Page 85 of Cruel Secrets

“I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”

Skyla sighs and moves to the window. I get up and follow her, watching as Dominic forces Matt to his knees in the snow.

Royce presses the gun to Matt’s forehead, the gunshot cracking through the morning, echoing off the surrounding trees.

His body slumps forward into the snow, lifeless eyes staring up at the skies.

“I’m going to go check my bandages,” Skyla says with a smirk. “Ellie is going to kill me if she gets here and finds out that I’m bleeding.”

“You can’t leave me alone with your brother. He wants to kill me.”

She shrugs and starts heading for the stairs. “He wants to kill a lot of people. Just try talking to him and you might find out he’s not so bad.”

“Skyla!”

With a dismissive wave, she takes the stairs two at a time, barely hiding the wince as she disappears from sight.

“Well, I think there are other matters we need to discuss,” Aiden says, appearing behind me.

“Could it wait until I have pants on?”

“I don’t think so.” Aiden crosses his arms, watching as Royce and Dominic drag the body to the back of a truck, hoisting it into the bed. “You see, this changes things. Does your brother know that you have a personal relationship with Royce?”

“You’re going to kill me either way, aren’t you?” I turn and face him, trying to steel every last nerve I have.

“Haven’t made up my mind on that yet. Depends on whether I think risking my relationship with my brother is worth it or not and what he sees in you.”

My mouth goes dry as I look at him, knowing that killing me is still on the table for him.

There isn’t the cold spark to his eyes that would be in Noah’s, though.

Instead, Aiden looks like he’s calculating a hundred different scenarios, wanting to be certain of the next move he makes and the three that come after it.

Royce walks back into the house as Dominic takes the hose to the bloody snow, washing it away and into the gutter down at the end of the road.

Aiden nods to him. “Now that that is handled, we have other matters we need to discuss.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the fact that the house here is no longer safe.” Aiden crosses his arms, still staring at me. “And you’re dating a woman who has a direct connection to the enemy, which is a problem for me, even if you don’t see it.”

Royce steps between me and his brother. “You’re going to learn to like it, and if you can’t, then we’re going to have a problem. Gia is not working for her brother, and she wants to get away from him, so if I were you, I would start talking to her like she can help us instead of hindering us.”

Aiden scoffs, pacing away from us. “I don’t care what you think she can do. We’re sending her and her daughter to Vermont, and you’re going to be coming back to New York with me.”

CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR

ROYCE

“Like hell.”I step closer to my brother, already thinking about returning the punch he gave me earlier. “You’re not going to be sending her to Vermont. You’re not going to take my family away from me.”

Aiden rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t seem to register what I said. Not at first anyway.

And then it dawns on him, eyes widening as he looks once more between me and Gia.

She bristles as she looks at him, hands curling into fists so tight I can see the white skin from where her nails are digging into her flesh. “What?”

He doesn’t get any closer, instead watching her through narrowed eyes, his mouth set in a thin line. “Family?”

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