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He opens the door to the house with ease, and we push our way through. The place is eerily quiet, and I look for an alarm system.
“Where the fuck is the box?” Joey looks at me and shrugs.
He shakes his head. “A multi-billion-dollar fashion designer with a multi-million-dollar home and no security alarm?” He looks as perplexed as I do.
“Yeah, that’s exactly how I feel. What the hell isn’t adding up, Joey?”
“Per the blueprints, we need to go through the living room, take a right to the kitchen, and her office should be behind the pantry.”
As Joey heads toward the living room, I look around. Vibrant colors are everywhere. This house feels more like a home than someone who just stays here for show. A Snickers candy bar wrapper on the coffee table with a magazine open to a perfume page.
“It’s true then. She doesn’t have a maid or servants.”
“Doesn’t look like it, little brother. It seems like Jasper and Boris were her only employees at the house.”
Fuck.That inner voice in my mind is so smug right now. It’s doing a little jig, telling me it told me so. That they weren’t employees but family. Goddamn it. I took her family away.
Shaking the feelings off, I move with Joey and smile as we come to her office. It’s a damn mess. Chaotic. A lot like Crucinda. You can tell she uses the room, and the swatches of fabric on the worktable are in the color sequence of the rainbow.
“Where do we start?” Joey asks, and before he can touch anything, I stop him.
“Don’t. I’ll do it.” A wave of possessiveness overtakes me, and I pierce him with a stare that tells him he better not touch one damn thing.
He chuckles and leans up against the door frame. “Be my guest.”
I move meticulously through the piles of paper, and they are all designs. I stop when I come to a collection called 101 Dalmatians and Lucinda. The project was stopped because Crucinda put an injunction to stop using pet fur. It was the first of many cases my father lost. All because pebble didn’t want him using real animals.
“Joey, take a look at this.” I show him the file, and his nose scrunches in confusion.
“Dad always said that they were an animal-friendly operation.”
I nod. “Not according to those lawsuit injunctions. Crucinda took every animal from the warehouse our family owned and…”
My hands start shaking as the realization sets in. “Every animal is here on this farm.” The office shifts, and I grab onto the table as my stomach turns sour and my vision blurs.
“I killed innocent people,” I gasp.
“Fuck, I told you we shouldn’t have done this, Jason.” Joey grips my arm to help steady me. It takes a few minutes before I can compose myself.
“Jason, get it together. We can right this wrong later, but we need to be sure she’s telling the truth about our mom.”
He’s right.
My God. No.
I’ll call it a mistake afterward. Right now, this points to mom committing suicide because she was caught using animal fur. We need more evidence that proves she came to Crucinda for help.
Opening the last drawer, I pull out the file that says divorce, and four tickets to Spain, as well as passports, fall out.
“What the hell?” Joey picks up an empty passport, and I realize Crucinda didn’t have our picture, but she was going to meet us.
“Our mother came to her for help. Take all the papers to John and meet with our family lawyer. He has some explaining to do.”
All the puzzle pieces are fitting together. Father lied. Fucking lies everywhere. But not Crucinda. She told the fucking truth, and I… Nope, not going down that road.
“I need to make amends with Crucinda. Or at least try to.” I lower my head, ashamed. Not only because I dragged my brothers into this, but because I’ve become a mother fucking killer for the wrong reasons.
The idea someone has hurt my sweet pebble so much, and still, she wants nothing but my affection in return, is killing me.
