Page 106 of The Business of Blood

I still had Jack. I was no closer to finding him, but he’d crept closer to me.

And that meant something.

But first, I had to confess. I had so many secrets. So many sins. I had to cast off the heavy burdens and make some sort of recompense, or the weight of it would crush me like some inconsequential vermin beneath guilt’s unrelenting boot heel.

I’d found that God was like the law—His reason for being to judge and punish you for your dastardly deeds. To warn others away from breaking long-standing tenets. In my life, He’d been more vengeful than benevolent.

But perhaps because I’d gone about it all wrong.

God, like the law, had a tendency to be merciful if a supplicant were willing to do two things.

Confess. And atone.

I could do both. It was time I unburdened my soul. I knew where bodies were buried. I knew the sins of so many others.

But I’d only confess my own.

I knocked on the imposing wooden door, not surprised to find it locked. The arch was taller and wider than most.

It’d have to be, I decided, to house who lived behind it. I knew the hour was early, that now was not the proper time for revelations, but if I didn’t unburden myself now, I’d explode.

The door opened, and a surprised breath released a fragrant cloud of smoke from the person on the other side. I shivered on the doorstep while he inspected me with eyes that glinted, his expression shifting from hard, to uncertain, to concerned.

And then, Inspector Grayson Croft took my elbow and pulled me inside his home.

I opened my mouth before I could change my mind and inhaled deeper than was necessary to speak seven words.

I need you to take my confession.

“I told her not to write to you,” he growled, less helping me out of my cloak than yanking it off me.

My lips slammed shut of their own accord. To whom was he referring? Had Inspector Croft not sent his own condolences?

I didn’t want to examine my feelings on that score, so I took in my surroundings while gathering the thoughts that had scattered like moths. I’d been mistaken. Inspector Croft’s dwelling resembled nothing close to a lair. If I were to pick a word for it, I’d choosecozy.

I wasn’t sure what to do with that information.

“You don’t have to do it,” he continued. Resuming his grasp on my elbow, he conducted me through the oddly feminine front parlor and down a hallway cluttered with paintings, portraits, and photos I suddenly ached to examine.

His home smelled like bread and vanilla.

“How do you know why I’ve come?” And was he, of all people, doing his utmost to talk me out of confessing?

In a strangely solicitous and almost careful gesture, he nudged me into a room done in dark blues and masculine leathers. Bookshelves lined every wall and were not so much orderly as well-used. A fire crackled almost diffidently in the hearth, and on a side table next to a high-backed leather chair, his half-smoked pipe rested next to an open book.

I’d been mistaken…about being mistaken…

Thiswas Grayson Croft’s lair.

“Amelia is just about as likely as you are to heed an edict. I told her not to bother you, not so soon after the death of your priest.” He didn’t so much as look at me as he said this. Instead, he bustled around the room in a decidedly un-Croft-like manner, tidying up.

“He wasn’t my priest,” I whispered around a knot of emotion as he pushed another chair close to the warmth of the fire.

“He was something to you.” He gestured for me to take a seat, and I did everything but collapse into the comfortable furniture.

Yes. Aiden had been everything to me once. I didn’t know what he was to me now. A mistake? Both my sweetest memory and my most terrible one. The keeper of my heart and the breaker of it.

My reason for being here.