Page 79 of The Dearly Departed

Gerald took the file from Dean and laid it on the table before sliding it toward me with just the tips of his fingers.

Without a moment's hesitation, despite the war taking place in the pit of my stomach, I flipped it open to find a picture.

I bit my lips together as I stared down at the color photograph.

It was a picture of me, sitting on the couch in Gerald’s upstairs office. My mask was off, anybody looking could clearly see my face. I moved the photo to the side and found another of me pulling the mask on. And then beneath that was the final nail in the coffin. Because there I was, pouring the contents of a little glass vial down the throat of a man I didn't know, outside of his involvement in Leonard's murder.

Of course, I hadn't wanted to do it.

Of course, I'd been coerced.

But my innocence ended there.

I had made a choice, and that was all a judge would see if these pictures landed on their desk.

"You're blackmailing me," I stated, my voice gruffer than usual—the only evidence that I'd been successfully shaken by what was laid before me on the table.

"It's business, son. Nothing personal."

"You planned this," I accused him, diverting my eyes from the pictures to my father's face, which was, to my surprise, not at all smug.

In fact, he looked absolutely apologetic as he shook his head. "Not exactly. But I can't say I'm unsatisfied with the outcome."

All I could do was ask, "What do you want from me?"

"Well, as luck would have it, son, you have a particular skill set that I'd like to take advantage of," Gerald said, clasping his hands together on the table's glossy black surface.

"And what skill set might that be?"

He tipped his head, gazing at me like one might stare at something they wanted. Something they wanted badly.

"You're ruthless."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

He reached over to tap the picture lying before me. "This man deserved to die, didn't he? He took a life, and you saw fit to take his. No mercy."

"You made me."

"I nudged you, sure," he agreed. "But you’d made that decision before I suggested it. You knew what you wanted to do. Don't pretend that you didn't. And, given the right circumstances, I know you'd do it again."

My heart thumped wildly, threatening with every beat to shatter my rib cage and blast through skin and bone to lay on this fucking table.

I swallowed repeatedly, the urge to vomit imminent.

"You want me to do … this … again," I murmured through a loose jaw, reading aloud from between the lines.

"You're already a murderer, son," Gerald said, his voice full of sickeningly sweet sympathy. "What's a few more bodies?"

I was stuck, trapped. I was cornered in a house with a thousand places to hide, knowing that, wherever I went, the devil on my back would always find me.

What choice do I have?

If I said no, he'd turn me in. Sure, I could always turn myself in and beat him to the punch. But I'd be behind bars, and Gerald would be free to target Isaac and Shawn.

I couldn't allow my mind to conjure the endless possibilities of what he might do to them. I couldn't stomach it.

"Shit," I murmured through a clenched jaw, pressing my back to the chair and tipping my head to look up at the ceiling.