A gentle push.
The door closed and the lock engaged.
“Move.”
Ivy took another half dozen steps. Tristan grabbed a chair and shoved it against the back of her legs.
“Sit.”
Ivy was already sitting.
Tristan grabbed the top of her hood, pulled it off. Took a clump of her hair with it.
“Now,” Tristan said as she squinted and her eyes adjusted. “You’re going to tell me what you did in those twenty-seven minutes. You’re going to tell me where Eugene’s laptop is, or I’m going to turn you into a vegetable just like your father.”
?Chapter 77
The man standingbefore her wasn’t the straight-edge TA that Ivy had hired. It wasn’t Tristan Coates. Tristan Neely, neither.
It was a bleary-eyed, red-faced psychopath. A broken human being. A man without a father. A father who, like Gene, had prioritized work over everything. And when he’d died, his work incomplete, Tristan had nothing to live for.
“You can make this stop, Ivy. Just tell me where the laptop is.”
“I don’t know.” Ivy took a deep, shuddering breath. Tears fell onto her lap. “I don’t know.”
They were in some sort of mansion. In the kitchen. Large bay windows behind Tristan, overlooking a series of bluffs. Sandy Hook? No, Highlands-Sea Bright. Yeah, that was it.
Ivy had no idea that Tristan had another place. Must have been Steve’s, purchased with earnings from his early crypto investments. Hadn’t shown up on any of the real estate documents that she’d spent hours combing through.
Tristan, knife still in hand, went to the table off to one side and picked up a laptop.
“This is my father’s half—where’s Gene’s?”
Ivy stared at the laptop. Couldn’t take her eyes off it. Thought of Abby, of the text she’d sent after their night out.
I couldn’t find it.
No shit. It wasn’t at his home. It was here. In this... place. Wherever the fuck this was.
And Tristan had it all along, just like she’d thought. Her father had entrusted her with his half, it made sense that Dr.Neely would entrust his only child with the other.
“Twenty-seven minutes... I know you were in that house for twenty-seven minutes. I know Eugene told you something before he hit his head.I know.”
Tristan was wrong about that. Both men had been unconscious when she’d arrived. Only one ever woke up, and he was never the same.
“I can’t believe you gave him up...” Tristan was all over the place. Manic. Obsessed. “You wanted to switch—you wanted door number three.” A tight laugh. “You were willing to sacrifice your own father for your bitch friend. You don’t deserve a father.”
“You don’t understand.” Ivy sobbed; her words were garbled.
“If my dad was still alive,everythingwould be different.”
Tristan set the laptop down and came forward with the knife. He bared his teeth.
“Steve would still be alive... if your father hadn’t killed him.”
“That’s not... that’s not what happened.”
“The fuck it isn’t.”
