Page 95 of Wells

I nod. The relief is real. I’m handing the shadow to someone safe, competent, and loyal. Vin is someone who doesn't want this to destroy me like it almost did before.

"If I were you, I'd stop looking inside these walls and start looking at who stood to gain the most from your father in the ground. The buyers he kept freezing out, the lanes he wouldn't share. Start there, not with a dead drunk's memory of a parking lot."

“You’re right. Thank you."

Vin stands. He walks around the desk and claps a hand on my shoulder.

"That's what I'm here for."

I walk out and wait for my car to be brought around. The sun has set completely. The spring night is cooler than it was this morning at the park.

Vin doesn't waver. He never has. And he's thorough with his recollection, unlike an untrustworthy nobody like Dane.

Vin, family in everything but blood. The relief of having someone I can trust work through this with me, even if to put it to rest, is enormous. My brother wants nothing to do with it, but I can't just let it go. Not yet. Leaving a thread alone has never been something I know how to do.

I'll keep pulling it, quietly, like I always have. Not because it will change anything, or bring my dad back. Because it's there.

TWENTY-THREE

Cera

The Stroke of Midnight: At the stroke of midnight, police on horseback sweep down Bourbon Street to announce Carnival is over and Ash Wednesday has begun, and the masks come off. One word in the dark, and the disguise she had worn for months fell away all at once.

The elevator opens directly into Wells's apartment.

Not into a hallway. Not into a lobby. Into his actual space.

I step out and the doors close behind me, and I stand there holding a bottle of wine I picked up on the way over, suddenly aware of how much silence twenty grand a month buys you.

The apartment with a massive ceiling stretches in front of me, all clean lines and pale wood and furniture that cost more than my car. The kitchen is open, with black stone counters and appliances that look like they belong in a magazine.

The living room has two low sofas facing the river, a coffee table that looks carved from a single piece of something, and nothing else. There's no clutter, no mess, not even a magazine.

This is not what I expected to be Wells Stone's home. He wears custom suits, drives a nice car when he isn't being driven by someone in a luxury blacked-out SUV, has a jet at his disposal, but there's a roughness to him that makes me forget what he's worth.

The entire side of the space is glass with an impressive view of the city beyond the river.

The Mississippi runs black and gold far below, the city laid out small beyond the glass. I can see it fits him in that he bought himself distance from the whole damn world.

I set the wine on the counter because I don't know where else to put it.

"You good?"

I turn. Wells leans against the doorframe to what must be his bedroom, hands in the pockets of his joggers, watching me with that calm, unreadable expression he wears when he's waiting to see what I'll do.

"Yeah. Just taking it in."

"Not much to take in."

I laugh, short and dry, because that is bullshit. There is everything to take in, the space and the view and the silence, and a front door that's an elevator when mine opens onto a hallway that smells like burnt popcorn and someone's weed.

"I've had three-bedroom houses that are smaller than your studio. You know most people have walls in bedrooms."

His mouth twitches. "It's technically a one-bedroom, not a studio. And there's a wall between it and the living space."

"Okay, you have one wall."

Wells pushes off the doorframe and crosses to me. He stops close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes, and the amusement is still there, faint but real.