AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sighing, I try to make sense of all the news. “Wait, you said Amanda Eder?”
Trevor nods. “Carina Eder’s sister was in that house, G. She died of a massive overdose on rohypnol and about three other drugs found in her system according to the blood samples your father had pulled before burying them with fire.”
“What the fuck?” I say absently, scrubbing my face and letting my eyes graze over two kids fighting over a cake pop at a table across the café. Such a mundane, everyday moment they’re having, while my world is becoming increasingly more complicated.
One instance, one run-in with Carina in an outdoor market had spun my life out of control. Spun me right back in the path of my father.
“So, my father covered up her rape and their deaths?” I ask.
Trevor nods.
“Not only that, G. You started that fire.”
And like that, my world tips upside down and darkens. “Excuse me?”
“You were there. That’s the first time he used you. Remember the old Victorian he wanted you to burn in Rochester? It was the only job he let you go on, your first job,” Trevor tells me.
Flashes of that night come meandering back through my brain. My father letting me out of the backseat of an SUV right as someone else left, telling me what he wanted me to do after months of me begging to be let into the family business. He’d finally caved, and my first job almost killed Carina. The only woman I’ve ever fucking felt anything for. And when she finds out I’m involved in this, it’s going to crush her. It’s going to ruin any chance I had with her.
I was an accessory to the worst night of her fucking life.
My head drops into my hands. “Did you find anything else on Stanner?”
“Not too much, but I’m still digging. He’s a tough one to crack. We’re not the only company in his employ to keep his dirty laundry hidden. But what I found odd was that one Wes Black is absent from the reports. Your father noted he was there when he showed up, but I can’t find any record of him after that night. Anywhere.”
“I stopped dealing with cases like this. This is beyond what should be fixed. He couldn’t turn a fucking job down. These scumbags should be rotting in prison, not living it up in their penthouses. What about the other creep who was there, Conner Whitfield?”
“I’ll check on him and report back to you. I’ve been focused on Emery and Carina, like you asked.”
I wave him off. “Of course, of course. You’ve done what I asked. Just do me a favor, don’t leave a trail. I don’t need my father knowing I’m sniffing around one of his cases.”
Trevor nods. “The Bancroft’s are having an issue with their landlord sniffing around again. We’re going to need to step into that situation. Did you get my e-mail?”
“Yeah, I’ll look into it.”
One thing I love about Trevor is that he doesn’t dwell on what I ask him to do. Just like that, we were back to two normal guys, sipping our coffees and discussing work. But this news forever changed one of us. If I’d have gone by the house, maybe it would’ve sparked my memory, forced me to recall the night Father had me burn the inside the best I could with gasoline. But I hadn’t. I’d left and gone back home... How the fuck am I going to tell her?
How the fuck is she going to react?
* * *
Back in the shadows.
Carina’s in her living room, on her couch, watching Netflix with a bowl of popcorn. Randomly, she’ll look out the window, and I’ll slip back into the pine’s dark outline, hiding from view.
This fucking mess of a situation has all been brought on by me falling for the girl beyond the windowpane. I don’t know how to fix it, and it’s what I do for a fucking living. Sure, my side of the business had gone softer than my father would ever be, but I still fix everyone’s issues. Yet, I can’t find a way out for myself.
I can’t be like them; that I know. I don’t want to be another lying piece of shit in her life that can’t tell her the truth.
Sighing, I trudge up the steps and ring the doorbell. The television pauses on the other side of the door before her shadow moves through the room, casting a silhouette across the very tree I’d been hiding near for hours in the cold.
“Oh, finally, I was getting worried.” She ushers me inside, and I pause near the back of the couch. Piglet hisses at me, as if he can sense the shift in my energy through some empathetic power he has.
“Don’t mind him. He’s an ass sometimes. Shoo, shoo,” she tells the cat, and he gives me one more backward, threatening glance before hopping off the couch and heading toward the cat tree.
Carina steps into me, tentatively putting her arms inside my coat and around me. Sensing something’s wrong, she pulls back and looks at me. “What’s the matter?”
“We need to talk,” I say, feeling the most unlike myself I’ve ever felt. It’s like my entire personality has come unplugged for what I need to get through in the next few moments.
