Decked (The Invincibles 1)

“Okay,” she whispered.

Mila was quiet for so long that I thought she may have fallen to sleep, but when I angled my head to check, her eyes were glassy and fixated on nothing.

“What are you thinking about, sweetheart?”

“Adler.”

“What about him?”

“So many things. His father is dead. Someone should tell him.” She sighed. “I wonder if he knew Marshall killed my sister and that she was his sister too.” She paused. “What about his mother?”

“I don’t know much about her.” In everything I’d learned about Marshall Livingston, I found very little about his wife.

“Will he be arrested?”

“Adler?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know the answer to that question either. It will depend on what all he knew, what his involvement was.”

“Do you think he knew all along that his father attacked me?”

I could say without any hesitation at all that I hated Adler Livingston, but that didn’t mean I believed the man knew the extent of his father’s anger. Maybe madness would be a better word.

“I don’t think so,” I finally said. “He may have been his father’s pawn, but my gut tells me he wouldn’t have hurt you.”

“Thank you for saying that, Decker.”

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. As much as I wanted to ignore whoever and whatever it was, I knew I couldn’t. I pulled it out and swiped the screen with my thumb.

Judd Knight didn’t make it. The text was from Grinder, not Rile or Edge, so it didn’t surprise me when the next text that came over said, Please give my condolences to Mila.

I dropped the phone on the bed and wrapped my other arm around Mila, holding her as tight as I could without hurting her.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Mila, he is.”

“Now I’m really alone.”

I knew from her staggered breathing and the dampness I felt on my shirt that Mila was crying.

I could tell her she wasn’t alone; that she had me, but I knew that wouldn’t be enough or what she needed. I’d been in her life a handful of days, and no matter how many times I reassured her that she could depend on me, count on me, be with me, none of that would change the fact that Mila now saw herself as an orphan. Whether I’d been in her life the last few years or not, didn’t change the fact that Judd Knight had just abandoned his daughter for the second time—and this go-around, it was permanent.

40

Mila

Decker stood by my side through everything. He took me to the cabin on Bluebell Creek and went with me to the funeral home and cemetery to make arrangements for Sybil’s services.

He held my hand when my father’s attorney told me that in absence of any other heir, I’d inherited all of my father’s holdings, and was now a very wealthy woman.

He stood in the back of the room when I met with Knighthawk’s board of directors and told them I wanted nothing to do with my father’s business.

When I told Deck I couldn’t handle making arrangements for my father’s services, he said he’d handle it, and that was the last I heard of it.

He sat next to me when the woman they all called Casper came to the house to tell me that while Adler Livingston was a piece of dog crap of a human being, she didn’t believe he knew anything about his father’s nefarious activities. Casper also told me that Adler’d moved out of my apartment building and that it was up for sale.