Present
“They are exquisite, aren’t they?” my father asked, peering around me at whoever was standing there. “I’m not even unhappy about it. I can’t wait to see what they do.”
Slowly, I turned, looking over my shoulder, but something told me I already knew who he was referring to. I always knew.
I spotted Rika and Banks standing there, watching us and looking at me questioningly.
I closed my eyes, my heart thumping so hard. Motherfucker.
“Sisters…” I repeated, turning back around.
“It was also ironic that I could get any woman so easily pregnant, except my own wife.” Gabriel pulled out a cigar from his breast pocket. “Christiane was beautiful, though. I didn’t mean to knock her up, but I knew the kid would be good-looking with genes like that.”
I couldn’t believe it.
But then again, it made so much sense. The stars finally aligned.
He lit his cigar, the puffs of smoke clouding into the air.
“Rika…” I said in a low voice. “She’s yours.”
“Oh, I wish,” he shot out, smiling to himself. “But no, Erika is a Fane.”
What?
Then I don’t…
“A few years before her, though,” he told me, “Christiane had a son.”
And then he looked at me, taking a drag of his cigar and thinning his eyes against the smoke.
A son.
I stopped breathing.
They were my sisters, but Erika wasn’t my father’s. So that meant…
I bared my teeth. “You’re lying.”
He broke out into a smile, enjoying every second of this.
It wasn’t true.
“Natalya Delova was my mother,” I maintained. “I look just like her.”
“Be that as it may, you didn’t come from her cunt,” he said.
I stood there, unable to speak. He had to be lying. There was no way that was happening right under my nose, and I didn’t know it.
She wouldn’t have… How would I never have known that? She would’ve spoken to me or done something.
My father’s laugh filled the air more than the smoke or the noise below.
I raised my eyes back up to him.
“Schraeder Fane was out of the country for a few months,” he explained, “leaving his pretty new wife at home alone.” He tipped his chin down at me. “I just couldn’t resist having my way with his pretty little bride.”
Having his way.
Like I knew he did in rooms of our house, late at night, their cries carrying through the walls.
I stilled as realization hit of how I was conceived. “You raped her.”
He laughed and then shrugged. “Whatever.”
I did the math in my head. She was young. Still. She was Winter’s age when Rika was born. She would’ve been a teenager when I was born. Eighteen? Nineteen?
My father continued, “When Schraeder came home to a pregnant wife, there was no hiding what I’d done. He was prepared to raise you as his own and leave town with his little family, but I couldn’t have that. Real men don’t let other men raise their sons.”
I glared at him. Like he raised me at all? Intimidating me, smacking me around, and treating me like property?
“So the night you were born, I came and claimed what was mine,” he stated. “She screamed and cried. And then spent the next several years depressed and drunk. I really didn’t think she’d take it so badly, but…things got a little better for her when Rika came along.”
Rika’s mother was a mess for a lot of years. I grew up, seeing a barely functioning, pill-popping, alcoholic on the rare occasions she was in public.
It was all his fault. Not her losing her husband or anything else. She’d been barely alive, and Rika barely had a mother.
But she was always nice, wasn’t she? Now that I thought about it. Always docile and sweet.
“They ended up staying in Thunder Bay,” my father went on. “Probably to be close to you.”
No wonder he didn’t bat an eyelash when he knew Natalya was coming into my room and what she was doing to me. She wasn’t my mother in his eyes.
In his eyes, she was making me a man.
“When you were a teenager,” he told me, “I found out she and her husband were planning on telling you the truth as soon as you turned eighteen. So I took care of Schraeder. With a little help, of course.”
With Evans Crists’ help. Michael’s father.
Since he had Power of Attorney over the estate and Christiane was all too happy and drugged-out to care, Evans saw his opportunity to control another fortune. The largest fortune in town.
I glanced back at Rika, seeing her brow furrowed as she probably wondered what we were talking about. None of my friends could hear us.
I dropped my eyes to the scar on her neck.
“Didn’t expect Rika to be in the car that day, but…” my father trailed off. “And then the town doctor provided Christiane with a nice little cocktail to keep her docile for the rest of her miserable little life.”
He stepped up to me, but I wanted to back away. The walls were closing in even though we were outside, and I gripped the blade in my hand as full knowledge of what was happening fell like a ton of bricks on my shoulders.
“You never really took notice of Christiane, did you?” he taunted.
But I barely heard him as I got lost in my head.
I could’ve had a different life. Christiane would’ve been different. I would’ve had good parents.
“The way she’d look at you at parties or on the street in town,” he went on.
She was looking at me? No, I don’t remember that. What was she seeing when she watched me? What was I doing?
My throat closed up, and my hand with the blade shook.
“Her heart was broken long before Rika was born or her husband died,” my father droned on.
She wanted me even with what my father did to her? Her husband wanted me anyway?
“She would look at you for so long, completely obvious,” Gabriel continued, inching up to me farther and torturing me with what was happening right under my nose, and I never even knew it. “I actually thought she’d be a liability, and I might have to kill her, too.”
What if she didn’t like what she was seeing? What if that’s why she never approached me? What if she saw me growing up and thought I was turning out exactly like him?
What if she was scared of me?
“You honestly never noticed?” he asked, looking at me like I was the dumbest shit on the planet.
Rage filled my chest, my stomach twisted into knots, and every image of him flashed in my head.
Raping her. Destroying her life. Stealing me away as she screamed.
Forcing her to watch another woman raise me a few miles down the road.
Giving me to that house and the horror I had to swallow.
And I looked up at him, clenching my jaw and channeling it all, knowing I would never give him any grandchildren to get his hands on.
“I thought you were so much more perceptive than that,” he told me. “But I guess she wasn’t very smart, either, so—”
I growled, grabbing him by the shoulder and shoving the goddamn dagger right into his fucking stomach.
My friends gasped behind me, and I heard Banks cry my name, but it was barely a whisper.
He jerked, his mouth falling open as he stood there wide-eyed for the first time in his miserable fucking life, and looking like he couldn’t breathe all of a sudden.
I pulled it out and stuck it in again, feeling it dig into his flesh and feeling a chill spread up my angry arm and filter through my blood, the rage cooling just a little.
I pulled it out once again, stared into his eyes, and rammed it into his fucking body, burying it in his stomach one… final…time.
“Just…die,” I bit out right in his face. “Die.”
He sputtered and rasped, his knees giving out and his body crumbling to the ground as he slid off my knife and collapsed.
Someone sobbed quietly behind me, but everyone else was silent as we watched him spill all over the roof, his white shirt turning crimson as it soaked.
I stared down at him, holding his eyes. Someone approached from behind, but I waved my hand from where it hung at my side, gesturing for them to back the hell off.
The weight in my gut started to dissipate, and I wasn’t running.
I wanted to see this.
I wanted to make sure he died.
“Are you okay?” Winter asked, wrapping her arms around me as I sat with my hands cuffed. “What’s going to happen?”
I nuzzled her, burying my face in her neck.
I had no idea. But I wasn’t scared anymore. She was safe. My friends were safe. No matter what happened, I had that, at least.
“It’ll be okay,” I whispered.
Strangely, I felt only tired, not even worried or upset or guilty, like maybe I should be. I was just happy he was gone and happy she was free. It was worth it.
The coroner was putting my father on the gurney, already zipped into a body bag, while the police talked with each other and waited for forensics to arrive.
Kai made sure none of us said anything until we talked to lawyers.
But I was the one found with the knife and the blood on my hand.
I’d be going in.
“Go with Banks and Kai,” I told her.
I wanted her out of Thunder Bay tonight. In the city with new air and space.
Away from this shit.
She held in her tears as she kissed me and whispered, “That’s not your life anymore. I don’t leave.”
I couldn’t help the smile that broke out as she kissed me again. I wouldn’t admit it to her, but that fucking made my night.
Banks pulled her back as the cop yanked me up and started to take me away.
I watched her over my shoulder, praying like hell that wasn’t the last time I touched her.
As I passed Rika, our gazes met, and she knew there were things happening she didn’t understand. I wasn’t supposed to kill him. That wasn’t part of the plan.
But she hadn’t heard any of the conversation between me and my father.
That shit was for another day.
For now…
“One down,” I told her. “The rest is on you.”
Hours later, I’d received medical attention for my wound and a pre-packaged cinnamon roll which still sat unopened on the interrogation room table in front of me.
My eyes burned from exhaustion, and my stomach growled, but I couldn’t get the damn roll, because I was handcuffed, and I couldn’t reach it. They knew that.
They hadn’t tried questioning me yet, though, probably knowing I was smart enough to know my rights.
But they hadn’t taken samples of the blood on my hand or had me remove my clothes, either. I was getting curious about what the hell was happening out there, because no one was coming in, and I hadn’t gotten my phone call. What if I had to piss?
I rubbed my face on my shoulder and yawned as the fluorescent lighting beat down on me.
Where was Winter? I pictured her in my head, in our bed and sleeping peacefully like I wanted her to be.
But I knew she wasn’t. She was awake and frantic, just as tired and worried as I was. It dawned on me after I arrived that, while I was happy she was out of harm’s way with my father gone, I still didn’t want her walking through this world without me. I didn’t want to miss anything.
For that reason, maybe I regretted doing what I did.
The door suddenly opened, and I turned my head, seeing a short, pepper-haired man in a gray suit but still pretty young and fit.
“Hi,” he said, stepping aside and allowing the officer in behind him. “I’m Monroe Cason.”
The cop came over, and I watched as he uncuffed me and turned away to leave, only to turn back with tight lips and pick up the cinnamon roll, setting it down in front of me.
Huh?
I leaned my forearms on the table, picking up the roll and turning it over in my hands a moment before I flung it at the door just as he was closing it.
Jerk.
I looked up at the dude, cocking an eyebrow. “I didn’t call a lawyer,” I told him.
He smiled small and shot his eyes up. I followed his gaze, seeing the video camera, and after another moment, the power light went off.
What the hell was going on?
I glanced at him again.
He dug in his briefcase, pulling out something wrapped in plastic. He set it on the table in front of me.
“I can have it taken care of, if you like, but I thought you’d want to see it destroyed yourself,” he informed me.
I leaned over the package, making out Rika’s dagger inside. Clean and shining new. Maybe particles of blood could still be found on it, though, which was why he suggested it be destroyed?
Why would they let me destroy my murder weapon?
I thinned my eyes on him. “What is this?”
“You’re free to go,” he said.
My heart leaped. “Why?”
He let out a small breath and placed his case on the table, unbuttoning his jacket and having a seat. Pulling out a paper from his briefcase, he placed it in front of me.
“No one will mourn your father,” he told me. “In fact, there are many who are quite happy—and grateful—that he’s gone. The testimony is that you and your friends showed up at the parade to celebrate. When you arrived, one of your father’s disgruntled employees had done him in, and you found him lying in his blood up on the roof.”
I scanned the paper, the testimony written there.
“Everyone has signed it,” he informed me as I spotted the signatures.
That was why they hadn’t taken samples of the blood on me. Or my clothes.
“His guards…?” I argued.
What about his bodyguards? They knew things.
But he was quick to answer. “They are now on your sister’s payroll, as she is the sole heir of your father’s estate. She assures me that she has her house under control.”
Her house. It was strange to hear, but it had a ring to it.
The cops, though. The blood that was on the dagger. My prints. People might’ve been happy to see my father go, but they weren’t shoving this under the rug out of the goodness of their hearts. There were many who still didn’t like me, either. They were rid of my father, so why not let me go to prison for it and be rid of me, too?
“Who’s your employer?” I asked, suspicious. “Who’s paying you? Who’d pay the city off to look the other way about this?”
He just stared at me, unblinking and then answered, sounding almost serene. “Someone who wants you to have a chance, Mr. Torrance.”
And I sat back in my chair, my eyes finally open and knowing the answer without him telling me.
Christiane Fane.
I unlocked the front door, Winter and I stepping inside her house an hour later.
I couldn’t believe I was out of there.
I knew the talk in town was probably bad, and I had no idea what the repercussions would be from Evans Crist as he undoubtedly knew that we knew how Rika’s father died. How she almost died.
But right now, I couldn’t bring myself to care. My father had been the bigger threat, and although we weren’t all safe yet, I had every confidence people would have a nice, long, fucking pause now before coming at us.
And if they did, we’d be ready.
I ran my fingers through my hair, just wanting a shower and a bed right now, but there was one thing more I had on my mind to deal with before that.
I closed the door and locked it.
“I kind of just want to go sit in the fountain,” Winter said lazily, resting her head on my arm as I held her hand and we walked.
“Plenty of time for that,” I told her. “I have another idea, though.”
“Oh?” She sounded amused like she could only imagine what I wanted to do right now.
But instead of heading up the stairs, I continued down the hall and through the kitchen.
She popped her head up. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
I led her outside, across the patio, down beyond the pool and pool house, and past the hedge line, into the trees. We went slow as she navigated her way over the land and fallen branches, but when we got to the large, white oak tree, I picked her up, carrying her over the debris of leaves and wood I hadn’t cleaned up yet.
Setting her down, I took her hand and put it on the tree.
She ran her hands over the bark, feeling up and down until she landed on a board nailed into the tree trunk.
She pulled away, straightening her back and her face falling as she understood why I’d brought her out here.
Her chest moved with her shallow breaths, and I could see the fear on her face.
Moving around her, I wrapped my arm around her waist and kissed the back of her hair.
“I’m stronger now,” I whispered. “I won’t let you fall.”
I felt her body shake, but she didn’t say anything. Just stood there, going through the shit in her head.
After another moment, she reached out, breathing hard but determined, and felt for the first step with her foot while grabbing hold of the board in front of her.
I watched as she started to climb, taking her time, one step after the other, and I followed, not taking my eyes off her for a moment.
She paused about halfway up, feeling the wind whip across her hair, but she kept going.
Just one more step.
And another.
“Stop there, baby,” I told her when she reached the top. I didn’t want her hitting her head.
She stayed put as I closed the distance between us, and then I reached above her head, throwing open the door in the floor.
Waving her hand to gauge the width, she climbed through, crawling up onto the floor and standing up carefully as I came through after her.
She stood there for a minute, getting her bearings, but then took a few careful steps, finding the railing. I kept my eye on her feet, making sure she didn’t step over. I’d put the boards in the fencing close enough together, we wouldn’t fall, but she could still slip and hurt herself.
I walked around, making sure everything was holding well and inspecting the pointed roof to see if any water had seeped through in the last rain. I’d thought about making it a full house, completely enclosed, but maybe that was better for kids. For now, I liked it open on the sides for the wind and the sound of the trees.
“So this is where you’ve been going?” she said, still facing out. “Not a hundred yards away from me.”
I came up behind her. “Never.”
All the nights I was away, I was still here.
I held her waist with one hand and leaned on the railing with the other, staring out at the house and thinking about where we were five years ago today.
It was Halloween, and I’d just been arrested.
“How are you?” she asked.
I knew she meant my father. If I was upset.
I still wasn’t sure. I was glad he was gone, but I was still trying to figure out what this meant and what the next step was.
The important thing was I wasn’t alone anymore, and that made a huge difference. We were going to be fine.
Unfortunately, not as fine as I wanted, though.
“I have no money, no home, a wife, and a probably pregnant girlfriend,” I said, trying to tease.
But even I knew the amount of shit that needed to be cleaned up when I woke up tomorrow. I had a lot to do.
She was quiet for a moment, but then said, “I wonder if it’s easier to get an annulment if the marriage was never consummated.” She let the words hang in the air a minute. “If it was never consummated.”
I looked down at her, knowing what she was worried about. Did I sleep with Ari…
I reached around and turned her chin toward me. “It’s called fraud,” I explained. “When you enter into a marriage with no intention of consummating it. I’m way ahead of you, Devil.”
An embarrassed little smile tugged at her lips, and I could see her shoulders relaxing.
Marrying Ari got me into the house and put them all under my thumb. I was a means to an end. It didn’t take long to face the fact, though, that I could barely tolerate eating a meal with that woman, let alone take her to bed. I knew who I wanted.
She lowered herself onto the floor, dangling her legs over the side just like we did when we were kids.
“Banks won’t want the inheritance,” she pointed out. “You can contest his will if you want.”
I let out a breath and sat down next to her, leaning back on my hands and looking out through the leaves in the tree that hid us from the world.
“Fuck it,” I said. “He was right. She’ll do better with it than I would have. And I don’t want anything of his anyway.”
She nodded, but no worry creased her brow. She almost looked happy, and with her hair blowing behind her and those same dark pink lips, she was eight again, and I was eleven, unable to stop looking at her.
She faced out toward the house, and I was glad she seemed to like it up here.
“What do you see?” I asked.
She inhaled a deep breath and then fell slowly back, lying down on the floor with her legs still hanging over the side.
A little smile played across her lips. “I see us spending the night up here.”
I came down on her, taking her face in my hands and heading for her mouth.
Hell yeah.
