Page 121

It’s an old black and white photo. A family. Vin’s, I’m guessing. Two adults, dressed up in their finest, with three children in front of them. Thin, dark haired, beaming. The eldest – Vin? – has a gap between his teeth. The girl next to him has the curliest thick hair I’ve ever seen.

But it’s the third child that pulls my attention. She has to be around ten. Thick, straight hair. Wide saucer like eyes. A pretty face that expresses how excited she is to have her photograph taken by a professional, with her best dress on, surrounded by family.

“What is this?” I ask, my stomach tight. Because I’m starting to figure it out.

“My momma, my daddy,” Vin says, pointing at each one. “Me, my sister Viv, that’s Bennet’s mom, and my other sister Lenny.”

“Lenny?”

He laughs softly, but there’s no humor in it. “She liked her real name better. Leona.”

The name slices through me like broken glass. My chest goes tight, my mind flashing to Eden’s tear-streaked face in the library when Selena dropped it like a bomb. And now here she is, frozen forever in black and white, smiling at the camera like she had no idea the world would chew her up and spit her out.

Vin’s gaze sharpens as he watches me take it in. “You remember her, don’t you?”

“Leona was your sister?” I ask, my voice thick. He doesn’t reply. He just stares at me, his gaze full of hatred. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I was biding my time.”

“Biding it for what? I’ve known you for years.” I look up at him, frowning. “You’ve known all this time and kept it a secret?”

“A good businessman never gives up his leverage. So yes, I’ve known all this time. Why do you think I’ve kept you so close? And I’ve also known what your father did to her.”

“My father?” I ask, confused. “What does he have to do with anything? He wasn’t home when she died.”

“Because your mother made him leave. She found out that he and Leona were having an affair.”

The words are like a fist to my jaw. I wince at their impact. “No. No, that’s not right. I was there. I would know.” The thought of my father in a relationship with a woman young enough to be his daughter makes me want to hurl.

“She loved him, did you know that? All the promises he made, all the sweet talk. It turned her head, turned her from a good, God fearing girl into somebody who did whatever heasked. She thought he was going to leave your mother for her. He told her he would. And she loved you too. Wanted to be a family.”

My stomach lurches. I think of Leona’s soft smile, her muted laugh, the way she shielded me from my father’s temper. It all collides with the image Vin is painting and I can’t make them match.

“You’re lying,” I rasp, but the words sound hollow.

Vin smiles like a cat who’s cornered a mouse. “Am I? Or is it easier to believe the fairy tale? That she was nothing but your nanny, nothing more than a servant, when in truth she was eaten up and spat out by your family. You destroyed her.”

“No,” I say more certain this time. “You’ve got it wrong.”

He picks up a folder. “This says differently. All the letters she wrote to my sister. Photographs of them together in a hotel. The police report your father paid good money to suppress.” He throws the stack of papers at me, and I watch as they flutter to the floor. “It broke my family apart. My mother died a year later. My father a year after that. And Viv, she didn’t speak to me for over a decade. Not after I stole all of Lennie’s letters.”

I look at the first document in the folder. A police report on her death. Nausea rises in my stomach. “She killed herself?” I manage to say through the lump in my throat.

“Of course she did. You think it was an accidental overdose?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.” All I know is that I found her. I called for help. And my parents, well they took a week to come get me. I drop my head into my hands, remembering the week I spent with their lawyer and his family, because my own mom and dad didn’t give a shit. “I didn’t know.”

“But you were responsible. Just like he was. You take innocence and you chew it up. All of you. Your father ruined her, your family ignored her, and you…” His lip curls into a sneer. “You were the prize she thought she’d win if she held on longenough. A little boy with wide eyes and a broken smile. She thought loving you meant she’d get him too.”

The words hollow me out. I can see her face the way it was that night, pale and slack, her hand dangling off the bed. I taste bile. “I was just a kid. I didn’t know,” I whisper again, though it sounds pathetic even to me.

Vin leans closer, his whiskey breath hot against my cheek. “And now you do.” He folds his arms over his chest. “We were getting so close. I could feel it. I was going to steal the thing you wanted most and bring you to your knees. I thought it was the resort. I was never going to release you from the loan. But then…”

“Then?” I prompt.

A sour smile pulls at his lips. “Then Bennett told me.Everything. And I realized the resort wouldn’t be enough. I don’t want you on your knees, I want you broken. I want it so you can never get up. So I’m going to take the one thing you took from me. The sweet hope of innocence.”

“I think I lost that a long time ago.”