Page 54 of Violent Little Thing

I swallowed hard. “Go to the camera and pull up the feed from ten minutes ago, when I got into the elevator.”

He frowned, but did as I asked.

He watched the past five minutes in utter silence, his back going ramrod straight when he heard what his once-family had to say.

“I hate them,” he said. “All this time…”

All this time, he’d thought he’d been solely responsible for killing his wife and unborn child, and that hadn’t been the case.

He pulled out his phone and called Apollo.

“I’m already on it,” he said. “I was listening to the conversation in the elevator. I’m already on the car’s website. You had a…”

I tried my hand in getting into Seth’s phone, and found that, despite the cracked screen, I was able to get in just fine. There was no lock on it whatsoever.

And on top of that, all of his information—passwords, bank accounts, everything—was written down in his notes app.

His entire life was in this phone. How, exactly, was he just going to go about living his life without it?

Rich people…

“…that year model was recalled for a loose left wheel hub that flew off at random. It killed four other people. Everyone else had multi-million-dollar lawsuits filed against them. They’ve been paying out the ass for years, because only rich people can afford to buy them. Meaning, they killed rich people that could afford to hang them up in court forever. Also, it looks like your father-in-law got a payout from them. To the tune of eighty-two million.”

I signed into Seth’s bank accounts and my eyes bugged out at the number of zeros there.

“Of course he did,” Court growled.

He got up and walked out of the room, his phone still on speaker on the desk next to me.

“Um, he left,” I said quietly. “I have Seth Cottonwood’s phone. There are a ton of emails, passwords, bank accounts, routing numbers, and even more stuff that I can’t figure out in here. Do you want that information?”

I heard keystrokes on a keyboard and then he said, “Call off the numbers.”

I did.

“I’m in,” he said. “Bank accounts in the Caymans. Bank accounts in the state. Ohhh, what do we have here?”

I was on the edge of my seat. “What is it?”

“He has a second family.”

I blinked. “He what?”

“Well, never mind.” He paused. “Not a second family. A kid…”

I scrubbed at my face. “Lauri’s sister, Zee, was talking about her dad saying she had a ‘dud’ of a kid. Could it be that one?”

“Maybe…”

Court came back in, looking cool as a cucumber.

He was anything but.

He sat down and rested his elbows on his knees.

“Court,” I said softly. “Does Zee have a kid?”

“Not that I know of.”