Page 141 of The Dearly Departed

Right then and there, I told him everything that had occurred that night in the greatest detail I could manage.

My arrival at Seint Manor in Hollow Cove.

The cushy life I’d discovered Gerald Crowley had found himself in with his equally fucked-up and perverted wife, Virginia.

The party I'd attended, wearing the mask that would somehow become my alternate persona.

Shawn managed to chuckle at that. "So, that's where the mask came from," he muttered, his lips quirking into an awful, sad sort of smile. "You scared the fucking shit out of me, coming down those stairs though."

"I've actually had people shit their pants when they see me coming for them," I admitted, and immediately, I wished I hadn't said it at all.

It sounded like I was bragging. Like I was proud. And I started to wonder if, maybe, I was starting to feel it, even if I didn't want to.

Proud.

I resisted the urge to cringe as I noticed Shawn was no longer smiling.

"Anyway …" I muttered.

I told him about Leonard being at that dinner, about my inability to speak to him without blowing my cover. About how I hadn't gotten a chance to speak a word to him in that house before he was poisoned, then shot.

Shawn's gasp was sharp as he slumped in his chair, an expression of shock and despair blanketing his face. "He was poisoned?"

I closed my eyes, seeing his lifeless body on the library floor. "Yes."

"How?"

"A waiter put cyanide in his drink," I muttered, lifting a hand to rub at my temple, careful not to bump my fresh stitches.

Shawn's lips parted with a quiet sob as he pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. I had to remember that the information was old for me. I'd had time to let it settle and take shape in my soul.

But for Shawn, it'd just happened.

"Were you …" He sniffled and wiped beneath his nose. "Were you with him at least?"

I hesitated before giving my head a quick shake. "No.”

He hung his head and emptied his lungs with a mournful sigh. “God …”

“He was already gone by the time I knew what had happened."

He lifted his head then, with anger darkening his blue eyes, but he only nodded as he hastily swiped the tears off his cheeks. He inhaled deeply and rubbed his hands against his thighs before standing and collecting the first aid supplies from the table.

He left the kitchen for a moment to presumably put everything away, and when he returned, he opened the fridge and removed two bottles of beer. He popped the caps off both, then handed one to me.

"What happened to the guy who killed him?"

My gaze flicked toward him for a moment before it fell to the open mouth of the bottle. Had he known this part of the story would be the hardest for me to tell? Was that why he had offered me a drink?

I lifted the beer and took a pull, draining a quarter of the bottle in two gulps. I wasn't a beer drinker, and neither was Shawn. Hell, I wasn’t much of a drinker at all, except in the moments in which I was forced to sleep with Virginia. Drinking was always Ike's thing. He was the partier of the three of us.

But still, I was grateful for the burn against my throat and in my belly as I muttered, "Dead."

"You killed him?" he guessed.

I wrestled with my hesitation for a second, staring into the open bottle before nodding quickly and knocking the beer back and finishing it in two more gulps.

"I, uh …" I swallowed and cleared my throat, desperate to push past the lump of shame and emotion rapidly growing, but it wouldn't budge. I rubbed my hands against my thighs and through my hair, nervously looking for anything else to do as I admitted, "Gerald … he threatened me. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t. He said … he said he’d kill you and Ike. So, I poured the rest of the cyanide down the guy’s throat and watched him die in front of me.”