Drake nodded. “It was easy to find you. I read all the childhood records on you, and then followed police reports with certain details. A male victim, usually with a history of assault against women. A violent yet poorly thought-out attack. A kitchen knife or other household object used as a murder weapon. It wasn’t hard figuring out which were yours.”
My father. Reading up on me.
“You never thought to introduce yourself? Like a normal person?”
Drake threw his hands in the air and raised his voice. “I was doing the best parenting I could from afar. Cleaning up your mess! Making sure you kept your freedom.” He took a step toward me. “I’m not a good person. I don’t care about others. What could I ever offer you? I stayed away for your sake.”
I didn’t excuse him, but I understood him. “You’ve been watching me all this time?”
“You made mistakes in the early days. The skillet pan kill; I had to encourage a neighbor to forget seeing you. The bar kill; I had to make sure the hairs you left behind got misplaced.”
I thought I’d been out there on my own, that killing men and getting away with it was a sign that I was an avenging angel with good luck behind me, that it showed I was doing good work. But I’d just had my dad hovering over me, clearing up my mistakes?
“Fox was a good influence at first. He was careful. Maybe not as good as me, but he was methodical. I respected that. But even before The Corporation’s kill order came in, it had become clear that Fox was going to be your downfall. He was the one pushing for the big names, the ones that were going to get you caught or killed. He needed to be stopped.”
“You were happy to let Fox die?”
“Once I’d found you, I did a good job of protecting you. I made sure you got away with all your crimes. I’d trusted Fox to do the same. And then he let you down. Unforgivable.”
I shook my head. “When Ivrea failed, how did you convince them to not try again?”
“I said you’d been given a big enough scare that you’d rethink your choices. I said I would monitor you and step in if necessary.” He looked at me as if he expected praise for this. “When I realized what the keyring was, and that Bibi had it, I put you under surveillance. I had to be sure you hadn’t managed to cash it out. That you weren’t part of a bigger infrastructure, a bigger gang.”
I started pacing. “We’re a family! We just have an unusual little sideline. That’s all we’ve ever been!”
Drake shrugged. “I couldn’t understand why you’d take all that risk—for what? This naïve attempt to make the world a better place? But with every surveillance report I received, it became clearer and clearer it was just the two of you and your little detective friend. I was about to call it all off, but then you took Clark Dixon.”
“We thought he was just a random wife-beater! We had no idea he—”
“He was working with The Corporation. They were going to buy Boltons.”
Bibi laughed hysterically at my phone. “Silly Peso!”
I dropped my voice further. “You thought us killing him was a sign we were working for one of your competitors?”
“Losing him killed The Corporation’s carefully engineered takeover plan—and then they saw how much Fox made from shorting on the Boltons stock.”
Drake was The Chameleon. Drake was my father. Drake had been trying to save us from The Corporation. Drake wanted cash. Drake wanted Dolly Dodo.
What the actual fuck was going on?
Something else hit me. “Danny, Kristoff, Barry—they all died because of you?”
“Danny needed to die because he knew too much. I was meant to be meeting him there, but Fox beat me to it.”
Danny had been standing there waiting for Drake, not Fox. He would’ve ended up dead either way—just at my father’s hand, not my husband’s.
“I never even knew Danny was a criminal.”
Drake snorted. “He was very small-time. A little drug-dealing here and there. I enlisted him to help because of your history with him. But he was an idiot who got ideas above his station. Started strutting around, thinking he was a big deal.”
That did sound like Danny.
“Kristoff was a threat to your career. The reputation you hadbuilt. He was an entitled idiot. And Barry was too nosy for his own good. I saw him taking photos of me when I was in my car. I couldn’t risk him handing anything in to the authorities. I wasn’t going to let some nobody be the one to unmask me.”
“But why did you kill him at our house?”
“To confirm Jenny was working with you. Watching how she helped make his death look like an accident was very interesting.”
