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“Miss Shultz.” The valet boy beams. I just flash a tight smile and walk past him and inside.
My last name is nothing more than a reminder of the mother I don’t have and a father that acts like he doesn’t even like me. Because her last hurrah—so to speak—was giving me life, my dad decided to give me her last name as a tribute. Or so he says. I just think it was another way to distance himself from me.
So, I’m a Shultz and not an Ortiz like him.
I don’t even bother stopping at the desk in the lobby. I don’t need to. Even though I haven’t been here in a while, I still know the place like the back of my hand. I move to the elevators and hit the Up arrow. When the gold metal doors slide open, I enter and punch the number four with my thumb.
Luckily, it seems everyone is asleep because it doesn’t make any stops along the way. When the doors open again, I see the golden plaque on the wall indicating the floor number. I exit and turn left, starting down the hall and scanning all the odd numbers.
Four twenty-seven.
Four twenty-nine.
“Four thirty-one,” I whisper to myself before raising my fist to knock.
When the door glides open, Lydia stands in front of me. Her normally long blonde hair is chopped short, dangling above her shoulders. A cigarette is squeezed between her fingers, and her eyes are bloodshot and filled with unshed tears.
“Lydia…” I start, trying to find the right words to ask what’s wrong.
She shakes her head and pulls her lips into a line before throwing her arms around my neck and squeezing me close to her. “I need you to know I’m okay, and you have to promise not to freak out.”
I pull away, keeping my hands placed on her waist. “What’s going on?” I don’t want to make a promise I can’t keep.
She leans forward slightly and glances down both sides of the hallway before pulling me in and closing the door. Silence envelops us as she paces the giant room.
“Lydia.”
She turns back to me and inhales a long drag of her cigarette. “Malcolm is dead.”
“What?” I couldn’t hide the shock in my voice if I tried.
“Dead. He’s dead.” She pulls her bottom lip in between her teeth, a sign I’ve learned means she’s thinking. Or maybe she’s waiting on me to freak out.
“W—” I clear my throat, trying to maintain some sort of composure, but it’s a lost cause because my mind instantly starts to wonder about all the things that happened just a few days ago. “What about the laptop? Fuck. And Bradley. What if they connect him to that and think he did it? Fuck! What did you do, Lydia?” Now I’m the one pacing.
“Carmen.” Her voice is soft, endearing almost. “If Bradley meant what he said, they won’t know a thing. You have to stay calm.”
I turn on my heel and stomp toward her. “Calm? You killed someone and I’m supposed to stay calm?”
“I didn’t kill anyone. And what happened to the Carmen who always said she would help me hide a body? We need her right now.”
I let out a sarcastic laugh. “That bitch is gone. I’m logical Carmen freaking the fuck out because I never actually thought you’d be in a position like this. What the fuck happened?”
Suddenly, her face falls, and a single tear slides down her cheek. She shakes her head vigorously before wiping it away and squaring her shoulders. “Just know he deserved it.”
I want to argue with her and say he didn’t, but how would I know? Malcolm was nothing more than Carter’s dad to me up until a few days ago when Lydia told me she was fucking him.
That thought alone sends my mind into a spiral.
Malcolm fucked Lydia. Yes, she’s eighteen now, but she wasn’t the first time. She seduced him. She wanted him. But still. He. Fucked. A. Minor.
But even then, does that justify death?
I do my best to silence the thoughts. “What happened? No bullshit answers, Lydia. I want the truth.”
She sucks in a deep breath before taking another drag from her cigarette. “The whole truth?”
I nod.
