Page 104 of Deviant Knight (Knight's Ridge Empire 4)

“She loved it there. She could get her fix on every corner and find guys to make sure she could afford to pay all the dealers.”

“She used to turn tricks while you were there?”

A bitter laugh falls from her lips.

“Of course she did.”

Silence descends between us. I’ve got a million questions about her life before she appeared in Knight’s Ridge, but I swallow them down, either too afraid to know the truth or suspecting she won’t even want to answer.

And if she did, I know that it would end with me killing the woman responsible.

My main question, though… Is Emmie as untrustworthy as her mother, or is her mother throwing her under a bus?

I want to say it’s the latter. But as they say, the apple never falls far from the tree.

Just look at me and my father. Two peas in a pod. He’s trained me to be his perfect soldier, his perfect heir. Who’s to say Cora hasn’t done the exact same thing with Emmie?

Because she’s not this good a liar, a little voice says.

“Did she hurt you? Did they ever hurt you?” I ask in the end, needing to know if there’s any other motherfucker out there who needs to be taught a lesson.

“Why, what would you do about it?”

“Kill them,” I spit without missing a beat.

Her eyes widen in shock, her lips opening and closing as she fails to find a response.

In the end, she just shakes her head.

“I might have been clueless for most of my childhood, but everyone around me knew who my dad was. Who my grandad was. Thankfully, no one laid a hand on me.”

“Good,” I say, although I can’t help feeling a little disappointed. How better to get her to trust me than to kill someone who wronged her? “Where do you think she’s gone?” I risk asking.

She shrugs. “Run away with her pimp? Her dealer? Dead in a ditch somewhere? Who the fuck knows? Wherever she is, she’s clearly forgotten I ever existed.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” I whisper. Her mother hasn’t forgotten her, because she’s trying to pin her crimes on her.

Fuck. I really hope Emmie isn’t tangled up in the middle of all this.

She can’t be. She just fucking can’t be.

“Theo?” she eventually says. It’s been so long that I started to wonder if she’d fallen asleep.

“Yeah?”

“Can you be honest with me for once?”

“I can try.”

“Why are you really here? Why have you really been creeping into my bedroom at night and watching me sleep and…” She trails off, making me wonder if she’s figured out what I’ve been doing. Well, other than spying on her, of course.

“Because I have to,” I answer honestly.

Her brows wrinkle.

“Because being anywhere else feels wrong.”

“Th—”

“I’m sorry about your mum, Em. You deserve better.”

Cupping her jaw, I drop my lips to hers once more to attempt that kiss again.

This time, when I part hers and lick at her tongue, she doesn’t freak out. Instead, she leans into me, wrapping her hands around my back and sliding us closer together.

It’s the most painful kind of hell, because I don’t deserve it. Any of it.