Page 72 of Risky Passion

Alice Turnur. She’d been fifteen years old when she became an orphan and was dumped here, but she’d looked much younger.

Her picture was small, yellowing, and slightly faded, but her beauty still shone through. Her hair framed her delicate face, and her eyes held that same quiet strength I’d always admired. A tear spilled down my cheek as I ran my finger over the image, tracing her features like I could bring her back.

Alice. Sweet, fragile Alice.

Her father had destroyed her long before this place got the chance. Years of abuse at his hands had left her shattered, and when he finally snapped, killing her mother before turning the gun on himself, he’d made Alice an orphan.

But the abuse didn’t stop when she got here.

Not until I swore to protect her forever.

Alice could never kill anyone. Not even the fuckers who hurt her. She had too much light in her, too much kindness, even after everything she’d endured. I didn’t hold that moral ground. I didn’t have her softness or restraint.

I glanced at the skeleton slumped in the chair.

Bryon Baldock, the orphanage doctor. The man who was supposed to care for the children, but instead preyed on both boys and girls; he didn’t discriminate. He’d been the last man to ever touch Alice. The last man to steal pieces of her, she could never get back.

But he wasn’t justhermonster.

He came and went as he pleased, causing terror with every visit to Angelsong, breaking lives and leaving scars no one could see.

Until I’d trapped him in this room for eternity, ensuring he would never hurt anyone again.

I hoped his final days were pure hell. He’d deserved every minute of that agony.

Placing my hand on Alice’s photo, I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. For a moment, I let myself think of her, the way she used to hum while braiding my hair, the way she would laugh at all my dumb jokes, her quiet strength that had kept me going when I thought I couldn’t survive another day.

I opened my eyes, closed the yearbook, and turned my attention back to the boxes stacked along the walls. These records documented every sin, every horror, and every ruined life.

But nobody cared. Not the police. Not the system. Half of them probably knew exactly what went on here and chose to look the other way.

I couldn’t trust the system to do the right thing with this information back then, and I sure as shit couldn’t trust them now. Alice’s name would be in these reports, and the fucking media would twist her into aheadline, rip her life apart all over again, reduce her to a statistic. She deserved better than that. She deserved peace.

All the orphans did.

I would rather let it all burn.

And when the flames consumed it all, maybe Alice’s ghost, and all the others, might finally rest. Maybe even I could rest too. After all the killing was done, that is.

I pulled down another archival box, and as I tugged open the lid, dust swirled into the beam of the phone light like an angry ghost.

Baldock’s ghost.

Forcing myself to ignore that stupid thought, I reached for the first folder on the top of the box and my heart nearly stopped.

The name scrawled across the front of the manila folder was Fraser Madden.

It felt like someone had driven a knife straight into my chest.

I sucked in a shaky breath as the weight of his name hit me like a tidal wave. Fraser Madden . . . the name I’d given to my other boy. The child trafficking victim I’d been forced to look after. The boy I should never have grown attached to, but who wormed his way into my heart until I loved him just as fiercely as I loved Thomas Wexler.

They may not have had my DNA, but they were my boys, and I loved them with everything I had.

The real Fraser Madden had been abandoned as a baby, just like me. He was only nine years old when they found his body.

Nine!

He’d been such a wonderful boy, full of life, funny, clever, a little bit naughty, but just enough to make you laugh instead of scold. His smile could light up the darkest room, and his high-pitched giggle was infectious.

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