Gabe leaned over to read, and a few moments later, I heard him gasp as he ripped the paper from my hand. “No fucking way…”
While he skimmed it again, I tried wrapping my head around what I’d just read. I was trying to decipher why the hell there were two conflicting reports from the same accident, but more than that…why the second one hadLucas’s momlisted as the driver of a second vehicle involved in the accident that killed Callie’s dad.
Not just the driver…but the oneat fault.
Still trying to make sense of it, I looked at the last two documents I pulled from that envelope, reaching down and shifting the top paper to see the second. My eyes widened when Iregistered the titles of each written in bold black letters across the tops of the pages. “No…”
Gabe looked at me. “What?”
Something in my gut told me I knew exactly what I would find if I read those documents in their entirety, so instead of picking them up, I stared at them. A part of me didn’t want to know. And for the first time in my life, I sure as hell didn’t want to be right.
One document was a non-disclosure agreement. The other, a settlement agreement.
Gabe, sensing my hesitation, lifted the documents and looked at them. I continued staring at the spot on the table where they had been moments ago, my body tense. The silence as he read them was deafening.
“Lucas’s mom and dad signed both of these, along with Callie’s mom,” Gabe said, his voice quiet.
I closed my eyes. We didn’t have to look any further to know where the money in that trust came from.
A ragged breath escaped me, not wanting to ask my next question, but I did it anyway. “Who drew up the contracts?” I heard the rustle of papers beside me before it went silent again. I tensed my jaw. “Who?”
“Your dad…”
Fuck.
Chapter 19
My fingers were steepledover my lips as I sat at the table inside the file room with the documents Gabe and I found sprawled across it. Standing beside Gabe was Kenneth Pierson.
Gabe called him and told him we needed him to meet us in the file room at what was once his office. It was clear my dad had been involved in a cover-up with the Carlisles, and both Gabe and I wanted and needed to know whether his dad knew and was a part of it.
I wasn’t paying much attention while Gabe showed Kenneth the documents we found along with the information regarding the trust I’d been sent by the bank while lobbing questions at him.
I was still trying to process what the hell was happening.
“I didn’t…” Kenneth blew out a breath. “I had no idea.”
I looked up from my seat at the table when I registered his words. The look of shock and sheer mortification written across his expression once he realized the gravity of what we had justuncovered told me he was telling the truth. He didn’t know, and he wasn’t a part of it.
I was relieved, but at the same time, some sick, twisted part of me wished he was, if only so we could get answers. Because there wasn’t anyone that could give us any now. Everyone involved—my dad, Lucas’s parents, and Callie’s mom—were gone. We had nothing but those damn documents and speculation to go off of.
I blew out a breath, dropping my head and rubbing my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. “This is un-fucking-believable,” I muttered.
“But why?” Gabe asked. “I mean, why go through all that trouble…pay all that money?”
“Reputation,” Kenneth and I said in unison.
Lucas’s parents, more so his mom, were the type of people who looked at reputation aseverything. To them, it was the one thing that could make or break you in this town.
“Eighteen years ago…” Kenneth mused as he looked over the accident report again. “John was running for his second term as county mayor back then. This happened just a few months before the election.”
I scoffed. “And there you have it.”
Kenneth sighed, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Listen, Wes?—”
“Don’t,” I interrupted, knowing what he was going to say. “I know he was your friend—hell, he was my dad—but don’t you dare defend him and what he did.”
“I promise I’m not trying to defend him or his actions, son. I just…I know this is hard for you, but perhaps there’s more to the story that?—”
