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He opens his mouth, closes it again and shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
Before I can make heads or tails of what just happened, before I can ask him what he’s sorry for, he hands me off to Val and walks away. I take a step to go after him, but Val has his orders because his grip is like a vise around my arm.
“Santos?”
He turns back when he gets to the door, but whatever is on his mind is heavy. Then he’s gone. Just like that, and without another word, he’s gone.
33
SANTOS
My mind is a blur of facts and faces, my head full of words spoken by the dead and the living alike.
Thiago’s warning to Madelena when the third person appeared on the catwalk.The blood of a monster runs in his veins. He’d know better than anyone. He shared that blood, too. Same as Caius.
Caius telling me he had his bracelet repaired after he broke it climbing. I remember that climbing event. It was years ago. But he’d backed out after getting there. I remember picking him up from some bar, where he’d spent the afternoon. Caius is afraid of heights. He’s always been afraid of heights.
So how was he on the catwalk?
Camilla telling me Thiago was meeting someone at the lighthouse. Thiago knew all along that Caius was the Commander’s son. Did he threaten to expose him? Did Caius feel like it was a possibility? But who would care? Me? What did he think I’d do with the information?
No. There’s more. I’m missing vital pieces.
My father’s final words to us.I know what you did, and this is your punishment.
Did he know my mother lied to him about who fathered Caius? That’s a hell of a punishment to cut Caius out when Caius himself wasn’t guilty of anything. He was simply born of what equated to rape.
Rape.
Bea Avery’s version of history varies from my mother’s. But they both tell one part exactly the same way. The Commander did not know of Caius’s existence. If he did, he would’ve demanded to take him. Hell, he wouldn’t have bothered to demand. He’d just have taken.
But he took me. What a coincidence that he found me, that my crime so perfectly fitted his needs.
“Damn it!” I slam my fist into the steering wheel.
It’s late by the time I get home from Hells Bells. I switch off the engine but instruct the soldier at the door to leave the keys in the ignition. I don’t think I’ll be here long. I’m not sure why I came anyway. I know what I’m looking for will only confirm what I already know. I have the police report from Alexia’s murder memorized.
Besides, I know what I did when I found her, and only I know.
I push both hands into my hair and pull when I get to the study door. Because what will this mean? What does it mean?
I enter the study and close the door. I’m not really here to look at the report even though it’s what I busy myself doing, opening the safe, taking it out, setting it on the desk. I am trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I’ve been betrayed.
The folder sits closed on my desk. I get up, walk into the living room and reach over the bar to get the bottle of whiskey. It’s Caius’s. I drink a very long swallow, carry it back into the study and sit behind my desk again. I look up at my father’s portrait and I swear his eyes are different. I swear he’s looking at me asking me the same questions I’m asking myself.
What the fuck am I going to do?
Because the police report doesn’t contain the detail that my mother knew. Caius couldn’t have known it. I never told it to him. I never told anyone. Because it was too shameful, too wrong. Too much a betrayal of Alexia.
As I open the folder and re-read the report I know by heart, I feel a twisting inside my gut and my chest. I wonder if this is what Dad felt when he found out about Caius, assuming that’s what triggered the changing of the will.
A right-handed person killed Alexia.
I killed her father because I was insane with rage and fury and convinced it was him. There was no one else it could’ve been. Caius had even told me to go get Alexia, to not leave her there with her father because of what he’d do to her if he were to find out. It was all laid out for me. All I had to do was play my part—and I did, exactly as the script was written.
But after finding her and before I went after her father, I closed her legs, and I wiped away the word W-H-O-R-E the killer had written in her blood across her stomach. I wiped it away because she wasn’t that, and I wouldn’t have anyone think she was.
How did my mother know? Did Caius tell her that, too, just as he told her Alexia was pregnant? Did he tell her that after killing her and writing out that word to taunt me? To push me so far, I couldn’t come back from it?
