The air had sizzled around him, power coming off of him in waves as he’d rounded the car to stand beside their father.

I’d felt a tug in my gut toward the elder Bennett. He was dangerous too. I couldn’t have explained how I knew, but I felt it. I could taste it. Brooke’s father wasn’t the more dangerous of the two. Kai was. I couldn’t take my eyes from his face. And he knew it—and how I felt that too, I had no idea.

He’d known the effect he had on me, and it wasn’t normal, but he didn’t care. A wave of embarrassment washed over me, heating my neck and cheeks, and it was only then that I tore my gaze away to bring Brooke closer to me. I wasn’t sure if I was comforting her or myself.

“Papa,” she’d rasped out, her body stiff in my arms.

“My daughter.”

My skin had crawled when I heard his voice.

I’d tried to check my reaction, but when I looked away, my gaze skimmed over Kai, and his nostrils flared. He knew what I felt in response to their father; I couldn’t hide it. Instead, I lowered my head and held still. I was a statue, the way I’d been when my father paced the house, in the moments his anger left their bedroom.

“Dude!” A hand waved in front of my face.

I crashed back to reality. It left a sour taste in my mouth.

I was here in the cabin, not at the school. Not on those steps. Here, Cowtown. Calgary. I wasn’t there anymore, but man, I felt trapped in the past.

“Riley.” Carol’s head turned as she spoke to someone. “She’s out, like out out. It’s weird.”

Carol stepped backward as Blade came forward.

I pulled myself out of my memories and gazed at them, standing together as they regarded me, their arms crossed over their chests.

“I’m fine. Sorry.” My insides trembled. I coughed and tried to steady my voice. “I mean it. I just got…shaken for a bit.”

Blade grunted. “I’ll say.” He went back to his computer and turned off the news a second later.

They stared at me.

“You know the Bennett mafia family?” Carol asked, speaking almost as gently as Mrs. Patricia had all those years ago.

That was the crux of it all. Even all those years ago, I’d known who they were.

There’d been another time, one I didn’t piece together until later when I’d heard my father speak of them, and he’d been scared. He’d been on the phone in his study, and I’d been passing by the door. I’d heard him and stopped.

I’d never heard my father scared, and he was terrified that day.

I’d pressed my ear to the door, and I hadn’t moved until he’d ended his phone call. I didn’t know who the Bennett mafia were at that point. I just knew the name Bennett made my dad nervous, and I’d figured that was a good thing to know. A very good thing to know.

Maybe I should’ve put two and two together the first day I met Brooke, but it hadn’t been like that.

Brooke was bubbly. She was one of those girls who could’ve had anything or anyone, even at that age, and she was still nice. That amount of power corrupted a person, but not her.

Even though she was an extrovert and lively and opinionated and loud, she was warm and mostly down-to-earth. Okay, maybe not down-to-earth, but she was kind. That overrode everything.

She was humble. She was extra, but she was humble.

That had said so much to me, even back then, and as I looked at the black screen where her brother’s image had been not long ago, I wondered if she had remained true to herself until she went missing.

I felt Carol and Blade waiting for me to talk. Lowering my head, like I’d done all those years ago, I started to explain. “For a year and a half of my life, before everything went to shit, Brooke was my best friend.”

? ? ?

It was two-fifteen in the morning, and I stared at my roommates.

They were curled up in blankets, sleeping in the living room. Blade had taken the chair, his long legs resting on the coffee table. Carol was twisted in her blanket on the couch across from me. A dribble of drool glistened on her chin, and her hair had fallen over her face.

They’d sat and listened to me as I told them everything.

What I’d said wasn’t a total revelation. Blade knew I knew Brooke Bennett. They just hadn’t known how much I cared for her or how much I loathed her brother. I’d told them about the day her brother and father came to see her.

I’d told them how Brooke’s father took her into the park, how she didn’t want to go with him.

How they’d talked.

How Kai Bennett had stared at me as we both waited, his eyes lifeless and cold.

I told them how I’d been scared to move, to look at him, to make a sound. I’d felt the same fury and violence from him that I’d seen from my father, and it had almost made me piss myself.

And then I told them how as I stood there, I’d heard Brooke cry out.

She’d folded to the ground, sobbing, as her father stood over her.

He’d just watched—watched as his little girl, his only girl, fell apart in front of him, and he hadn’t made a move to comfort her.

I’d moved to try to go to her, but Kai had blocked me.

“She’s fine,” he’d said, like I was trying to bat a mosquito.

I’d hated both him and his father with the same passion in that moment. Unable to hold my anger back, I’d glared at Kai.