Page 18 of Property of Bones

“You’ve got ten hours,” I say, stepping close enough for him to heed my fucking warning. “We’ll be watching.”

I don’t wait for a response. I already know he got the message loud and clear.

I fall in step behind Spike and Tank as they head back to the Charger.

“You headed back to the compound?” Spike asks as I swing a leg over my bike. “Crusher’s grilling burgers.”

“Got shit to do,” I grunt, already starting the engine. “Be back in a few.”

They don’t press. Just trade a look that says they know exactly where I’m headed, then climb in and drive off without another word.

Twenty minutes later, I’m back at Marv’s, the rumble of the traffic fading as I step into the back office. I punch in the code for the security feed, flipping through cameras until I find her.

Sunny.

She’s talking to a customer, laughing at something they said, that smile of hers lighting up the screen like it was made to cut through all the ugly in the world.

What the hell am I doing?

That woman is joy. Light. Hope.

She’s everything I lost a long time ago… everything I’m not allowed to want.

Even standing near me would cast a shadow over her.

And yet… I’m still watching. Still drawn to her like a damn moth to a flame.

“You should ask her to dinner,” a gravel-thick voice says from behind me as the office door creaks open.

“Shut it, Marv,” I growl, eyes locked on the screen. Sunny’s still smiling. Still shining. “You know better than most why I’d never do that.”

“Just because your old man was a monster doesn’t mean you are too.”

“I skin people alive,” I remind him. “And I laugh while doing it. If that’s not monstrous, I don’t know what is.”

Marv snorts, stepping inside. “You wanna talk monsters? Let’s talk about a man who kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl and kept her locked up for fifteen years in his basement. Raped her. Got her pregnant…three times. Then murdered her and blamed it on his own son… who, surprise surprise, also happened tobeher son.”

I go still.

The silence that follows is thick. Suffocating.

Marv lowers himself into the chair beside me, joints popping like old wood under pressure.

“You didn’t ask to be born from that,” he says quietly. “You didn’t choose what he did.”

My fists clench. I still can’t look at him. Can’t look away from her.

“I got his blood,” I whisper.

“You got his blood,” Marv agrees. “But you don’t got his soul.”

What Marv didn’t say was that he and my old man were best friends long before the monster showed his teeth. When I was born, my fourteen-year-old mother tried her best to raise me right. My father took me when I was five. Ripped me out of her life and claimed me as his own. I only saw her once a year after that on my birthday. It was the only reason I looked forward to it. One day. One smile. One breath of light in the darkness.

When I was fifteen, everything changed.

My old man told the cops I killed her.

Said I snapped. That I shot her.

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