I direct my attention to Mel and her sister. “I have something I need to speak to you both about.”
Ashley stares at me, her expression full of curiosity, but Mel’s eyes widen, and I can feel the anxiety radiating from her across the table. I guess she can still read me better than I thought.
“There would never be a right time to tell you about this, but it’s something you both need to know.”
It’s Ashley who speaks. “What is it?”
“It’s about your father’s murder. The men who were shot by officers at the scene, Wilson and Inglewood, are the men who murdered him, and it was a robbery that went wrong …” I run a hand over my jaw. “But it wasn’t an opportunistic crime. Bryce set the whole thing up.”
Mel’s hand flies to her mouth, her eyes filling with tears.
“What?” Ashley gasps. “How do you know that? I don’t understand.”
“When Mel mentioned that Bryce always blamed her for what happened and that it was his idea to go to the beach that weekend, it just didn’t add up for me. I asked a hacker friend of mine to look into it. She found out that Bryce owed a lot of money to some very bad people. With no funds of his own left to access, Bryce recruited both Wilson and Inglewood to break into your house.”
Mel speaks for the first time. “Nobody was supposed to be home.”
“Exactly. They would have had the codes to the safe, and they would’ve walked away with close to a million dollars. But your dad was there—”
“Because of Hayley’s pool party,” Mel interrupts, and Ashley squeezes her big sister’s hand.
“Bryce couldn’t get a message to them in time to call off the job. They were raised by militia, massive conspiracy theorists, and refused to carry cell phones.”
“So, Dad confronted them and they shot him?” Ashley says, her eyes wide in horrified fascination.
“Yeah, the ballistics report suggests that’s what happened. But even though Bryce couldn’t get through to Wilson and Inglewood, he did manage to contact one of his buddies from NYPD, Detective O’Grady, who made sure he was the first on the scene. When O’Grady found Luke had been murdered, he knew that the only way to stop Bryce’s part from being discovered was to kill them both. He triggered the panic alarm, claimed he’d only just arrived when his colleagues got there and that he shot Wilson and Inglewood in self-defense. It was cast-iron.”
Mel simply gapes at me, but Ashley lets out a low whistle. “So how did your hacker friend get this information? And are you sure it’s reliable?”
“I don’t question her methods, but yes, it’s reliable. I’ve seen the phone records between O’Grady and Bryce on the day of the murder. Four calls in the space of an hour, during which time your father was murdered.”
Ashley leans forward, one hand still holding onto her sister’s. “So what now? Can Bryce be arrested? Or this Officer Grady?”
“Unfortunately, there’s not enough evidence to convict Bryce of conspiracy to commit robbery in any court. Wilson and Inglewood are dead. Officer O’Grady was killed about seven years ago. Ironically, he was shot in the line of duty while attending a robbery. And the men that Bryce owed money to, well they’re not going to cooperate with any sort of investigation and implicate themselves or risk exposing their lucrative racketeering business.”
“Fuck,” Elijah mutters.
“Right!” Ashley agrees.
“So Bryce paid these guys off with our family’s money as soon as he became the legal executor of Dad’s estate and the CEO of Edison Holdings?” Mel asks, her voice little more than a whisper.
I nod.
“You know none of this surprises me even a single bit.” Ashley shakes her head, her button nose wrinkled in disgust, but it’s her older sister I’m more concerned about.
My girl wears her heart on her sleeve, and a full range of emotions plays over her face. Anger. Shock. Betrayal. Her eyelashes flutter, wet with unshed tears. Her fork clatters to the table, and she flees the dining room.
Elijah, Ashley, and I exchange concerned looks.
“I’ll go check on her,” Ashley says.
I shake my head, already pushing back my chair. “Finish your dessert. I’ll go.”
Ashley considers me for a second, seeming to wrestle with the idea of letting me comfort her sister, but she nods her agreement after a few seconds.
I find Mel in her room, sitting on the edge of her bed and staring into space. The door is open, but I knock on it anyway. Her head snaps up, and she swats at her cheeks.
“All I ever seem to do lately is cry,” she says with a harsh laugh. “You must be getting fed up with seeing me constantly sniveling by now.”
I sit on the bed beside her and bump my shoulder against hers. “I wish you wouldn’t be so damn hard on yourself, corazón.”
Sniffing, she shakes her head.
“I know it hurts, but I figured you both should know.”
She presses her lips together and takes a deep breath through her nose. “Seems like the truth always hurts the most, right?”
I tuck her dark hair behind her ear. “Not always.”
She turns and looks at me, her moss-green eyes glistening. “No, you’re right. Lies hurt much more. Especially when those lies have become so ingrained in your consciousness that they’re a part of you. They shape the person you are, affecting every decision you make.”
I take her hand in mine, lacing our fingers together.
“He made me believe that my dad’s death was my fault. I was thirteen years old, and he convinced me that it was my fault.” A heaving sob wracks her body.
I squeeze her hand tighter, resisting the urge to offer to kill him and bury his body somewhere he’ll never be found. I’ll leave that for another day. Instead, I let her pour out the hurt festering inside her.
“He held it over my head every day of my life. It was why I could never cut ties with him. Why I agreed to all of his ridiculous schemes. Every decision I’ve made since that day has been influenced by the belief that my father was killed because of me.”
