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“That doesn’t prove you didn’t kill him,” Odin finally says albeit more quietly now that he’s been confronted by evidence of his father arranging a hit on his uncle. “If anything, it helps the case against you.”
“Christ.” I choose one of the photos and hold my phone up so Odin can see it. “How about this, then?”
Odin looks puzzled at first. He peers closer, then turns his face away. “Jesus Christ.”
“What’s the time on the clock say? It’s incidentally logged on my phone as well in case you think I arranged that.” He keeps his gaze averted. I signal to Val, who takes hold of Odin’s head and forces him to look back at the phone. I get that he doesn’t want to look. I’m zoomed in on the photo of his uncle floating face-down in the pool where the clock on the wall clearly shows the time. “If you’ve seen the rest of the surveillance footage, you’ll know I let myself in about three minutes prior. Hardly enough time to drown a man, dry myself off, and take a fucking picture, don’t you think?”
Odin looks up at me, confused. “Why don’t you show Maddy that? Then she doesn’t have to know what her uncle did.”
“You think her seeing his body floating in the pool is a good idea?” Is he for fucking real? I could have shown her this from day one, evidence that what I was saying was true. But no way I was doing that to her. Hell, if it were up to me, she’d never have found out the kind of man Jax Donovan was, but there was no other way—or if there was, I didn’t think of it.
“She’s never going to find out about the existence of this photograph, understand?”
He nods.
“And you’re going to tell her what Uncle Jax did. How he was blackmailing your father, among others, and left him with no choice but to remove himself from the company or face prison time.”
He grits his teeth.
“Now tell me. Who got you the surveillance footage?” Because it’s not supposed to exist. We made sure it was erased at the top level of the security company.
“No one.”
I raise my eyebrows and study him, giving him the opportunity to find the right answer without me having to beat it out of him. I’m doing this for my wife.
“I have it. It’s hidden,” he finally says.
“Where?”
“Home.”
“We’re going to go get it when you’re done talking to your sister. Now who got it for you?”
He shifts his gaze away, jaw set stubbornly again.
“Is it your boyfriend?” I ask, because I do know a few things about Odin De Léon. One of them is that he’s not interested in girls. I don’t give a fuck about his sexual preferences, but Marnix De Léon does. Odin has been forced to keep this hidden from the society of Avarice and is expected to marry a woman of equal standing. Madelena is aware and keeps his secret with him. It’s one of the reasons Marnix is so disappointed in his son.
What I do care about is that his boyfriend, Rick Frey, is some sort of computer wizard. He’s the only person I can think of who could hack into the security company’s database and find what was supposedly destroyed years ago.
Odin tries to keep his expression neutral, but I see the flicker of emotion in his eyes, see the line form between his eyebrows. I give him a minute and sure enough, he faces me, eyes welling up with tears.
“He won’t talk. He’s not like that. He’s trustworthy.”
“Well,” I push the chair back and stand. “After you talk to your sister and we’ve picked up that surveillance footage, you and I will pay him a visit and I’ll decide then how trustworthy he is.”
4
MADELENA
Santos is sitting in the same armchair he’d been sitting in when I woke up. He’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite name as Odin confirms what he told me, that Uncle Jax was blackmailing our father. He, too, however, declines to give me more details, and I know it’s bad.
My gaze vacillates between my brother and my husband as the façade of the world I’ve always known is chipped away, exposing an ugly truth beneath. As I numbly listen, I remember the overheard conversations, the distrust going back years, as far as when Mom was alive. No, not just distrust. Hate.
“I’m sorry, Maddy,” Odin finally says.
“You’ve known all these years.”
“What could I do? What would have been the point in telling you?”
