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. And people don’t fuck with what’s mine.

“How did you escape?” I ask as I take the dress. “I’m mad at you for that, just so you know.” He scoffs as he turns round, letting me drop the blanket and pull on the dress. “You didn’t come for visitation, and I got bored.”

LMAO Tobias is so funny. *gets bored* *breaks out of a mental institution*

“Just accept my gratitude. I know your children are your priority, but I appreciate that you’re here for me.” “You are also my priority. I would have always hunted for you to the ends of the fucking earth, little one. I know you didn’t have the best relationship with your father, your brothers are useless pricks, and my son is shackled to a bitch on an insane power trip, but you have me.”

I was alive when I was around Kade. And now I’m alive because of his father.

I accidentally forget to hold a branch, and it slaps Tobias in the face. I cringe and glance over my shoulder, mouthing an oops. He looks like he wants to stab me.

😂

Aria rushes out, her eyes red as her body slams into Tobias and she lets loose a string of sobs. “Our babies,” she cries. “We need to help them. Please help them.” He strokes the back of her hair, his arm around the small of her back. “We will. I promise we’ll get our kids back.”

I love Kade more than anything in the world. He was the only person who kept me breathing. He was the air to my starved lungs.

“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.”

Base chuckles. “If it makes you feel any better, I love someone who’s never once loved me back, and I’d still die for her. Your sister, by the way.” He sighs into the darkness. “And when I find her, because I will, I’m not going to let her out of my sight. She’ll love me one day. She has to. Even if she just fucking told me she liked me, it would be enough.”

Base and Lu 😭❤️

“The next time you see Stacey, you better apologise and promise never to be a cunt again.” “No shit,” I retort, my voice hollow. “I’ll fall to my knees and beg for forgiveness the next time I see her.”

My dad would never do that to me or my mother. He’s putting on a facade to try to get her out of there. My lips almost curl at the corner. He burned the manor down too. Fucking psychotic genius.

In another life, they would make the perfect couple, but in this one, they love each other so dangerously there’s no chance of ever being together.

She has no idea how much she soothes the darkness within me. It’s like the fragments of my heart slowly join back together – until I hear the soft whimper of her trying to hold in her tears, and everything comes crashing down again, because I caused those tears.

“I don’t know what’s happening with you, but if you need to do this assignment for your freedom, I’m willing to let you do it. I…” Her voice breaks, and so does my heart. “I don’t have anything to live for, but you do.”

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

Aria rolls her eyes. “Tobias. Behave.” “With all due respect, sweetheart, I behave for no one when it comes to our children.”

“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.”

It all boils down to this moment, when she glances over her shoulder and gives me a tight smile out of friendliness, not knowing it’s me. The one who shot at her. The ex-boyfriend who would burn the world down for her. The piece of shit who could never fall out of love with her. I nearly drop to my fucking knees, staring at her little dimple and the freckles dusting her cheeks and nose. She’s truly a work of art. A masterpiece. And I’m proud to say that I was her first love.

Having her so close makes me want to fucking live. I haven’t wanted to live for such a long, shitty time.

“Please just shoot me and get your freedom, Kade. I can’t hear this – not when I’m ready to give up. Please don’t give me something to live for.”

“If you were still in love with me, we wouldn’t have just spent years in hell, Kade. If you were in love with me, you would have stayed by my side when I tried to tell you the truth a year ago. You don’t love me – I’m just someone you used to have in your life when it was normal, so you hold on to the thought of me.”

“I’ll deal with Bernadette. I just needed to apologise. You don’t have to ever forgive me, but I want you to know that if I had all the time in the world, I would spend it trying to win you back. I’d prove myself worthy of you, Stacey. Because there hasn’t been a day that’s passed where you haven’t kept me going. My love might not be enough for you, but it’s all I have left. I love you. I love you so fucking much that I want to live.”

“We have no future together, but you can have one. Love isn’t enough to fix us. Even your kind of love.”

“Like you said, we’re done. We didn’t have a chance anyway. It was always going to be me or you who died today, and I would never let anything happen to you. I just needed time to say I was sorry before it was too late.”

“The first time I saw you, I was yours. I’ll always be yours, Freckles. Our girl will be proud of the woman you’ve become. You’ll both always be my girls.”

“It’s you and me, son,” Tobias says, low enough that it’s a whisper, but I’m close enough to hear. “You’re not doing this by yourself anymore. I’m here. I’m not letting you do this alone. You and me, you hear me?”

“You have no fucking idea how long I’ve waited for this. Do you know who I am?” He points at himself. “I’m the father of the child you killed.”

And the crowd cheered!!!

“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.”

“I’m here. It’s me, Stacey. I’m not going to hurt you.” He slaps the side of his head, his mutters growing louder, and my eyes burn while I watch my first and only love try not to destroy himself. The eighteen-year-old who was nervous to kiss me during a game of dares – who shook nervously when he pressed me into the couch and kissed me – who shared all my firsts and treated me like a princess.

“I’m your Freckles, remember?” The hand beating against the side of his head stops, and his fingers curl into his palm as he drops it so he can hold his knees with both arms. “We have two dogs. Milo and Hopper.”

You gave me a reason to live when I felt like I was already dead inside.”

“You still make me smile. When I think of you, I feel alive.

You made those times I was in hell feel like heaven. I wanted to die so many times, wanted it all to end, but I had you, so it was worth it. Living was worth it.

“I wish we could go back to the day we found out I was pregnant. Sometimes, I picture what she would look like. Blue eyes like yours, hair like mine, and an attitude and personality like your dad.” I snort at myself. “She’d have definitely been a heathen. A three-year-old heathen that we loved infinitely.”

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.

“You should know, you look hideous right now. And I think death is far too kind for you. You should suffer. You should see what my life is going to be like without you. But you don’t deserve to breathe the same air as my future children.”

“I want you to know that it’ll be me who kills you. Kade might have caused you all the pain you deserved, but it will be me who ends your life.”

“I hate you, Chris. And if by some miracle you make it to heaven, I hope my mother kicks your ass. If not…” I lean forward to whisper in his ear as the gurgling stops. “I’ll see you in hell.”

Barry looks around the room. “This is going to be horrible to clean up.” “What can I say? My son is an artist.”

“Look what they’ve done to my son. They tried to sell you and my daughter. Of course I’m going to avenge you all.” He throws his arm over my shoulders and directs us to the patio. “I would do anything to protect my people, little one.”

“Did you say Base is with her?” “Yes. It seems the Russian dickhead can’t leave my daughter alone for a second.”

“Sometimes I struggle to find reasons why we’re friends.” “We aren’t friends. We’re family. Now – out of bed.”

He glances at Kade, and his smile drops. The big, bad psychopath has a heart, because I see it every time he looks at his kids, at Aria, and I’m sure it grows in size like The Grinch’s when she grins at him. When she giggles. When she reaches up and kisses him on the cheek.

He shrugs away from them and turns to Aria, who’s sobbing and begging him to stay, to find another way, but all he does is smile at her, take her face and kiss her on the lips. It’s more than just a kiss. It’s everything he wants. Everything he had. And everything he’ll lose. It’s a goodbye. A see you later. An eternity of wondering what if. I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to raze her empire from the inside, and he’s going to take himself out in the process. Because he loves his family, and he’d do anything to save them. Kade is free, but Tobias never was. He’s been a prisoner for over twenty years.

Tobias 🥺❤️

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

Tobias 🥺❤️

“It was never going to be an easy road. At least now I can do something good for my family. Live your life the way you were supposed to without me, Doctor.”

Tobias 🥺❤️

“I’ll make it worth it, little one,” he whispers against my hair. “Just you watch. Heaven and hell will see the flames of their downfall.”

Being loved by Stacey Rhodes is a dream.

“Like I said, I missed you. I felt close to you, even though you weren’t here.” “Sounds a little psychotic and obsessive. I think you spent too much time with my dad.”

😂

“Why would you want me anywhere near you?” “Because I love you. Because I’ve always loved you. Regardless of what you’ve gone through and the changes we’ve both had to make to our lives, my feelings remain the same, Kade. I won’t stop loving you.”