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Am I really defending him?
Am I taking the side of the man who left my sister to die alone?
I shake off my thoughts for a better time. Today needs to be about Colette. “It doesn’t matter what I said. I’m appalled you’re making my family suffer through Colette’s loss all over again for a couple of extra album sales. It makes me sick to my stomach that you’re trying to profit from this. So much so, I’m considering pulling the album’s release.”
I swear steam billows out of his ears as he snatches up my arm. “What the fuck did you say?”
As his nails pierce my skin, I say, “Let go of me. You’re hurting me.”
When my plea falls on deaf ears, I look at the men still lingering in the living room, soundlessly seeking their assistance. I realize they’re paid by Knox when they pay no heed to the cruelness of his hold. They don’t come to my defense at all. They continue packing away their equipment like they’re the only people in the suite.
Even scared, I yank out of Knox's hold before assuring him my family’s pain will never be used for financial gain. “I won’t let you do this, Knox. Death isn’t a gimmick for profit.”
When he throws his head back and laughs as if I couldn’t be more wrong, I glare at him before storming into my room. He might think his contract is ironclad, but I have news for him.
I wanted to do this off my own back, but that doesn’t mean I was stupid enough to sign a contract without having a lawyer look at it first.
“Regan ripped Knox Records’ original contract to shreds before drafting a fairer and more balanced proposal.” I crank my neck back to Knox before giving him one of the many narrowed glares he hit me with when he used Apollo to outvote me on concepts for my album. “If you didn’t read it before signing it, that’s a ‘you’ problem.”
My anger augments when my scan of the dresser in my room has me failing to locate my phone. That’s where I left it after speaking with Jenni and Emily. I placed it on top of my songbook—my missing songbook.
“Where is it?” I ask, my fury high. “Where is my stuff?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” For someone who lies for a living, Knox is horrendously bad at it. “I didn’t take your shit, Nicole,” he murmurs when I barge past him to storm into his office slash bedroom to search for my belongings. “I put it away for safekeeping.” He looks as smug as a pig in mud while rubbing his hands together. “That book will sell for a fortune in a few years.”
“It’s not for sale. It willneverbe for sale.”
He butts his shoulder on the doorjamb when I march to his desk and throw open the drawers. His laid-back response exposes I’m searching in the wrong area, but my anger is too perverse to see sense. That songbook is the only tangible thing I have left from Colette. The rest are memories.
Memories I wish weren’t so strong when I pull a copy of Laken’s record from Knox’s soft leather briefcase in the bottom drawer of his desk. It isn’t solely the sheet of paper Knox handed me three nights ago. It includes details of Laken’s plea and his handwritten confession.
It even includes photographs of the crash scene.
Even though I shouldn’t look, it is the equivalent of a train wreck.
I can’t tear my eyes away.
The damage is mainly confined to the passenger side of the car. The driver’s side took hardly any of the impact. The fender has a deep scrape, and the side mirror has been knocked off, but the damage is so minute that the fancy silver jaguar on the middle of the hood looks as new as the day it was driven off the showroom floor.
Jaguar?How could Laken afford to drive a Jaguar? His watch is an antique, but he has no clue of its worth.
“What the fuck are you seeing?” Knox asks when he spots my expression. He pushes off the doorframe and enters deeper into his office. “There’s nothing in there but his confession.” He drags his hand under his nose, a telltale sign he’s struggling to keep a rational head. He did it multiple times during a lengthy recording session previously. “They checked. They said they scoured every inch of it. It should only tell you what you already know.” His eyes adopt a wild, fierce look. “Lakenkilledyour sister. Hemurderedher because he’d rather waste years behind bars than raise the kid she was trying to pin on him.”
He hasn’t just undone his entire campaign that he was clueless about my sister’s accident until his PI dug up information on Laken. He’s wholly obliterated it.
No one knew Colette was pregnant. It was kept hidden because it didn’t benefit her case. The DA said it could have hindered it, so with my family’s reputation in our local church on the line and my father’s realization nothing would bring his daughter back, he agreed that sealing the records of the case was best for all involved.
The only people who know Colette was pregnant are her direct family…and the man she went to tell the night she died.
Between sobs, she told Petra that her meetup with the baby’s father hadn’t gone to plan and that he suggested she get an abortion.
She told Petra she couldn’t do that, that she’d raise her baby with or without the father’s help.
The crash occurred not long after that.
“Oh my god. It wasn’t an accident.”
It dawns on me that I said my statement out loud when Knox replies to it. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Laken killed her. He veered his car off the road when she refused to get an abortion.”
