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Matteo puffed up. “I’m just telling you what the entire LAPD thinks—that you are a murderess.”
“That’s enough!” Eli roared at his brother, drawing the attention of the few people who were in the coffeeshop. Matteo opened his mouth, probably to argue, but the look in Eli’s eyes was murderous, and he must have realized he could no longer push his brother too far because he snapped his lips shut.
I felt an odd sense of satisfaction at the way that Matteo glared at me but kept his lips sealed. Eli and I might not be together, but he made it clear that he was not going to put up with his brother’s shit when it came to me.
Despite everything, that warmed me.
Still, I didn’t like that Matteo was looking at me with accusation in his eyes. “I might be the black sheep of the Moreno family, but I didn’t kill them. I would never do that.” The very idea of harming my family made the bile in my throat rise.
“But that doesn’t mean that Caleb didn’t,” Eli said. He stared at me with intense eyes. “You saw last night what he was capable of.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Last night, Caleb showed me a side of himself that I’d never seen before, and I couldn’t get past the smell of him. I was sure that it was the same I’d smelled that night.
Even then, I’d thought it was familiar.
“You think he did it.” Luca leaned forward. “I can see it all over your face.”
Luca’s blue eyes made me uncomfortable, and I tried not to squirm under his gaze. I might not know him well, but there was something about him that made me worried he could see something under my skin.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m sure you saw this in the police report, but my memory from that night isn’t exactly reliable.”
“You were drugged.”
I shook my head. I appreciated Eli trying to absolve me of responsibility, but I couldn’t allow it. “I went out and got shit-faced because I was pissed at the world. I didn’t ask what Caleb was giving me that night. But he didn’t force me.”
A tension settled over the table as everyone processed the information. “What about Caleb’s brother?” Sophia asked, pressing her finger to the phone. “Do you think that he might have had something to do with it? You seem pretty sure that there were two people there that night.”
The photo wasn’t great, but I knew Callum Strong anywhere. There was always something about him that made me wildly uncomfortable. That night, I’d been glad he hadn’t been at the club glaring at me through those eerie eyes of his.
“He could have been,” I said. But there was something about all of this that nagged at me. Did I think that Caleb and Callum Strong could kill? Callum, definitely. Caleb—I was still unsure.
“Why my family though?” I asked the question aloud. “Caleb and I were together.”
No one answered. Obviously, it was the question that everyone wondered as we sat across the table from one another. Even Matteo, who’d clearly dug up information on me, seemed stumped.
“Maybe Callum didn’t like that baby bro was with you…” From the way Matteo looked at me, I wondered if he felt the same way.
“Callum doesn’t like anyone,” I responded.
Luca tapped his fingers against the edge of the table. He pretended to be calm and collected, but he had his own tells, and I could see that not having the answers bothered him. It was especially interesting considering that Luca and I had only been near one another a handful of times.
“Do you think that Caleb might have recruited his brother to harm your mother because she wanted to keep the two of you apart?” Eli asked.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I turned that over. “I thought about that,” I admitted. Last night, I’d been sure that Caleb was one of the two men in my house that night, but I couldn’t figure out how or why he managed to pull it off. “But no. According to the medical examiner, Angel and my mother were dead for at least thirty minutes before I came home. Caleb was still at the club when I left. Even if he left the moment that I did, he wouldn’t have made it that fast.”
“But maybe his brother did it?”
I shook my head. “Callum didn’t like the two of us together. Not just because he didn’t want his brother being kept from him, but also because of what my father did.”
Luca looked over at Sophia, as did Matteo. She rolled her eyes and sighed. “I’m not stupid,” she reminded them. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Everyone knows that your fathers are mobsters.” Her cheeks turned red. “Or rather, my father constantly complains about it.”
I tried not to laugh. I was sure that Sophia’s father did complain about it. From what I heard, Marco Blanchi’s powerful position kept Matteo in school even though he probably should have been kicked out.
“Caleb doesn’t strike me as someone with a lot of brain cells,” Eli grumbled.
I sighed. “There’s still evidence that we need to gather.” Sophia was the voice of reason around the table, and I appreciated that.
Thinking about everything that happened was too much for me, and though there was a part of me that was sure that Caleb was there that night, I couldn’t ignore that my memory was not the most reliable.
