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“Fine,” I say, not wanting to go into it. Because I’m not unhappy, not right at this moment, and I should be. I should hate him. “He’s not unkind to me. Mostly. You’re scaring me. Tell me what you found out.”
Odin smiles at a couple whose arms brush ours as they spin. That smile remains on his face as he turns back to me. It’s not real though—not remotely so as he says, “There’s more security footage.”
My heart drops.
“I thought… The electrical issue…” The investigators had told us there had been an outage and there was no usable footage.
“It’s not good, Maddy,” he continues as if I haven’t spoken.
My throat goes dry, my chest tightening. “Tell me.”
“He was there for over an hour. I saw when he entered. Saw him out on the back terrace at one point.” There are cameras all over the exterior of the house. Our uncle was obsessed with security. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were cameras planted inside. “Time of death was consistent with when Santos was in the house.”
I stop dancing momentarily, the room blurring around me, the floor tilting beneath my feet. Odin gives me a nudge to keep me moving.
“No,” I say, shaking my head as I try to make sense of it. “No. He drowned.”
“He was an accomplished swimmer who did the same laps in the same pool for over twenty years. You and I have always known he didn’t drown.”
“But…” I don’t want this to be true.
“And there’s more.”
My hands feel clammy against Odin’s suit jacket, and the meal I ate sits heavy in my stomach.
“When Santos was a few weeks shy of eighteen, he killed a man.”
“What?”
“I don’t know the full story. Had to do something with the man’s daughter. He was arrested.”
I know his past is violent. He’s made no secret of it.
“But then the whole thing went away. Like no crime had been committed. And Santos went MIA for five years. The Augustine family didn’t have the kind of power to make that happen. Not then. They were low level criminals. Thugs.”
“Is that when he lived with the Avery family?”
He nods, looks over my shoulder. “You know about the Commander then? He told you?”
“A little.”
“The Commander headed up a secret police force that operated out of Miami, but there was more. His power reached much farther. And this force, I get the feeling a lot of people turned a blind eye. The end justifying the means sort of thing.”
I think about what Santos said about Thiago’s scar. But then Caius’s different version comes to mind.
“This Commander had private dealings in the northeast,” Odin continues. “Holdings and investments up and down the coast, actually. From what I gathered, he used Santos as well as his own son, Thiago Avery, as his enforcers.”
“God.”
“They did some bad shit, Maddy. Really bad.”
“May I cut in?”
Odin stiffens.
I startle at Santos’s sudden appearance. When did he get so close without us noticing? And what did he hear?
Odin turns to face him, but Santos doesn’t take his eyes from me, and I can’t drag mine from his. Odin hands me off because Santos wasn’t asking, and I shudder when Santos’s big hands touch me, one wrapping around my waist to span my lower back, the other holding my now limp hand.
