Prologue
Ryker
Four years ago
There was no excuse for the things I’d done. Nothing I could say to make them right. In the end, it would all be a lie anyway. I liked the feel of my knife slicing through skin and found beauty in the way blood poured onto the floor to spread like motor oil. I liked them too much to regret them, and I’d do them all over again.
To find her.
Despite all my crimes, and all my sins, I knew even then that nothing could compare to the crime of stalking Calla Latour. Following her husband came easy, even if it meant I had to work harder to stay hidden.
They frowned upon watching the police.
But stalking his innocent wife because he decided the simple life with white picket fence just wasn’t enough for him? That was a crime worthy of the death sentence. It was a crime I knew I could never justify to myself.
Especially since she quickly became an addiction. I felt her burning in my veins as if I'd shot her up like a drug.
A woman like Calla was all good, all sunshine and light. I lived my life in the shadows where I belonged. But somehow it felt like my shadows changed when I first set eyes on her. Like my shadows became her shadows. Calla was a guiding light in my otherwise bleak existence, and I couldn’t turn away.
It didn't matter that she spent most of her time in yoga pants, with her white blond hair in a ponytail, looking more and more exhausted with every hour that passed. Something about those big, dark blue eyes called to me in a way that I couldn’t explain.
But I kept my distance. Because if I got too close, I would take Calla for my own. I owed everything to the Bellandi family. Her husband Chad would be useful to Matteo if he proved himself.
Very useful.
It wasn't every day that a Police Lieutenant wanted to join the Bellandi payroll, intending to make evidence disappear or stop it from being collected.
So I watched her. I made sure she wasn't meeting with anyone on her husband's behalf. Even though I knew from the first moment I followed her that the only crooked thing she had going was her smile.
She walked through the park, pushing her two-year-old son Axel in the stroller and willing him to stay asleep. She looked pained doing it, as if the toddler just never slept or gave her a moment's peace. Judging from the look on her face and the way I’d watched her snuggle with him on the couch the entire night before, I suspected it might be true. Her husband had come home after dinner, greeted her briefly, and gone up to their bed to sleep peacefully under the covers while she handled Axel.
She was too good for him. Too good for both of us.
I stayed a few paces behind her, feigning disinterest as she made her way down the path in the park near their house. The fresh air seemed to help calm Axel, as it was already their second stroll through the park for the day.
The stroller veered to the right suddenly, something shifting, so it tilted to the side. She tried to put it right, but it woke Axel anyway. Groaning, she dropped her head for a moment before she bent down to inspect the wheel. I couldn't see what happened from my spot behind them, but the way Calla buried her face in her hands and took out her phone was sign enough that something was wrong. She typed a number in, putting it to her ear as she reached down and grabbed her son from the stroller.
She bounced him rhythmically while she spoke to whoever she'd called for help—her face looking more and more harried with every second. When she finally hung up, she turned a smile to her son and shushed him before she spoke to him.
With every second she waited, her body slumped more and more. The weight of her two-year-old exhausted her, and I could practically see the way her back pained her when she tried to straighten out.
At 5'3", she was far too small to be holding Axel for lengthy periods of time like that. Yet she did it anyway, never even trying to set him down as he snuggled into her side desperately.
With a muttered, "Fuck," I knew I couldn't watch her suffer. Knew in that moment, I'd do anything to make her life just a little easier. It would end badly, there was no way approaching and talking to her would end well for me or her.
But I did it anyway.
I stepped out of the shadows of the trees, making myself visible as I walked along the path more noticeably. "Excuse me," I said, and even to me my voice sounded rough. I didn't talk much, avoided it when I could. When I was on a hunt or doing surveillance, I could go days without ever speaking a word.
I tried not to wince, tried to give her the friendliest smile I could manage. But I wasn't friendly. I didn't know how to be. I'd lost everything that made me human a long time ago.
I cleared my throat. "Do you need some help?"
She spun around, fixing that deep blue gaze on me so suddenly it was like a punch to the gut. My body stilled as my world spun, focus narrowing down on the flush that spread over her pretty cheeks and the way her pursed little mouth tipped into a blinding, ever-so-slightly crooked smile. She sucked back a sharp intake of breath that seemed to echo the raging in my blood. As if she could feel the same inexplicable urge I did, the need to claim and take and make her mine.
Those blue eyes glittered in the sunshine, my world narrowing down to the way they felt on mine. To the reminder of the kick to the teeth she’d provided from the very first moment I laid eyes on her through her living room window the day before.
"You don't mind?" she asked, but her body sagged with relief.
"Let me take a look," I agreed, going to the stroller and squatting down. Her eyes felt warm on my back, heating the chilled skin like the rays of the sun itself. I didn't imagine Calla saw many men like me in her sheltered life.
It should stay that way.
She averted her eyes as her teeth bit into her bottom lip with another flush of her cheeks. "Thank you so much for this," she sighed. "My husband is on his way, but it can be hard for him to get away from work," she explained. I resisted the urge to laugh at her attempt to let me know there was a husband in the picture. Under normal circumstances, it would have been smart. Dissuading interest early on could only benefit her, but she should have known that a man like me could take whatever he wanted. Married or not.
"It's no problem. Your boy looks like he's having a rough go of it," I grunted, finding the part where the tire had come off the rim.
"He's teething," she responded. "These teeth will be the death of me. He's usually a calm boy, but something about this time has him miserable." She wiggled her nose on his, making him squeal with laughter even as he clung to her. "Don't they, Cookie Monster?" she asked him.
I snapped the tire back onto the rim, grateful the solution came so quickly. I needed to get away from her, put distance between us before it was too late to turn back. The sound of her laughing in response to her boy's joy was something I couldn't handle. Not if I wanted to have any chance of leaving her alone.
I straightened, and the position put me closer to her than I meant to be. As my eyes slid down over her face, my gaze settled on the thumping of the pulse in her delicate neck as she stared up at me.
Axel broke my moment of fixation when he reached out his arms, straining toward me while Calla tried to contain him. "I'm so sorry," she laughed. "He isn't usually so friendly."
A boy after my own heart.
I held out my hands, lifting him under the armpits and out of Calla's arms. She looked panicked for a brief second, but then relief crossed her face as the weight left her back. I stared at the little boy in my arms, at the chocolate brown hair he'd inherited from his father, but his mother's blue eyes shone back from his face. His little hand reached up, touching the scar through my eyebrow in confusion before he laughed and punched my nose.