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“Your father was a raging alcoholic. He was emotionally and physically abusive—but mostly with his wife. Zane tried to protect her, but sometimes it was impossible. Before he left the house, we ensured that you’d be out, too. Hence, why you were sent to boarding school.”
Hearing his words, a chill runs down my spine. Is this true? Why can’t I remember any of it?
“What about Iris?” I manage to whisper, my voice unsteady. “Did he abuse her?”
“She was daddy’s little girl. He had this weird attachment to her which kept her safe from any emotional or physical assault.”
I blink back the tears at this revelation. While I want to believe that I knew my father and I had a good relationship with him, it seems like it was just an illusion. He was not who I thought he was and the man I loved was somehow a figment of my imagination.
He never did anything to me, unless I count the emotional jabs he took at me after my mother died. His financial recklessness, which nearly cost me everything I held dear, was its own form of cruelty. If not for Brahms and Ellington, I might have lost everything.
This revelation is painful, unexpected, and . . . I don’t understand why we’re talking about Dad. “What does my father have to do with us?”
“The accident,” he explains to me. “Iris was involved with a married man—a famous designer. She was pregnant, and the wife threatened her career. Your dad was trying to save her. Which is why he began spreading the rumor that Iris and I were together—engaged.”
I’m listening but none of this is making sense. “Zane and I were trying to figure out a way to help her. Though he wasn’t happy about her affair. We were going to Vegas, to stage a pretend wedding so they would think she was with me. I was doing this for Zane and Iris. Your dad and the pilot of the jet were friends. He was the one flying the jet—I didn’t know he was drunk.”
“Dad?” I frown.
“Dad was flying the plane?” My voice comes out like a squeak.
Brahms nods.
“But why did you take the blame?”
Chapter Thirty-One
Brahms
(Then)
The cold, sterile lights of the hospital room buzzed overhead. The muted scent of disinfectant and illness permeated the air. The last few weeks—or was it months?—had been a blur. Waking from the coma felt like emerging from the darkest depths of the ocean, gasping for air, and fighting to remember.
It felt like hours since I woke up and the news that Zane died hit me, but I still had trouble understanding that he was gone. As the doctors ran tests and asked questions, all I could think of was my best friend.
He died.
Ellington was there, right beside me, as the staff wheeled me back to my room. As soon as we arrived and we were alone he asked, “What do you remember from the crash?”
I tried to think back through the haze. I saw the wreckage again, the mangled plane barely recognizable. Bile rose as I recalled the screaming, the violent impact as we plunged to the earth.
I still couldn’t understand how I survived.
“Zane,” I muttered thickly. “He was with me. I . . . First he couldn’t move, but then I remember him clearly kneeling next to me, telling me to hold on, that I had to protect her. To remind you he loved you.”
Ellington closed his eyes briefly at the mention of his boyfriend—the love of his life. When he opened them, they glistened with unshed tears.
“Sorry for your loss,” I said, feeling guilty that I was there and not him.
“The investigators sifted through the debris, analyzing. They found the recordings in the black box with drunken ramblings,” he said quietly, not even acknowledging Zane.“Thatcher’s alcohol levels were high when they rushed him into the operating room.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “The pilot didn’t drink or fly the plane for that matter. It was Thatcher who insisted on piloting that night.”
Ellington nodded grimly. “I knew you would confirm my suspicions.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“That’s the problem. Thatcher swears up and down the pilot was flying. He has no issue letting an innocent dead man take the blame,” Ellington scoffed in disgust.
