Scarred Regrets (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 5)

We couldn’t go to the police, not with the badge on Brad’s chest. That would be the first place he’d go to look for the kid he’d raped continuously, the kid who knew he’d murdered two people in cold blood, to keep his drugs and not have to pay my parents with them to have access to me. Whatever his reason, the lack of life in his brown eyes made me entirely certain the fate he had in store for Cesca and me wouldn’t be all that different from what he’d done to my mother.

It might even be worse.

Had he killed them while I lay there, sleeping through the agony of his abuse? Had he raped my mother after my father died? I shouldn’t have cared what happened to them.

Not after what they’d let him do to me.

We ended up closer to downtown, where most of the buildings were commercial and not houses where strangers lived. Eventually we found an empty alley, and I turned into the shadowed back of it and hid Cesca and myself behind the dumpster. She looked up at me with terror in her eyes, and I lifted her hand to wrap her fingers around the butterfly at her neck.

“Mom and Dad are dead,” I explained, and she tensed her brow as she tilted her head to the side. I knew she didn’t understand. Concepts like life and death were too unfamiliar to the girl who barely got to leave her bedroom.

“Home?” she asked.

I swallowed around the bile rising in my throat, looking around the alley that hid us from the monsters like Brad, who were just waiting to take advantage of our situation. The alley couldn’t be home forever, not with businesses opening up.

Eventually, they’d chase us out.

We’d find something better.

“You’re my home,” I said, running a hand over her hair and wishing I had just given her a shower before I went to clean. It might have been her last opportunity for a long time. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she nodded and tucked her head tight to my chest.

In a few minutes, I’d open the dumpster and see if I could find her something to eat. In a few minutes, I’d get up and start doing whatever I had to do to take care of her.

Cesca would be okay.

No matter what it took.