“Are you sure that’s wise?” I asked, my voice hoarse and croaky from screaming.
The man looked me over, nothing past his cold blue eyes visible but they were enough to convey his pity and contempt. “You’re not going anywhere, love. We both know that. At least this way I don’t have to wipe your ass for you.”
He jerked his head, indicating for me to get out of the way, then slammed the door in my face. The metallic clicking sound of locks turning seemed to echo through the empty, dark apartment, and I wrapped my arms around myself.
“Shit,” I whispered to myself, taking a few more steps into the open living room. I’d lost my high heels somewhere and my tight skirt was crusted with blood. The deepest of my cuts from Johnson’s murder attempt felt like they had reopened, because they burned under my clothes. Worse, my whole body was trembling like a damn leaf in the wind. No wonder that guard hadn’t considered me a threat. I was just a pathetic, weak, little girl. No good for anything exceptbait.
My knees gave out and I collapsed right there on the floor.
* * *
Some time later—Idon’t know how long—I peeled myself up from the floor. My tears had long since run dry and my emotions were drained.
All I knew was that I couldn’t just give up. Not like this. I owed it to the guys, to Jasper, Evan, Dylan... to Beck. I owed it to them to get the fuck up anddosomething. Kill Catherine, expose her, or at least die trying.
Grasping onto that glimmer of determination, I started searching Graeme’s penthouse for anything that might help me escape. Just the fact that he had a secret penthouse mere blocks from the local Delta offices told me how long he and Catherine must have been plotting this coup.
For the most part, everything about the apartment was standard rich-guy bullshit. Nothing personal, at all. Save one item.
An urn.
“Who are you, and why are you important to Graeme?” I murmured to the urn as I paused in front of it. The ornately carved golden object sat on a pedestal all on its own at the end of a corridor full of expensive artwork. A glass case covered it, and specially designed lights in the pedestal lit it up as an item of value.
Peering closer, I noticed something out of place. A necklace. Not the dainty, feminine sort, but a carved piece of bone or something in the shape of a turtle attached to a leather string. The sort of necklace guys wore if they’d been on a surf trip or something. The kind of necklace...
Oh shit.
That was exactly the kind of necklace Oscar had been wearing in that photo on Richard’s computer!
“Oscar,” I gasped, pressing a hand to my mouth in horror.
“Sick, isn’t it?” A deep voice said from behind me, and I startled. So much that I almost bumped my brother’s remains off the pedestal. If Richard hadn’t darted forward and steadied the whole thing, we’d both be standing in ashes.
“Richard! How—what are you doing here?” I was starting to question my sanity. Maybe watching Beck get shot had spiraled me into a mental breakdown and I was now hallucinating things. “Wait, you mean thisisOscar?” I turned my gaze back to the urn and needed to swallow down the bile threatening to rise.
“I believe so,” Richard replied, his face full of sorrow. “It’s taken me months, but I think I finally got to the bottom of things.” He held up a well-worn looking journal, but I wasn’t following.
“Graeme killed Oscar? But why?”
Richard shook his head. “No, Catherine did.”
I gasped, even though it really wasn't really that much of a shock. I’d had the exact same thought the moment she slit another man’s throat right in front of me. Not to mention I had I had first-hand knowledge of how she treated her children. Catherine wasn’t fucking sane. Not by a long shot.
“Oscar kept a daily journal,” Richard explained, holding up the book again. “It was an exercise his therapist asked him to do, to help work through his anger after he found out about who really fathered him.”
The pieces started clicking together in my head. “That’s what was in the box inside his coffin? His diaries? Why keep them at all? Why didn’t Catherine burn them or something?”
“Because Oscar knew the location of the Delta vault. My father—your grandfather—had been grooming him to take over the secret when he was old enough, but Oscar was always too smart for his own good and worked out the location on his own.” Richard paused with a sad smile, looking down at the journal. “He’s recorded it in here, but encoded it. Smart boy. When I saw Catherine with this just before the funeral, I forced her to put it in the coffin with—” His voice broke slightly. “With Oscar. She didn’t get an opportunity to get them out again before he was buried, then I figured she just gave up because her read through didn’t tell her anything.”
“Is that why she dug him up?” I wondered. “To have another shot at decoding the diary?”
Richard shook his head, looking unsure. “If I know my wife at all, the reason she had Graeme dig Oscar up was to ensure that no one would ever find out her secret. Being a victim her entire life was her greatest shame… she would rather die before revealing that to anyone.”
It was all starting to come together. Catherine had always seemed unstable and psycho, but the depth of her mental illness was so much more than I’d ever imagined. It literally dictated her entire life. Dictated to the point that she had planned some long-game scheme, twenty years in the making, to turn herself into the queen of the world. Delta had not even seen her coming. So secure in their power, they’d let the snake in the grass taken them down in one fell swoop.
She’d made my job of toppling them that much easier at least. Now I just had to finish the job.
Richard shook himself then, like he was shaking off bad memories. “We should go, Riley. They’ll be back soon; they’re following my trail to try and take me out like the rest of the board members. They got to Rome, so I’m all that is left.”
