Page 100 of Restitution

Kade crosses his arms. “I’m not watching my dad fuck her.”

“Keep watching,” Barry demands.

She tries to kiss Tobias, grinding in his lap, but he stands abruptly and knocks her on her ass. He’s heavily drugged, but he still has control. I shouldn’t be surprised, considering he’s Tobias, but I am. He should be knocked out by now.

Bernadette crawls back, but she stops when he grabs her jaw. He says something that makes her smile, and she’s licking her teeth and lips.

She gets into a position that would indicate she’s going to suck him off but starts thrashing in his hold as his grip on her tightens. I can almost hear the crack of her jaw as she releases inaudible screams with terrified eyes.

No one enters in time to stop Tobias from lifting her from her knees by her shattered jaw and slamming her back into the wall with brutal force. Once, twice, three times. Blood marks the wall where her head’s smacked into it.

She’s out cold as Tobias punches her right across the face and throws her on the floor.

“Shit,” Kade blurts out, looking at one of his team. “Where is my dad now? Is he still alive?”

The older man looks at me then opens another file and stands back.

The clip plays an unaired, pre-recorded news report. The reporter is standing in front of a cliffside, wind whipping at her hair as she addresses her audience.

“Officials have recovered a body from the car. The individual has been identified as convicted killer Tobias Mitchell. He escaped his institution in the US not long ago and has been on the run ever since. It seems the hunt for the psychopath has now come to an end. There will be more information in the coming days.”

31

STACEY

No one speaks as Aria rushes for her phone, dialling a number with flying fingers and pressing it to her ear while covering her mouth with a palm. She’s muffling a sob, her body shaking.

It’s a silent cry. A scream is trapped in her throat as the line rings. And rings. And rings.

It’s all we can hear in the silence of the room.

I glance over my shoulder to see Kade staring at the monitor, the screen paused on the reporter’s face, the banner text at the bottom mocking us about Tobias’s possible death.

It knocks the breath out of me, thinking it might be true. There’s a hole in my chest, and if I feel like thiseven though he wasn’t my father, then what the hell do his family feel?

Kade’s tapping his middle finger on the table with haunting slowness, his jaw clenching, his breaths steady but harshly exhaled through his nose.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Over and over again.Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

He’s thinking. The mind of a killer in overdrive. Dangerous. Deadly.

The footage Tobias and I saw of Kade draws my mind away from the present, and I feel like throwing up. I see him stalking his victims in alleyways and dragging them into darkness, stabbing them, leaving no trace behind so he’ll never be caught.

Driving over someone’s skull repeatedly because he stepped on his foot.

Tying rapists to chairs and carving the names of their victims into their skin.

Putting bullets into a man to finish a contract before fucking me beside the dead body.

Shooting a gang leader for touching my ass.

Pulling the trigger and nearly killing me.

Strangling.

Smashing his lethal fists into a face until its owner is unrecognisable.

Driving a knife into the skull of a woman for giving him a dirty look then leaving her body in a Russian river.