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Ramses chuckled. “Technically, but since we’re showing him…” Ramses opened his hands. “You can take them off my hands then? I tried to offer one to Ares, but he’s not a fan.”
He was being nice about that. I smirked. “He thinks his work is pretentious.”
Actually, there weren’t many artists Ares seemed to actually like outside of his own father’s work. He talked shit about pretty much anyone I brought up that I said I liked, Bocelli being one of them.
“Yeah. I guess I was trying to be nice.” Ramses scratched his neck. “Anyway, they’re yours. Maybe ask Dorian. He probably wouldn’t mind going.”
I knew he wouldn’t. He’d actually taken me to see art before. One of Ramses’s local galleries actually.
Ramses swirled his brush around in more paint before rolling up to the canvas again.
“Would you be busy?” I asked, surprising, well, myself. I shook the tickets. “I mean, I guess I just thought it’d be fun. Dorian wouldn’t mind going, but you know, since you’re into all this stuff too.” This stuff? Really, Sloane? “I just mean if you’re not busy.”
I didn’t know why I was nervous about asking him. I guess I worried he thought it’d be weird or something.
But when he smiled, I wondered why.
“That’d be very nice,” he said, and when I gave him the tickets back, he placed them on the table that held his paints. “And you’re right. It would be fun, and I’m honored you asked me.”
I wanted to get to know him more, and I knew he wanted to get to know me. Like his wife, I was well aware how much the two were still walking around on eggshells with me.
It seemed this was a step in the right direction, and when I left Ramses that night, I couldn’t help but notice the air around him was different since I’d arrived. He was sunsets and lit skies now like his paintings, and no longer just a man trying to hold his family together.
I wondered if that was what had changed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dorian
“What do you mean they’re all dead?” I asked Thatcher, the other half of our table barely paying attention. Bow, Sloane, and Bru were going over the plans for his birthday party with Wells and Ares. Ares was at least sort of engaged, but Wells hadn’t even bothered. He was on his phone while Ares’s attention sporadically drifted to what Thatcher was going over with me.
It was some dark shit, and I thumbed past another page in the folder he’d given me. Thatch had ended up getting me Sloane’s adoption records that day he’d promised me, but once he found out I’d told Sloane (and that the pair of us had patched things up), Thatcher had offered to look further into things himself. I called that an act of goodwill and his support for my and Sloane’s relationship. The two of us had been very early as far as being on the mend then, and Thatcher had wanted me to focus on that.
There was a reason he was one of my best friends, and I hadn’t minded him looking more into things because I had wanted to work on my relationship with Sloane at the time.
Today, I was definitely invested, and Thatcher turned on his chair, the both of us abandoning our lunches to look at this shit.
“I’m mean they’re dead,” he said, pointing toward the pages in my hands. We had caseworkers here, lawyers, and government employees. They all had ties in some way to Sloane’s adoption and birth records. Sloane as Noa Sloane. Not Sloane as Pilar Mallick. These people on these pages had made things happen whether they’d signed off on documents regarding her adoption or simply aided with the process. Thatcher opened his hands. “They all appear to be from natural causes. The ones I found anyway. These records are old, and some of these people are hard to track down.”
From what it looked like, the majority, and only a handful of these people were actually dead.
“This one had heart disease. Died during an operation,” Thatcher continued, motioning to a social worker’s picture. He gestured toward a lawyer. “This guy died during an operation too. Plastic surgery. Not exactly natural, but he died on the table. A bad reaction to the anesthesia.”
I gave him back the folder.
“A ski accident,” he continued regarding a government employee. This person’s name was on Sloane’s birth certificate, had signed off on it. He shrugged. “It’s been hard to find pretty much any of these people, but the ones I have found…”
It hadn’t been good for them.
“Sounds like justice to me,” Wolf cut in, barely looking up from his phone. I supposed the party plans hadn’t been that invigorating for him in the end. His attention flicked over. “Anyway, I don’t know why y’all are even looking into that shit. I’m sure the parents are.”
That was the way he’d felt when I’d brought all this up over a month ago. I wasn’t about to look into his twin’s records and keep that detail a secret from him either, but once I’d mentioned it, he’d wondered why I was bothering. He hadn’t seen the point, and I received that resistance even more when Thatcher did start presenting me with information. Wolf and his family were in a good place. They were in a great place, and Sloane was back. He was happy.
So, I got it.
Even still, he didn’t question my need for justice, which I still wanted for my girl and his sister. I leaned in. “You know why I’m looking into this, and you’re right. It seems justice has been served.”
“Good. So maybe you can give it a rest?” Wolf stroked his jaw, eyeing me, and I shook my head.
