Saint or sinner—I wasn’t sure which this guy was yet. I could understand his actions completely. I definitely could.

If I’d been away with the Marines and came home to find my wife cheating on me with my brother, I knew without a shadow of a doubt I would flip out too. I would have gone crazy and most likely killed one of them.

Was it wrong that I was giving this guy credit for not taking that path? He’d beaten his brother within an inch of his life, torched his car, and wrecked the whole house with a baseball bat. Then he’d topped it off by shooting the place up.

That was what he’d done, and that last part was why we had been called in. Patrol cops had said they needed more muscle, which meant me and my partner, Aaron.

Didn’t matter that we were up to our eyelids with work for an ongoing investigation that was already requiring far too much work for my liking, and it didn’t matter that we didn’t deal with shit like that anymore. In our precinct, a cop was a cop whether he pushed pencils behind a desk or had moved up the ranks and become a detective, like we had.

It was just that lately things had become more crazy, and always on a Friday—always on a fucking Friday.

Mondays were shit, but people already knew that. Fridays, though, had become everyone else’s Mondays for me.

It was a day I hated for two reasons.

The first was this crazy madness that had suddenly taken off. The next item on my agenda of crap was I was certain Aria, my sixteen-year-old daughter, was ditching school to see some guy behind my back.

I was a damn good detective and I mostly loved my job, but it was difficult to stay focused when my girl could have been getting up to God knew what. I had to somehow know what to do on my own.

No one had to tell me it was wrong for me to be fixated on her right then instead of doing my job, or that it was wrong for me to be looking at the clock wondering how much longer I’d have to be there at Lieutenant Burt Rollings’ house questioning his wife, who was shamelessly flirting with me while Aaron questioned her husband in another room.

The brother had been taken to hospital.

“Mrs. Rollings, last question: do you consider your husband to be a violent man?” It was a question we were required to ask in these sorts of domestic disagreements.

This was where I needed to separate fact from my opinion. It didn’t matter what I thought of a situation, even if I could understand why it had happened.

What mattered was what had actually happened, the views of the people involved, and the way things played out based on the emotions that existed at the time of the incident.

Steadying my pen, I held up my notebook and got ready to write down her answer—except what I saw when I looked at Mrs. Rollings wasn’t a woman who was as devastated as she’d claimed to be.

“You know what, I wouldn’t even consider us married. Our relationship is very open. So, I’m not even sure why he behaved that way.” Her eyes sparkled as she looked me over.

We were sitting in the living room, while Aaron had taken her husband into the kitchen to question him. They were in there with Sean, the patrol officer who’d been nearby when shit went down.

The whole time I’d questioned Mrs. Rollings, she’d been giving me that look—that look of interest most women had given me all my life, the brave women who could match my wild streak.

Well…that was the old me, the person I’d been before I changed, before my world changed and handed my eighteen-year-old self a daughter.

It wasn’t that I’d lived my life like a priest or had become some saint, but even I thought this woman was a piece of work. Alas, it was perhaps a bad idea that I’d interviewed her while she wore that barely there negligee. It was just how we’d found her.

“So you have an open marriage?” Trying to be professional, I wrote that down, even though I didn’t believe it.

“We do. Does that help you in any way?” she cooed, leaning forward onto her elbows to give me a good view of her cleavage, which appeared to be enhanced by what had to be multiple surgeries on her tits. She flipped her dark hair to the side and pursed her lips together. Looked like she’d had some shit done there too. “If I asked you out for a drink, would you say yes?”

God…why?

I sighed, wanting to roll my eyes, but I restrained myself.

“No, I would not say yes. I would say no.” I sounded like my father, who used that tone when he was pissed. He’d skip past abbreviations and emphasize his syllables for effect, just like I did.

“Really, you’d turn me down? No man in their right mind would turn me down.” As she tilted her head to the side, the strap to that skimpy thing she wore fell down her shoulder, now giving me a good view of most of her breast, all but her nipple exposed.

Know what? Fuck this.

I frowned and shook my head. Fuck this shit. I just left her and walked into the kitchen to join Aaron and Sean.

Thankfully, they looked like they were done. Lieutenant Rollings was already handcuffed and ready to go to the station.

We’d been there for less than an hour, but it felt like it’d been forever.

“We’re just going to take you to the station where we can question you properly,” Aaron told the lieutenant.

The poor man nodded and a tear ran down his cheek. I wouldn’t lie or pretend to not feel anything; I did feel sorry for him.

He stood up by himself, but Sean took hold of his left arm to usher him out.

“What will happen to her?” he asked Aaron. “I need someone to come around and clean the place up.”

My best buddy at least had the decency to give a professional answer and not say what I knew was on his mind.

The place had been shot up to hell and looked like a herd of wildebeest had run through it.

“We’ll sort something out,” Aaron told him before giving me a withered look.

“I can’t believe my own brother would do this to me. Fucking bastard,” Lieutenant Rollings snarled.

I didn’t bother to tell him his wife was an equal participant in the scenario, and based on my brief encounter with her, I thought it had most likely been her who initiated the whole affair.

We walked him out of the kitchen.

Mrs. Rollings was still sitting in the living room in that seductive pose, perched up on the sofa like one of those hairless cats I hated. She reminded me of one of those paintings of those god-awful things, sitting on a cushion. Her steely blue eyes only served to enhance the vision.

“Bye baby,” she called after the lieutenant.

I felt some sense of triumph when he turned his head away from her and looked ahead, not answering.

He did, however, break down once Sean got him seated in his patrol car.

The guy was actually crying tears of pain.

Women…they were beautiful creatures who could change everything in the blink of an eye, for good or for bad. Some were literal angels, while others were like Mrs. Rollings and used their looks to get what they wanted without caring about the consequences.

Then there were others who were so valuable and precious, there was no description for them.

I could only think of three women who fit that description for me.

The first was my mother, who’d put up with my crap daily for a solid eighteen years. The second was my baby girl, who I preferred not to consider a woman just yet because when I looked at her I saw the five-minute-old baby the doctors had handed to me when she was born.

And the third…well…

The third had to be Olivia, Aria’s mother, the one woman who’d successfully managed to steal my heart. She had also been the only woman to truly break me, to break everything inside me in a way that would never be fixed.

A part of me had died too the day she died.

Much as I hated it, I found myself thinking about her more than I wanted to lately. It was all this shit with Aria.

It was simple: the reason I didn’t know what to do was because I’d never been a sixteen-year-old girl. Eager to leave and initiate my plans for the evening, I rushed over to Aaron. If not for that damn incident, I would have been home an hour ago. I needed to get back by five. It was four now, and if I left right this minute, I could probably beat traffic.

“Hey, you good to finish up here?” I asked him.

He ran his hand over his beard and frowned, large brown eyes narrowing at me. The scar over his eyebrow looked more pronounced when he scowled.

“Ryan, don’t tell me you’re going to do what I think you’re gonna do.” He huffed, folding muscular arms across his chest.

“Don’t know what you mean. Are you good here? She didn’t say shit that was worth noting.”

“Aria—leave her. Trust me. Just leave her, or it will get worse,” he cautioned.

Aaron didn’t have kids, so I didn’t know why in the hell he expected me to take his advice.

He was as clueless as I was, and there was no way he could tell me what to expect from a teenage girl who could apparently do what she wanted because she was turning seventeen in a few months.

“I’m pretty certain about the getting worse part, so I’m going.”

He walked closer to me as Sean drove off with Lieutenant Rollings.

“Ryan, you should be coming with me to the station to process the witness statement. That is what you should be doing, not trying to get home in time to catch Aria in the act of whatever it is you think she’s doing.”

I’d never told him my plans. As usual with this guy, when it came to me, he’d guessed.

We’d known each other since we were in diapers. Our parents were friends, and we’d grown up like brothers. I was an only child, but he had two sisters and a brother. He was the youngest.

“Mrs. Rollings asked me out. That is all I have to report, and it’s not relevant to the incident.”

“No way.” Aaron chuckled.

“Yes.”

“What a fucked-up situation.”

“I agree. Aaron, I’m going—need to beat traffic.”

“I’m warning you, Ryan Donovan—you’re becoming that overbearing father type. I may not be a father, but I had sisters who were sixteen once, and it was not nice. They’re like wild creatures who take on their own lifestyles, parents be gone.”

That sounded like truth, but it didn’t help me at this moment. I left him, jumping back into the unmarked police vehicle I’d borrowed for my stakeout.

He said something but I didn’t hear. I took off down the road and headed home.

Ten to five.

Miraculously, I beat traffic. Granted, the way I drove helped. I knew how to push the limits from my speed racing days.

I parked a few doors down from my house, right outside the Johnsons’ place so I could get a good view.

Mrs. Parker had told me she’d seen Aria leaving the house twice this week with a spiky-haired boy wearing a leather jacket who looked like a hoodlum. Mrs. Parker was a seventy-five-year-old woman with a neat beehive updo who reminded me of Mrs. Drusilla.

Okay, that wasn’t really her name. I’d given her that name when I was ten. She reminded me of something from Dracula, and it didn’t help that her dentures either fell out or moved when she spoke.

She’d called me a spiky-haired hoodlum too, and I’d worn several leather jackets she hated. She would spy on me and rat me out to my parents. For a while I couldn’t stand people like that, but now I knew why they existed. It was an extra pair of eyes for parents—parents like me who needed at least ten eyes watching over my girl, who’d suddenly changed from the sweet angel she was into this makeup-wearing person with short skirts and mini things.

The year before, Aria had traded in going fishing with Aaron and me to hang out with her friends at the mall. Then she’d stopped going to watch any kind of game with me. We loved watching basketball and playing football on Sundays. We went camping, rock climbing, and sailed the open sea for whatever adventure we could find.

That had changed the previous year, though, just before she turned sixteen. Actually, it might have been a little before that.

Now I barely recognized her.

In horror, I watched as the door to my house opened and she skipped out wearing a skirt so short I didn’t think I could even call it a mini skirt. Her hair was down and super straight, like in one of those shampoo commercials.

As she floated down the steps leading to the garden, I saw the top she was wearing and nearly had a heart attack. It was one of those midriff things, but that wasn’t what nearly killed me.

It was the belly button bar in her navel and what looked like a tattoo on the edge of her hip.

I’d just caught my breath when a motorcycle sped down the road adjacent to the house and stopped outside it.

As Aria practically flew up to the cyclist—a guy with a leather jacket—he took off his helmet, revealing dark blond hair, ruffled with spikes.

A breath escaped my lips and my hand gripped the gun in my holster when I saw this person take hold of my baby girl and assault her lips with what was supposed to be a kiss.

I got out of my car, gun at the ready, and growled.

Of course they couldn’t hear me because they were too busy sucking face to give a crap that a man with a fucking gun—AKA me—was walking up to them.

I was too slow; the shock slowed me down.

Aria stopped kissing the guy, took his helmet, and set it on her head.

“Aria!” I called out when she jumped on the back of the bike.

I was sure she heard me; I wasn’t that far away.

“Aria!” I cried again, now running.

Fuck, why didn’t I run before?

I stopped, getting ready to turn back, but then I saw an old car swerving down the road. It was really old, like something out of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Aria and spiky-hair boy were heading the same way. I could see the catastrophe that was about to happen so I started running toward them again.

I could see it: Aria would crash with this idiot on a motorcycle, into this idiot who was coming down the road in whatever the hell kind of vehicle that was.

Fuck!

Spiky-hair boy pulled some stunt and missed the car then sped up way too fast, zipping down the road like a demon from hell.

But…the car was still coming…right at me.

I had to jump out of the road to get out of its way. It got as far as the railing, where the driver screeched to a stop and jumped out.

The driver was a striking blonde with long hair that glistened as she moved. She wore a blue strapless sundress that showed off the definition in her toned, graceful arms.

“Fucking piece of shit,” she cursed, glaring at the vehicle.

I’d stopped in my tracks to watch her. I had been about to give her a piece of my mind, but seeing her threw me off kilter.

She kicked the car, and dammit to hell, something snapped and the fucking piece of shit started moving again.

With no driver inside.

Jesus Christ.

“No!” she yelped, now running after it.

On instinct, I ran too, because I saw danger. There was a driverless car going full speed ahead down the road, and there could be people in its path.

“My things!” The woman cried.

The car headed straight to the edge of the pier. The woman only stopped when she saw that, hair billowing out into the wind in wild tendrils. Her hands flew up to her cheeks.

I stopped too when I saw what was about to happen. It was like something from one of those crazy films—not the blow ’em up, edge of your seat, theatrical Michael Bay movies but the other kind where everything that happens is just far-fetched and ridiculous.

Except this was real.

The piece-of-shit clunker went up and over the green, rolled along full force, knocking over the community notice board, then it crashed through the barrier that separated the sea from the dock and went in head first, straight into the water.

Fuck.

I hated Fridays.