Side by side, we cooked a meal, working in quiet with some new understanding between us. When we were done, the food eaten, the dishes cleaned, I bumped him with my hip.
“If I’d said yes to leaving tonight, you wouldn’t have let me go, would you?”
Not after stalking me, catching me, and keeping me so sweetly.
Tyler’s smile was instant. Predatorial. He wasn’t pretending to be a monster. He was warning me.
“No, doll. I wouldn’t.”
God help me, I smiled. Not because I liked the answer. Because I believed it.
Chapter 13
Dixie
Sleep didn’t love me anymore. Maybe I’d had too much rest over the past few days, as all I could do was lie awake and think.
Thinking was a terrible hobby.
Mila’s questions haunted my mind, or perhaps it was all the answers I had.
On my phone, I searched for the latest articles about the Marchants. Almost immediately, I wished I hadn’t.
The top one in my search was a hate piece. A comparison between Mila and the four dead women who’d been found on theEden. They painted her as a socialite in diamonds, her lifestyle supported by trafficking women her age or younger to be raped and murdered. Pictures showed my sister at corporate parties and smiling with our grandfather.
They made her look complicit.
The gross article gave the names of the four women. One was twenty-seven. My age. I wondered if the older woman comforted the younger ones, telling them it would all be okay. That hope had been destroyed by an explosion and rushing water.
Sickened, I swiped out of it, my chest aching for them. And for my sister who was being used by armchair journalists whodidn’t give a damn about the loss of life or the damage caused. They only wanted clicks and clout.
Mila’s one wish filled my head. For information.
A thought rose inside me, and I gripped the phone. How could I be so selfish when women had died? When my sister was hurting? I could be brave enough to talk to her, but it had to be face to face. Anything else wouldn’t be fair. Which meant returning to the place I’d once loved. It would be scary but nothing to what others had suffered.
Another article popped up at the top of my search.
A repeat of the one identifying the heirs. Except now, they had a picture of Kane to go with that of Mila. Brand-new and just updated. Only mine remained a silhouette.
I stared and scanned the words.
Kane’s write-up, unlike Mila’s, focused on him potentially being active in the secret side of the business. Not the glossy, pretty figurehead like our sister, but the muscle. A women-hating thug.
Sickness curled through me.
I climbed from the bed and padded into the hall. Through the open entrance to the living room, Tyler sat up from the sofa, the low firelight outlining him.
“What’s wrong?”
I knelt on the sofa arm, the leather cool under my bare legs, and held out my phone with the picture of Kane. “I’m outta touch with my family, but how will my brother feel about this? I don’t think it’ll be good.”
“That the first time you’ve called him that?”
I waggled the phone.
Tyler took in the screen. His expression dropped. “When?”
“A minute ago.”
