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Lorenzo leans forward in his chair. “Can you tell us what happened to you, Callie?”
She takes a sip of her coffee and rests the mug on her thigh. “That sick fuck beat me and raped me,” she says matter-of-factly, as though she’s told this story many times.
“Brad?” Lorenzo asks.
“No.” She shakes her head. “Jake.”
“Jake?” Lorenzo frowns.
“Yeah, I told my parents, and they both just let it happen,” she says with a shrug. “He was like our dad’s golden boy, and he got away with murder—probably literally in the case of our mom.”
“You think it was Jake who killed your mom?” Nathan asks, while I listen in shock.
“I wouldn’t put it past him. He was a sick, twisted fuck.”
I squeeze Lorenzo’s hand and try to stop my entire body from shaking.
“Jake? Not Brad?” Lorenzo asks again.
“The semen found on Janice Mulcahy’s body belonged to Jake,” Nathan cuts in. “We got access to all the sealed files.”
Holy crapballs. What the hell kind of family did I marry into?
“How old was Jake then, like fifteen?” Lorenzo asks.
Nathan nods. “That’s why his files were sealed too.”
I fight the urge to be sick. “Semen? You mean Janice? Brad and Jake’s mom?” Lorenzo squeezes my hand tighter. “So she was abusing Jake? Having sex with him?”
Callie snorts. “He was raping her too. I told you, he’s a twisted fuck.” How is she so calm about all this?
Lorenzo takes a deep breath to compose himself before he speaks again. “What happened when you were thirteen?”
“I got pregnant. Best thing that ever happened to me,” she says with a derisive laugh. “That’s when people started to believe me. Child services whipped me out of there and I never looked back. I found out about my mom’s death when I was seven months along, and I haven’t seen a single one of those fuckers since.”
“What happened to your baby?” I ask.
She smiles softly. “He was adopted by a great family. He’s doing really well. Just finished college. I don’t see him, but I get updates.”
I return her smile, glad that she seems to take comfort in that.
“Did you know that Mike Mulcahy wasn’t your father?” Nathan asks her.
“Not back then. I didn’t find that out until a few years ago.”
“Who was your father?” Lorenzo asks. I can’t believe I had no idea about any of Brad’s messed-up past. “He have anything to do with how hard it was to access those records?”
“Yep. Seems my dear old mom had an affair with a guy named Foster Carmichael,” Callie replies.
Lorenzo frowns. “Why do I know that name?”
“He was a big deal in New York in the nineties and early 2000s,” Nathan explains. “Before he started pissing off the wrong people. But back then he was a big fish with a lot of government pull. Family values were a major foundation of his campaigns. He couldn’t afford the scandal if word ever got out that he’d had an affair and a kid with a married woman, so he had the whole thing buried deep.”
“I figure good old Mike knew all along that I wasn’t his kid, which was why he allowed Jake to do what he did,” Callie adds. “And my mom was bullied by him her whole life.”
“Where does Brad fit into this though?” I ask, finally finding my voice. “Jake always seemed a little afraid of him.”
“I guess he was.” Callie shrugs. “Brad was always a bully too. He was the one person Jake could never push around, and while Brad didn’t actively participate in any of the shit Jake did to our mom and me…” She shakes her head.
