Restitution (The Edge of Darkness, #3)

by Leigh Rivers

We aren’t together – haven’t been for a while – but Stacey is my girl. Mine.

I close my eyes as more tears slip free, and I try to control my breathing as I reach up to the buckle. My fingers tremble as I fail to pull it free twice before finally tugging the leather from the loops. The man snatches the belt before I can drop it, and I gasp as he wraps it around my neck, slots the leather through the buckle then tightens it till it settles against my throat.

The guards seem to be happy, so they pat his shoulder and tell him to enjoy his first night. The door opens and closes, then I hear a beep. I let out a choked, strangled sound as he lets go of the belt so I can breathe.

Hands grab at my face, forcing me to look up into the eyes of my new master. Tobias Mitchell.

My lips part, all my fear washing away as I manage, “To-Tobias?” Kade’s father grabs the blanket right next to us, wraps it around me, then pulls me in for a hug I didn’t realise I needed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You’re okay. You’re safe with me,” he says softly as he strokes my hair, letting me cry into his chest. “I found you, little one.”

“You are also my priority. I would have always hunted for you to the ends of the fucking earth, little one.

And I never thought I’d say this, and forgive me, Aria Miller, but to be safe and sound in Tobias Mitchell’s hold is a dream I never want to wake up from. I don’t want to let go.

Chris can’t get me, because I’ll be dead. You’re fucking dead to me. I’m dead to me too. I’m not scared.

If Stacey ever lets me hold her hand again, will she feel all the death I’ve caused?

She’d be disgusted with who I am now. Especially when she sees the scar from the corner of my mouth to the middle of my chest.

If she ever asks me how many people I’ve killed, do I lie? Do I admit that I’ve lost count? That I ...

My girl. Even when faced with the worst kind of horror, she fucking fought. I didn’t think it was possible to love her more than I already do, but I do.

Archie made comments that resulted in me biting his ear off. One-eared Archie, the prick.

“You have to admit, it’ll make for awkward dinner-table chat when I’m married to your sister. Do you think your dad will snap me in half when he finds out I’ve made both his offspring come?”

I shake my head. He’s fucking insane. A ruthless killer when we’re working together, usually getting jobs done a lot faster than me, but then he’s a goofy prick that has heart eyes for my sister.

He’s like the sun shining into a ditch full of dead bodies.

Stacey was pregnant, was raped, and you left her. Her dad died a few months later, right? How can you lie there and declare war on the world when you treated her like that?”

“I take it you loved her.” Loved. Past tense. The way he says the word almost makes me flinch.

I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving her. I don’t know how to not love her. Not a day goes by that I don’t despise myself for leaving her.

“She was everything to me. I think she still is,” I say quietly, frowning to myself at how honest I’m being. Then I hate myself for saying think. “No, she is still everything to me.”

“I’ll fall to my knees and beg for forgiveness the next time I see her.”

“I’d rather die of an infection in my chest than behave for you. Wait, did you get even uglier? Unlucky, Archie-pops. I find shoving a bag over her face helpful when she’s being a greedy whore for my cock. You’re not very good at pleasing her, are you?”

He’s a psychopath. An actual one – not just a madman with crazy, obsessive tendencies that people label as a psycho. He thinks differently.

“Um, hello?” “Ah, Freckles. It’s been a while since I heard your voice.” My lungs stop working, and I’m not certain I’m even blinking as my hand grabs at the bed sheets beneath me. “K- Kade?”

For a split second, things start to brighten. Even a smile pulls at my lips. “Are you okay?” I ask when he says nothing. “Where are you?” I gulp as he remains silent, and my voice betrays me as it breaks. “Kade?” “Stand up.” Frowning, I look around the room. “What?” “I said…” He pauses as I hear metal clanking. A gun loading? “Stand the fuck up.”

My entire body stiffens when I see the red dot shining against the door. He’s aiming into the room? What is he doing? My lips move, but no sound comes out.

“Stand up,” he snaps. “I won’t tell you again.” “No,” I croak, my face twisting. Is this really happening? “Are you scared?” he whispers, amusement in his voice. But I don’t reply. I can’t.

“You know the best part about accepting kill contracts? It’s the chase. The adrenaline that comes from knowing someone is terrified, running, hoping they see the next day. I’m going to make you run. And I don’t mean the way I did before you whored yourself for me at the party.” He inhales deeply, taking a drag of his smoke. “I’m giving you a day to run. Make it exciting for me. Because once I ...

“You don’t mean any of that,” I say quietly, standing and reaching for the door handle. I need to get to Barry or Tobias. “I want to help you, Kade. Please let me help you.” “Don’t fucking move,” he snaps. “Stay exactly where you are.”

I go ramrod straight, my eyes wide as I turn around, looking down to see the red dot on my chest. “You won’t hurt me.” “Even from a distance, I can still see how much of a bitch you are.” He laughs, amusing himself as he takes another draw of his smoke. “Play a little game with me. Keep your eyes open until they burn. Blink, and Barry dies.” The red dot vanishes from my chest. “Got a clean shot on him too. Ready, get set, go.”

“Yeah, you can. You just need to die in the process. That was the deal we settled on. I had to choose between you, my dad and Base to win my freedom. You were the obvious choice. Oh, did I see you blink?” I shake my head. “You’re bluffing.”

The window smashes as he pulls the trigger, and a searing burn rips across my cheek as a bullet grazes me before I drop to the ground.

Staring at myself in the cracked mirror, I’m disgusted with who I’ve become. A murderer. A sex slave. A scarred, sick, mentally deranged motherfucker who can’t go a day without drugs.

Stacey Rhodes. My girl. My anchor that sank to the bottom of the ocean without me.

“No, I did. I don’t give a fuck about you. When I next see your mother, I’ll kill her, right after I force her to watch her husband being tortured. Nothing you say will stop me. If you try to intervene, you’ll be subjected to the same fate.

She’s as much the devil as her bitch of a fucking mother and deserves the same treatment. And when I see Archie? Not even a gunshot to the head will fucking stop me.”

“You’re not fucking marrying my son.” Deadly and cold, Tobias looks at her, a snarl on his lips. “I promise you, and everyone in this room, if you get in my way, me threatening you will be the least of your worries. You’re lucky to still be fucking breathing as it is.”

Cassie comes running straight for us, but I roll my eyes and put a bullet in her skull before she can reach me. Stacey flinches and turns away in revulsion as Cassie’s body drops to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Gone. Dead. Good-fucking-bye.

Barry crouches down to Cassie’s corpse and checks her pulse. “She’s dead.” Tobias frowns like a child just kicked his shin. “Of course she’s dead. Are your eyes working? Her brain is splattered on the ground, you fucking idiot.” Barry mutters to himself then looks up at Kade’s dad. “I was just stating a fact.” “A useless fact,” he counters. “Any others? You want to tell me the sky is blue while you’re at it?”

Tobias Mitchell 😅🤌🖤

“Joy,” Tobias replies, crossing his arms. “I like watching you bleed. I’ll enjoy it a whole lot more when I kill you.”

“I’ll leave your hearing, so I can tell you when I win her back, so you can hear her moaning my fucking name. When I marry her. When she births my fucking children. And guess what? I’ll have all of that. You won’t. Because Stacey Rhodes has been mine since the day I fucking met her.”

“Such a good, good girl.”

“Fuck, she’s soaking and tightening around my fingers, Christopher. I bet you wish you were me. I bet you always wished you could be me. She’s fucking drenched for me. Do you know what it feels like to be loved by her? To see a future with her? To watch her grow your child, only to lose it because of a piece-of-shit jealous cunt?”

Kade watches me take the stairs two at a time, and he honestly looks terrifying. He has a saw in one hand and a hammer in the other, and his face is red with blood, the whites of his eyes the only light present.

“Don’t be afraid of me, Freckles,” he calls, spitting out blood that’s leaked into his mouth. “This is for us.”

“Forgive me? Please. Please forgive me.” His words are broken, but I understand each one, muffled as he pulls away from my shoulder and drops his head into my lap, hugging the back of my knees.

“I’ll do anything. I know we can’t get back what we had, and I’ll never be that eighteen-year-old kid again, but please don’t hate me. Please forgive me. I didn’t want to be like this, Stacey. I didn’t want this. I didn’t… I… Stacey.”

This Kade Mitchell is a glitch in the universe. But he’s my glitch, not Bernadette’s, not Archie’s, not the men and women who paid for his forced services and punctured him with needles to dope him up.

Under the skin of the devil they created, buried in the fucking void of the darkness he’s trapped in, I will find a glimmer of his humanity. Why? Because he’s mine.

“I love you. Every broken part of me has loved you from the moment I met you.”