Lock You Down (Rivers Brothers 2)

"I'm leaving," I told them, tone curt as I grabbed my bag and stormed out.

I never went back.

When they called, I rushed off the phone without saying much.

I couldn't seem to feel the same way about them when they didn't believe me, when they didn't join me in my hatred, in my desire to see justice served.

Eventually, in an extension of an olive branch, or just wanting me out of their hair--I couldn't truly say which--my father had offered me Devil Tears.

I wanted to believe they just thought I needed the distraction, the fresh start.

But a larger part of me thought they didn't want to have to deal with the evidence of our disconnect anymore. If I was in the same state, they would have to explain why their only surviving daughter was no longer at the house for parties, no longer attending charity events, no longer updating them about her life.

I didn't take Devil Tears because I genuinely wanted it at first. I took it because it offered a chance to move without looking suspect. The man they had originally put in charge had needed to move back to Jersey five years before to help his ailing mother. He'd rented out a small office and did a one-man operation. Very badly. The books hadn't been balanced. Vendors hadn't been paid.

He'd been relieved when they'd offered him early retirement, a pension I personally didn't think he deserved, but my parents were generous that way.

And I packed everything I had in the world, and set my sights on New Jersey.

Not to run Devil Tears, but to have an excuse to be closer to Michael. To formulate a plan. To get the justice I so badly needed for my sister.

Rebuilding, though, had given me a focus I didn't know I needed. It gave me a reason to get up and get dressed every morning. Eventually, it helped soften the sharp edges of grief as I hired people who became friends, as I tried my best to take hold of the wheel of a woefully off-course ship.

But never did I lose sight of my real mission.

Even as I found the barn, as I had it remodeled, as I had the lawn ripped up and replaced with wildflowers to help the local bee population, even as I spent a small chunk of my trust fund to get the entire place running on solar panels, as I found ways to make packaging and shipping more economical and ecological.

I got myself a place.

I made friends with Krissy.

I did community outreach by helping the local delinquents.

I built a life.

But I never, not for one minute, lost sight of the real reason I was in Navesink Bank.

I was there for Michael McDermot.

I was there to make sure he never did to anyone else what he did to my sister.

I was there to catch him if he ever tried.

If he so much as grabbed ass at a bar, I knew about it.

It didn't matter that it had been over a year of watching him without a lead. Men like that, men who got off on taking away a woman's power, they never just did it once.

Eventually, he would try it again.

And I would stop him.

Catch him.

Make sure he got locked away for it.

It didn't matter if it took the rest of my life, I would find some small bit of justice for Sammy.

I would make sure her attacker paid for what he did to her.-Present-"Fuck," Nixon hissed, shaking his head, his hand raising to rub over the scruff on his face that was quickly becoming a decent beard. "Babe... I'm so sorry. I can't imagine."

I sucked in a deep breath, hoping it would calm the raw sensations inside.

Sammy's loss was always a fresh wound; it was never something I went a day without thinking about.

It was my first thought every morning.

I was sure it always would be.

I'd scoffed at the therapist had told me it would be the first thought for a long time, but then, one day, it would be the second thing, then the third. And that would be how I knew I was healing.

Maybe I didn't heal because I kept picking off the scab, because I didn't want to heal until I had some semblance of justice.

I was okay with that.

I didn't want to wake up and not think of Sammy first thing. Even if I knew my brother and my parents were already much further along in their recovery than I was.

"It's been rough," I agreed, hearing the thickness in my voice as I willed myself to hold the tears in. They'd been too easy to come by lately.

"I knew he was a motherfucker," he declared, voice fierce, the exclamation enough to make a surprised smile pull at my lips.

"Yeah?" I asked, finding myself pleased that I wasn't the only person who saw it, that he didn't hide his evil as easily as he thought.