Levi taught me it was okay to be different, that it didn’t matter what others thought of me. As long as “different” didn’t include murdering one of my housemates and carving a pentagram into her chest, obviously.
And Nolan? Well, I thought he taught me how to love, but it turned out that was just stupidity.
I’d taken the lessons to heart, even after I came close to a coronary when a cop recognised me. What were the chances of a former officer from Pacific Heights transferring to the sheriff’s department in Blackstone Bluff? Tiny, right? But that’s what had happened, and worse still, he was good with faces. He’d pegged me as Alexandria Rockwell, niece of Porter, daughter of Reid and Eliana, a “troubled teen” who’d run away briefly before returning home with her tail between her legs and then moving to New Hampshire to live with her maternal grandparents so she didn’t keep “acting out.”
It was he who’d arranged for me to be placed in a foster home while someone tracked down my parents, and no way was I sticking around until they arrived. My mom was a bitch, and the father I’d once idolised and looked up to had sided with her over me when I told them what Uncle Porter was doing. Of course I wasn’t being abused, Mom said. I was just attention seeking, acting out because she wouldn’t let me watch TV late at night, and Porter was a police captain, for Pete’s sake.
I was thirteen when I managed to video him raping me. Thirteen when I heard him laughing with Dad over beers, telling Dad how he accidentally pulled over one of his colleagues for driving while drunk, and when he chauffeured the officer home, he’d had to stop twice for the asshole to puke by the side of the road. Thirteen when I discovered cops looked after their own. Thirteen when I realised that if I reported Uncle Porter, the department he ran would only cover it up.
Thirteen when I stole three thousand bucks from my dad’s closet and left home with my laptop, a stash of candy bars, and some clothes. Mom must have panicked, because my disappearance did make the local news, but half a day later, Uncle Porter gave a heartfelt press conference on the steps of the police station, explaining that I’d returned home and was now getting the help I needed. That was when I knew I’d been right. They’d covered everything up. My parents knew what he’d done to me, and they’d covered it up. Dad had sacrificed his daughter to save his reputation, and Mom had chosen to protect her lifestyle.
Payback had taken me several years, but I’d gotten there in the end. Chase and I had toasted the downfall of Rockwell Systems, Inc., on a beach in Tahiti.
As for Uncle Porter, he was still breathing, despite Jez offering more than once to take care of the problem. But he had to keep looking over his shoulder because I was there in the shadows, watching. Waiting. Fucking with him. My first night in the foster home, I’d emailed him the video and told him that if he didn’t resolve the problem, I’d make sure everyone knew why a sixteen-year-old had been living in Blackstone House in the first place. To give him his credit, he did have good connections, and I’d been nothing but a footnote in the news stories about the case, the “unidentified minor,” a victim of circumstance rather than a suspect. And if I ever needed another cover-up, I wouldn’t hesitate to blackmail him again, only now I had evidence of his corruption as well as the rape.
I’d also built a new life for myself, one I mostly liked, even though it occasionally felt as if something was missing. Not money—I had plenty of that now. Stability? The itch to travel to a new country every week wasn’t as strong as it had once been, and I was tired. Should I try buying a home of my own again? Perhaps. But where? I’d tried living in Paris, and the constant noise got on my nerves after a while. Antigua had been too quiet. Then there was Geneva, which had been pretty nice until our neighbour turned out to be a raging homophobe. I’d done some digging into his finances, and he’d moved from Anières to Champ-Dollon Prison, but by then, I was sick of the place. Sick of bureaucracy. Sick of the construction work that started in the street outside four days after we moved in and never ever ended. Sick of all the good restaurants being closed on Sundays. Oh, and I nearly got mugged. Chase flattened the guy, but that was the final nail in the casket. Not literally—the guy just had a few broken bones—but we left Switzerland the next afternoon. We headed to Australia, where we stayed for one day and seventeen hours. That was how long it took for me to find the snake in our hotel suite. I sent a photo of it to Dice, who confirmed it was indeed venomous, and Chase booked us a cab to the airport.
“So that’s why you talk to all your former roommates except Nolan?” Chase asked.
“I don’t talk to Levi.”
“Because he’s in prison.”
“Whatever. Are you going to get that coffee?”
“Just message the man.” A wink. “He’s hot in a country kind of way.”
“Don’t start.”
Chase merely chuckled as he ambled away.
“Nolan’s straight, remember?” I yelled after him, and a couple walking past on the beach nearby turned their heads to give me a dirty look. Dammit.
But it was the truth. Nolan was straight. He’d dated on and off during our time in Blackstone House, nothing serious, and now he was involved with Marielle. And okay, on paper she seemed like the perfect woman, but being in the same room as her gave me hives. All that, “Do you want more coffee, Nolan? Should I remodel your bedroom, Nolan? Let me suck your toes, Nolan,” meant I’d ground through a brand-new mouthguard in the two days I’d been there. So what if she was a strong, independent woman who’d worked as a designer at a high-end firm in New York before starting her own business? I still didn’t like her.
And I didn’t want Nolan to get hurt. Marielle was on a possible rebound—before she left New York, she’d broken up with her fiancé, according to a BuzzHub post from an old friend offering commiserations—and that was never a good basis for a relationship. The fiancé had cheated with her best friend before she threw the ring at him, cleared out her social media, and went on a journey to “find herself,” but after she deliberately got my name wrong and then interrupted a private conversation, I struggled to feel much sympathy.
And that alone made me message him back.
Me
Did you know there’s an island off the coast of Cannes where monks have made wine for over a thousand years? A.
Nolan said he missed the random facts, didn’t he? If it made him happy, I’d send him quirky snippets every day, safe in the knowledge that it would annoy the shit out of Marielle if she found out. When she found out. Nolan was terrible at subterfuge. Even if he hadn’t been with me in the basement that night in Blackstone House, I’d have been certain he didn’t kill Ruby because he just didn’t possess that level of cunning. Jez did, and Grey, and Brax, maybe even Dawson, but they all had alibis except Jez. And she didn’t have a penis, so that ruled her out.
Levi’s guilt had actually been somewhat of a surprise, but by process of elimination, it must have been him or Justin. I’d installed cameras to cover the exterior doors and windows, and there were only two blind spots. One on the far side of the circular tower because some foliage had overgrown, and one at the rear where furniture obscured the view. But the basement windows were bolted, and the tower windows on the first and second floors had been painted shut—fixing them was another item on our endless DIY to-do list. As for the windows in Ruby’s room, those were secured from the inside when we found her. Nobody but the remaining nine of us had entered or left in the period between her death and the discovery of her body. Then Levi’s DNA was found inside her, and although Dawson’s knife had inflicted the fatal wound, Levi had borrowed it a couple of days prior and never given it back. Jez saw Dawson hand it over.
I didn’t trust easily, not anymore. But I did trust Nolan—at least, I was certain he wouldn’t murder me—and the part of my brain responsible for teenage crushes and dumbass kisses didn’t hate the idea of having him back in my life.
I hit “send.”
CHAPTER 10
NOLAN
What the hell? Nolan wrote a heartfelt apology, and Alexa responded with…a question about a monastic winery? He’d hoped she might be sorry for lying, regretful that she’d disappeared for almost a decade, but no. He got this. And of course he already knew about the winery on Saint-Honorat—winemaking was his job, after all—and he’d always wanted to visit the place, but that would involve having both the money and the time to do so. Neither seemed likely to happen any time soon.
Especially if Alexa was going to send random facts rather than an update on his broken laptop. Although…hadn’t he said he missed the random facts? Was that what this was? An attempt to turn back the clock to the good old days? Because without an apology, Nolan wasn’t sure he could ignore what came between, not after he’d spent years riddled with guilt and regrets. Guilt about leaving, but also guilt for the way he’d been starting to feel about Alexa when he thought she was older.
