Page 93 of Diary from an Inked Throne

I shrugged. “Just in case.”

“Mmm-hmm. Remember what Liam said about not killing anyone?”

“I know, I know.” Dax was such a dad.

I wished I hadn’t had that thought because it made my heart hurt that he wasn’t getting to use that disapproving parental frown on his actual son. I really hoped there’d be some news from Luca’s guys today. Something concrete. Something we could follow.

I needed that little boy home just as much as Dax did.

Dax poked me in the back. “Whatever you’re thinking about, stop it. Focus.”

He was right. I shook off the guilt over not being out there searching for Nyah’s baby, and focused on being here, in the moment, doing something else that needed to be done.

With the beer bottle tucked neatly behind my back, I rapped my knuckles across Rivera’s door.

I waited for the sound of footsteps, but none came.

“Maybe he’s at work?”

I glanced over at the cracked concrete driveway and the car sitting in the middle of it. “Car’s still here. And the police department is all the way over in Providence.”

“He might have gotten a ride.”

“And let any of his cop buddies see the sort of squalor he lives in? Doubtful.”

I knocked again. This time I heard something on the other side.

“He’s definitely in there,” I murmured to Dax.

“Oh goodie,” he mumbled back. “He’s probably just getting ready to arrest us.”

“For what?”

“Trespassing on his property?”

“We’re standing on his porch.”

He leaned around me and twisted the doorknob. It turned, and the door swung open silently. “Now we’re not.”

Technically, we hadn’t moved our feet, but I got his point.

“Hello?” I called out, taking a step inside. “Anyone home?”

“Fuck off! I don’t have your money!”

I glanced back at Dax. The voice had sounded more like a drunken slur than anything else. Which might have explained the copious amounts of empty beer bottles on the porch. I led us through the small house, in the direction of Rivera’s voice, and came to a half-open bedroom door. I nudged it fully open with my foot.

“I told you, I don’t have your money!”

“You don’t owe me any money.”

Rivera lifted his head from where he’d obviously passed out on the floor halfway to his bed at some point last night. “Who the fuck are you?”

It was rich that he didn’t recognize me. Frankly, it pissed me off. I squatted beside the man and tried not to breathe in the stale alcohol stench practically radiating from him. “You really don’t know? Do I look different when I’m not locked up in one of your holding cells without a charge? Or is it because it’s not dark, and you aren’t handing me over to Jeremiah Matish in some alleyway?”

He lifted his head to squint at me then dropped it back to the floor. “Oh. You. I thought you were dead.”

I rolled my eyes. So much for Liam’s concerns, if the cops all assumed Matish had killed me. I patted him on his head, as condescendingly as possible. “Unfortunately for you, no. I’m not.”