“Asher, you need to get downstairs, now,” Declan barks through the door.
Ella’s eyes lock with mine and we both freeze for a second, caught off guard to have my brother pounding on the door during such an intimate moment. When the shock wears off, I help her right her clothes, and we both scramble to our feet. Declan no doubt knows exactly what Ella and I have been up to in my room, so for him to interrupt in such an abrupt manner means something is wrong.
“What is it?” I ask Declan as soon I open the door.
“A package was just delivered here. For you.”
I clench my jaw. “Me.”
“Dad already opened it.”
He doesn’t elaborate, and Ella and I follow him downstairs to the sitting room off the foyer where my father and mother are seated on a couch, staring down at a box on the coffee table. Their faces are solemn, and my father’s eyes are tinged with a deep hurt I rarely see in him.
“Stay right here,” I order Ella as I cross the room and look down at the box. A note sits on top.
I do believe these were Edward Langford’s favorite
A small jewelrybox sits open beneath the note. My grandfather’s gold Langford cufflinks sit inside. My heart pounds in my chest as I take in a small smattering of blood still on one of them. He’d been wearing these the night he was murdered, but they were not on his clothes when his body was recovered. They’ve been missing for twenty-five years.
Again, that night comes roaring back to my mind.
Grandpa’s limp,dead body is hauled from the ground by the first two masked men. They shove him into the back of his car. The third man picks me up and throws me over his shoulder. I fight, kick, scream, but he punches me in the ribs to shut me up and keep me still. My breath is knocked out of my chest.
I’m thrown into the back of the car on top of Grandpa’s body. I roll off him, screaming, panicking.What’s happening? Where are we going? Why hasn’t someone come for us?Grandpa pressed his alert button when the masked men pulled us from the car. That was a long time ago.Where is security? Why didn’t they come?
The door shuts, and the car darts away, tires squealing. Only one of the masked men is in the car. He’s driving grandpa’s long limo recklessly. The faint lights outside the dark window blur by faster than I’ve ever seen them as the driver speeds up, swerving, and I fly off the seat, landing on the floor next to Grandpa.
“You must always wear a seatbelt, young Mr. Langford,”my security guard’s words ring through my mind. Mr. Henley is always pushy about my seatbelt.
In a haze, I wriggle my way back up to the seat with my bound hands. I can’t reach the over the shoulder seat belts, but the center seat only has a lap belt. I shimmy onto the seat, grab the lap belt, and toss it, trying to throw it over my lap. I try one, two, three, four times before it works. I turn my body and grasp for the buckle with my bound hands, but the driver veers, knocking me onto my side.
I inch my way back up to sitting, frantic. Too fast. We’re driving too fast. I look behind me, over my shoulder, trying to get the lap belt into the buckle. My hands shake as I try to fit the buckle together. The two pieces clink against one another, but don’t connect. I try again, and again. Each time I’m close, the car hits a bump or swerves.Clink, clink, clink.No connection, just the two pieces hitting against each other.
The car engine revs, and we pick up more speed.
The driver starts to shout out a Catholic prayer in a hysterical, manic voice.
I try again. Finally,click.The seatbelt is fastened! I use my teeth to grab the excess length, and pull it as far as I can, tightening the belt.
The fabric of the belt barely leaves my mouth before theboomof the crash.
Everything goes dark.
Ella sidles up beside me.“What’s going on, Asher?” she whispers.
I flinch, coming back to myself.
Ella looks down at the package in my hands and gasps.
Lumped in the bottom, beneath the cufflinks, are dozens of photographs. I pluck them out, and my hands begin to shake, ever so slightly. From fear, from rage. The photos are candid shots of me, walking into work with my security, of Declan playing golf, but most of them are of Ella. Of her heading in or out of work, at the Vericom launch, out to dinner with her friends.
I toss them back into the box.
I’ve hesitated to tell Ella the entirety of the threats levied against me because I didn’t want to scare her. I knew I couldn’t keep it from her for much longer, but I wanted to give her time to process the fallout of what happened with Kyle first. I didn’t want to shove a new problem in her face, but now that’s out of my hands.
I set the box down and turn to look at her. “Our family is being threatened. That threat is mostly directed at me, but since you’re with me, it’s being directed at you as well.” My voice is dead, emotionless. I hate to give her this truth. But I know that keeping her in the dark about how dangerous this situation is, is no longer an option. Not when the threat is this overt.
“We need to talk,” I say, resigned. Maybe now she’llunderstand my hesitance about our relationship. It’s not about her. It’s about this. It’s about whether I want to pull her into this for the long term. I have no control over the short term, the board made sure of that. But I don’t know how to bring Ella, and maybe someday a family, into my world when this is a part of it. That’s what keeps me hesitating. That’s what I need to lay out for her, so she understands the truth.
