fear of admitting to something. “Call Liam,” I said to Vaughn. “His number is in my phone.”
But the detective shook his head. “No need for that. You don’t have to say a word. I’ll do all the talking.”
I forced my face to remain neutral. “Very well then. Get on with it. We have things to do.”
But on the inside, I was mentally running through the list of reasons why this detective would be standing at my door at eight in the morning.
He was here to arrest me for murdering Hugh.
Or he’d found a new way to pin my mother’s murder on me.
Or he was going to tell me Kian’s body had been found in a ditch somewhere.
I swallowed thickly, fighting to regain my composure.
Richardson rocked back on his heels. “A well-respected doctor and family man has turned himself into the police, claiming to have held you against your will and raped you.”
I didn’t react to the blunt way he’d announced it for everyone in the room to hear, zero compassion for what I might have gone through.
Riva gasped and put her hand on my arm, holding it tight. Her eyes watered. “Is that true?”
I lifted my chin. I wasn’t the same woman I’d been when Detective Richardson and I had last gone head-to-head. I’d been barely a shell of my normal self back then, but day by day, I’d been learning how to come back from that place. How to rise from the darkness that had threatened to bury me. The one that had kept me small and vulnerable.
Fang and Vaughn and Kian had helped build me back into the woman I’d once been.
I was a fucking warrior.