Insatiable (The Edge of Darkness, #1)

by Leigh Rivers

He was fine with watching me kill. Watching me torture people who’d wronged them. He was fine with weaponising me, a rage-filled kid desperate to keep his family safe, blackmailing me so I can’t ever stop.

I want to kill him the most. His time will come.

Here he stands with a smile, in a silk robe, asking me if his wife kept me up all night. I want to kick him back down the stairs and make him choke on his fucking boiled eggs. My shoulder hits his arm as I storm past him, down the steps two at a time until I reach my car, where it takes me ten minutes to control my breathing.

I might not fear much, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need my own security team. They’re always there. Out of sight but ready for anything thrown my way.

Bernadette doesn’t know about them obviously, because they’re there to protect me from her twisted games. She likes to play them when I piss her off – randomly sending someone to try to beat the shit out of me or shoot me somewhere non-fatal. Everyone she’s sent so far has turned up dead, without the need to use my guards. If she didn’t want her men killed, then she shouldn’t have sent me away to different countries for intense training in weapons and martial arts.

My team doesn’t know how extreme it gets with Bernadette and her husband, and if I can help it, I’ll keep it that way. They’re my soldiers – one word that I’m abused, and they’ll open fire and lose their lives. I have hundreds beneath me, but Bernadette has ten...

The sun is starting to rise as Stacey’s estate comes into view, and when I stop outside her house, I hide the gun back in my glovebox.

I look up at her window; the curtains are closed but for the small gap she usually leaves in the middle, so the sun can wake her. Despite what happened, I’m drawn to her so much that I’ve climbed up to her window four times over the last two years and watched her sleep. Even contemplated sneaking in once. I could do it now, right? Fuck, no. I need to repress all these impulsive thoughts.

I turn down my music, pull out my phone and stare at her contact details. Freckles. She’s been blocked for nearly two years. I doubt she even attempted to message me within that time period. She probably deleted my number and moved on to the next sad bastard to poison. I stare at the last...

Me: I’ll race you. Freckles: I always win, remember? Only hours later, the messages went from cute and playful to desperate and pleading. Freckles: Please answer the phone, Kade. Let me explain. Freckles: I want to fix this. Please. Loads of missed calls, and, a week later, she says: Freckles: Luciella said you moved out. Where did you go? Please talk to me. I love you.

That last part made me go feral. I’d taken my first line of coke that night and gone on a four-day bender with Base in America. I love you. Nope, she didn’t love me. She had no idea what love was. I blocked her right after I typed several responses without sending any. It was only days later that Bernadette approached me outside of the dance studio as I contemplated going in, and I wish so fucking much I’d walked away from her false offer.

Gritting my teeth, raging at myself for reading the messages again – something I’ve done a billion times while off my head on drugs or drowning myself in booze – I do the unthinkable. I unblock her number.

My blood is roaring in my ears, fingers trembling as I change her contact name and type a message to her. Me: I’m outside. There. Simple and straight to the point. No need to overcomplicate it. After two years of keeping my distance, I broke my rules by following her to the front gate, by watching her dance, by approaching her a...