Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 102754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
I nodded, brushing my thumb along her cheek. “They come first, yeah, but so do you.”
Her eyes flicked away for a second, like maybe it was too much to hold in that moment. I caught her chin gently and tilted her face back to mine. “I mean it. Don’t disappear on me, Sayla. Not when we’re finally in this.”
She nodded slightly, then glanced around the dark yard beyond the porch. “You got security yet?”
“Yeah,” I said, resting my chin lightly on her blonde head. “Just had it installed. It feeds straight to my phone, and I’ve got motion lights now too.”
She looked up at me again, lips twitching. “You sound like a dad already.”
“Guess I am in a sense, but it’s important they don’t forget Kemble,” I sighed, exhaling through my nose. “But what about you? You got a system?”
“There was one in the house when I moved in,” she admitted. “I just… haven’t really used it.”
“Start using it,” I ordered, not even pretending to keep the edge out of my voice. “Seriously, Sayla, things are different now. Watch what’s going on around you. Lock your doors and set your alarm. Don’t take chances.”
Her mouth curved into a soft smile, but there was something serious behind her eyes, too. “Okay,” she said quietly. “I will.”
And even though the night was still, and the porch was warm, I held her just a little tighter—because nothing felt more important than ensuring she was safe.
Chapter 15
Roque
It had been two weeks since I brought Kairo and Kaida home, and I still wasn’t sure if any of it felt real. The days blurred—early mornings, late nights, bedtime stories, tearful outbursts over the wrong socks. But we were settling. Slowly.
The funeral had been brutal.
Seeing Kemble’s dad in his wheelchair, looking smaller and grayer than I’d ever seen him, had nearly broken me. The man barely spoke—just stared at the caskets like he was trying to will them open. Kemble’s brother hadn’t made it, we still hadn’t been able to track him down. And no one had any clue how to reach Aislinn’s parents. No one had a phone number or an address, nothing. She hadn’t spoken to them since she married Kemble, and I didn’t know the whole story, just that it was enough to make her disappear from their lives.
The kids had clung to me the entire time. Kairo understood just enough to be quiet and confused, and Kaida just cried because everyone else was crying. I’d held it together for their sake, but after they went to bed that night, I sat on my bedroom floor and lost it for a while.
Now, though, we were finding a rhythm. I’d gotten them into daycare. Thank God Sayla helped with the forms because I swear those things were more complicated than police reports. It wasn’t cheap, but it was the best place in the area, and they liked it. Kairo came home with finger paint masterpieces and stories about his new friend who only wore superhero capes. Kaida was already bossing around the other toddlers. I was grateful for it—for a little bit of normalcy in the chaos.
I was back at work, too, no more working from home. Stepping into my office had felt strange like I’d been gone for years instead of weeks. Judd had caught me up as fast as he could, but there was a lot to unpack.
While I’d been gone, a complaint had come in against one of the officers we’d already suspected of playing dirty. A woman had reported him for witness intimidation—it turns out the cop’s brother was stalking her, and instead of protecting her, he tried to scare her into dropping the charges.
And just this morning, one of the newer analysts brought us a list that made my stomach turn—stop-and-search reports, traffic stops, incident reports, all pointing to another officer racially profiling half the damn town. Patterns so obvious a blind man could’ve seen them.
Judd was livid. I hadn’t seen him that pissed since the Delgado case.
“I can’t believe this shit was happening under my nose,” he muttered, pacing my office like a caged animal. “We don’t get to fix the world, Roque, but I’ll be damned if I let this department rot from the inside out.”
I didn’t have anything comforting to say, he was right to be angry. I was furious, too. But we’d start tearing it down, piece by piece, if we had to. We’d been rooting out corruption for months, and I hadn’t expected to find this much rot left behind.
And when I clocked out, picked up the kids, and saw Kaida’s entire face light up when she spotted me at the daycare door, it reminded me why I was doing this, why it all mattered.
I probably seemed flippant about what was going on at work, but the truth was, I’d spent the entire day neck-deep in reports, following paper trails and bad decisions. The case we were building was solid—ugly, but solid—and in between that, I was still attending calls, still wearing the badge like it didn’t weigh more daily. But now, I had to shut all that off.