Page 16 of Deviant Reign (Knight's Ridge Empire 6)

“What’s going on?” Piper asks, looking between the three of us.

“Someone ran me off the road and—”

“You were meant to bring her home to me,” D barks out, his voice low and deadly as he takes a step toward me, his fists curled tightly at his sides.

“I know. I was. We just needed to stop to—”

“To what? What could possibly be more important than bringing her home, Cirillo?”

I blow out a long breath and drop my head into my hands, pushing my fingers into my hair and pulling until I realise my massive fucking mistake when the pain from my wound makes my eyes fucking water.

“I found her in the Wolves den in Lovell.”

He glares at me before looking up at the ceiling as if he’s praying for strength.

“She’d been taking acid. She was off her face.”

Slowly, Dawson lowers his head. His face is a mask of fury and he directs it right at me.

“Because of you,” he spits out. “She was off her face, trying to forget, because of you.”

I swallow roughly, more than aware that his words are true.

“What happened at school yesterday, Cirillo? Why was she suspended? Why did she run in the first place?”

“I know, D. I fucking know,” I bark out, pushing from the sofa so I’m on equal footing with him. “But I had nothing to do with this. I was doing the right thing. I was taking her to get stitched up, and then I was bringing her home to you.”

“Stitched up?” he gasps, the blood draining from his face.

“It was just a graze. Unlike the motherfucker who had his hands on her,” I mutter.

His lips part, mimicking a goldfish, but he must decide not to comment on that and instead focuses on the issue at hand.

“Okay, so…” He scrubs his hands over his head before focusing back on me again. “You were run off the road?”

“Yeah. It was a black SUV. Blacked-out windows. I had no clue who was driving. When I finally lost control, we came off the road. Flipped a few times, I think.” I shake my head, desperately trying to remember what happened between coming off the road and waking up with her gone. “I got knocked out.” I point to my head. “When I came to, she was gone. No fucking sign of her.”

“Her phone?”

“Still in the car in her bag. Dead.”

“Fuck,” Dawson hisses, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

Piper rushes over to him.

“We’ll find her, Dawson. We will.”

She sounds so confident, I almost believe her.

When he finally lowers his arms, his face is full of anger and determination.

He looks like the brutal Reaper he no longer seems to have a desire to be.

But much like me, it runs through his veins, and I already know that he’ll raise hell to get her back.

“I’m going to kill any motherfucker involved in this.”

“You’ll need to beat me there then.”