Page 115 of Unholy Bonds

“I think so. I hope so.” The darkness in his voice made me walk closer to him. He pulled me down on his lap, wrapped his arms around me, and buried his face on my shoulder.

“Why?”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. He wanted to kill his father. He was thinking that if he killed his father, he might escape from his demons, but he was wrong. He just had to take a look at me. My demons never left me, even after my father’s death.

“So that I can kill him.”

There. For the first time, he wasn’t hiding from me.

“Do you think killing him would help you escape this darkness chasing you?” His body jerked underneath me, but he didn’t say anything.

“Was it The Strangler who killed Daphne Morgan?” he asked after a few seconds. He was changing the subject, and I let him.

I stood up from him and sighed. “Yes. It’s him.”

“I heard about it. Was it too hard for you to see that?” Ryden looked up at me, his eyes gentle, concerned.

“Of course. She… she was alive last night, and I think it’s because of me. I think he’s back in Detroit for me.”

I immediately wanted to take those words back, but there they were, out in the open. I didn’t know why I said it. The admission would only bring more questions, more questions I didn’t have answers for.

“What do you mean?” he growled the words out as his body went tight. I had seen him kill a man and never feared him, but now… now he looked truly dangerous. “What are you saying, Red? Why in the hell do you think that?”

“Because of this…” I had already dug this hole. Why not just jump the fuck in?

I slid the phone to him. His fingers curled around my phone like it was The Strangler’s neck.

“Why do you think it’s The Strangler?”

“Because he knows I’ve been hunting him.”

44

TRUTHS AND LIES

RYDEN

“I’ve been hunting him.” Hunting him? Words were coming out of her sexy as fuck lips, but I didn’t understand at first, and when I did, my ears rang. My heart was becoming black with rage. The need to burn everything down until only she and I remained was almost a physical ache. It took so much out of me to not lose it.

I took her phone, and everything in me went still when I read the first message and then another. There were a lot of them.

That sick fuck. How dare he play with my woman?

My fingers trembled. I wanted to find this bastard, and I wanted my knife against his skin until he was no more. Until he couldn’t be a threat to Yara. Every inch of my body burned, and the only need in me was to kill. This kill would be personal. This kill would be for my woman.

“You’re hunting him? What kind of insanity is that?” I asked, glaring at her.

I always knew she was insane, but this was more than insanity. This was a death wish.

“Why? Why would you do something like that? He’s a fucking serial killer.” I had this intense urge to shake her, but I couldn’t even move. She looked so pale in the overhead light and my heart—that stupid, problematic thing—became a mess.

“Because he killed my best friend.” Her voice was ice cold, and her eyes were empty. There was no trace of life in them, no feelings. I had seen that look quite a few times. In my own eyes.

“Yara?” She was playing with the edge of her sleeves, fatigue evident on her face. I ran my fingers down her back before pressing a kiss to her head. She shuddered. “Tell me, please.”

“I lied when I said it was a professional curiosity. It wasn’t. It was… it’s personal.”

“Personal how?”

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