Page 114 of Reaper and Ruin

The girl shook her head sharply. “I’m older! By two minutes!”

I widened my eyes like that was quite the feat. “Wow. You were faster than him, huh?”

The boy frowned at me. “But she’s not faster anymore! I can beat her in a running race.”

“Only if you cheat!” she shot back at him.

My heart squeezed at their bickering. It took me right back to being in that little house with my family around me, the scent of coffee in the air, my wife humming along with the radio playing in the kitchen, the kids running around our feet, arguing witheach other while they got ready for school, and I got dressed for work.

Those were the things I’d missed most.

The silence in my house had been deafening ever since.

“You know who else is really fast?” I pointed at X. “His name is Knox.”

The kids both peered up at him. The boy cocked his head to one side. “I could beat you.”

X looked him up and down. “I dunno, kid. Your legs are pretty short.” He sat himself down on the edge of an armchair, so he was more eye height with the boy. “Want to know a secret? These guys don’t call me Knox. They call me X.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “Are you a superhero? Like X-Men? Is that why you’re fast and you have a special name?”

Levi snorted.

X shot him a glare then turned back to the kids. “You know what? I kind of am a superhero.”

“Explains your love of tight pants,” Levi muttered.

“Hey!” X scowled at him. “I wore Hendrix’s suit like, two times! It’s not my fault he has chicken legs and I work out!”

I squeezed my eyes shut, wondering if there would ever be a time in my life where things weren’t chaos.

But then I would take X and Levi bickering any day over the silence in my house.

I tried again to get the kids’ names. “So my superhero name is Whip, he’s X. That big guy over there with the drawing on his face? His superhero name is Reaper. And this beautiful lady here is—”

“Omelet,” X filled in.

The kids both squinted at him.

“Violetta,” I corrected. “But you can call her Violet.”

They both seemed less confused by that.

A tiny bit of the tension in the boy’s shoulders dropped away, despite the fact we were still standing in the middle of a murder scene. “Her name is Arianna, but I call her Ari.”

I held my hand out to her. “Nice to meet you, Arianna. Can I call you Ari too?”

She looked a little hesitant but took my fingers and nodded. “He’s Will.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Short for William?”

He nodded.

I grinned at him. “So we all have superhero names. That’s pretty cool.”

The little boy kept glancing over at Violet, and then back to me. “Is she okay?” he whispered.

I glanced up at Violet. She hadn’t moved. It was clear to me she was in shock, and we needed to get her out of here so Grayson could check her over.