She gave me a shaky smile and wiped her eyes with the edge of her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m like this. For so long, I fought to get the company up and running again. It isn’t easy to just flip that switch to hating it all, even if I hate what it hid.”
“I get it. The business was your life, right?” I settled next to her, shoulder to shoulder.
“It was. I pride myself on being strong, but I’m cracking under the pressure. All that self-worth I had from being part of Marchant Haulage is gone, and now it makes me sick. Sick for all the things that were going on under my nose. Then selfishly, because people are out there forming the worst opinions of me because they think I’m guilty by association.”
She shook her head, cheeks shining. “I’ve been interviewed twice by the police, both times voluntarily. I gave them everything I knew, which isn’t much. From what I can tell, there’s nothing to be found in the regular business operations, which have been gone over by a forensic accountant. And I should know, because I was all over that, too. Even before I leftuniversity, I was an expert in the contracts and shipping routes. Except I wasn’t. I was completely blind.”
She lifted her head to me. “I didn’t know anything. Every revelation has been the worst kind of shock, and I accepted it badly.”
“I know, sis. I believe you.”
She managed a single bob of her head, as if my acceptance was important to her. Mila palmed her phone, unlocking it. Onscreen, a map displayed with a green blinking dot, the location down near the lakes.
Mila held it up. “They’re almost there.”
I goggled. “You’re tracking them?”
“Only Convict. Both of us feel safer if we know where the other is at all times. I just needed that reassurance of seeing him moving.”
I took a deep breath, my mind wandering to a time where I might not know where Tyler was. I didn’t like the feeling. I shook it off and returned to the moment. Shit was about to go down.
“If the Marchant-Smythes are there, and they really are the ones who carried out all the bad stuff, we need to hand them over to the police. It’s the only way to clear your name, right?”
Mila nodded. “I think so. We already told the cops about the family vault, and they brought in many Marchants for questioning. But most are elderly now, and a couple have even died. No headlines have sprung up about them. Lovelyn has a contact with the police. We should talk to her.”
We both stood, but Mila paused me at the bathroom door. “The reason you left, the reason why you didn’t stay on as the heiress they made me into, it was really bad, wasn’t it?”
I managed a nod. A rush of explanation wanted out of my mouth. I kept it in, only managing, “Enough to make a fourteen-year-old homeless and dependent on my looks to survive.”
“I hate that.”
I had, too.
She swallowed. “Was it at our grandfather’s hand?”
At least in that, I could make her feel better. “No, it wasn’t.”
Mila’s relief brought tears to my eyes again.
Cassie called from the living room. “They’ve reached the compound.”
Perhaps that was something else I could tack on to my explanation to Tyler. If I could say the words that condemned me a lifetime ago.
Chapter 24
Tyler
The corner of the operations centre I used for recon was sunk in shadows, a glow coming from the screens bolted into the far wall. Four feeds from the bodycams of four men I trusted to do what I said. And nothing I didn’t.
I braced my hands on a metal table, boots planted, gaze flicking between angles. On Kane’s feed, night vision washed the exterior of the lake house compound in high contrast black and white, with water lapping at a private jetty, tall pines hemming the property in, and a stone wall running the land-side perimeter to keep the world out.
It couldn’t.
“Confirm location,” I murmured.
Kane adjusted his position, the image bouncing once as he settled. “Lake house located. Expensive taste, shite security. Cameras on the gate and east side are dead or decorative. Either way, someone paid for peace of mind and didn’t bother to check it worked.”
Suited me. “Access?”
