money than I’d been expecting, to be split three ways among Jane, Lorna, and me. My little sister threatened to contest Jane’s share, but I shut her down, promising I’d never speak to her again if she didn’t abide by Skye’s wishes.
The money allowed Jane and me to rent a decent apartment in Glendale and go out for the occasional nice meal if we felt like it.
That night we’d come back to our apartment.
It was ransacked.
And I knew why immediately.
Panicked, I’d hurried into the bedroom where I kept Skye’s journals in the closet, and they were gone.
That wasn’t even the worst of it. The next morning, there were cops at the door, and I was in handcuffs being arrested for armed robbery.
Armed. Fucking. Robbery.
“You tried to fuck with the wrong guy,” one of the cops whispered in my ear as he lowered me into the police car. Dirty bastard cop. On Steadman’s payroll.
The next few months were even more of a nightmare than I thought they could be after losing Skye. Steadman had paid a cashier near the studio offices to lie. And it must have been some amount of cash he bribed her with because she took a bullet. The footage from inside the store didn’t show my face—it just showed some guy with a similar build to mine, wearing a hoodie that hid his face from the security cameras, coming into the store and robbing the cashier at gunpoint. The attacker clipped the cashier in the shoulder with a bullet.
That woman took a bullet to bury me.
She miraculously identified me. Said I came into the store a lot. She remembered my name from when I used my card there.
The fuck of it was, I’d gone into the store the day I attacked Steadman to grab bottled water. With no cash on me, I’d used my card.
Steadman’s security must have followed me. Put all this together.
Cops were paid off. He paid for the cashier’s lawyer. No one would listen when I tried to tell them about Skye, and my defense attorney said there was nothing he could do without any evidence.
There was no record of me showing up at Steadman’s office that day.
I spent all the money Skye left me on my defense fees. Worse, Jane had to give me a chunk of her share too to cover my legal costs. It didn’t matter. I got seven years for a crime I didn’t commit. To shut me up. To shut up anyone who knew about Skye.
Look what I can do, Steadman was saying. You’re a fucking bug and I’m a lion. I can squash you just by taking a stroll.
But I would get him.
I had patience. And I was smarter now.
As long as I could protect Jane while I did it, Foster Steadman was going to wish he’d kept his sick hands off my sister. I didn’t care how long it took.
I would bury the bastard.
13
One Year Later
JANE
Nineteen years old
For over a year, every Thursday, I’d gotten up early and driven Jamie’s car three and a half hours north to the state prison to make visiting hours at 11:00 a.m. I had not missed a week.
Nothing short of fire and brimstone could make me miss a week.
Not even the changes in Jamie. The coldness. The distance.
He hadn’t told me he loved me in weeks.
Yet still I said it. It was the last thing I said before I left him after every visit. Just for a moment, something would spark in his grim gaze and he’d lift his chin in acknowledgment.
I had to believe he still loved me.
Prison was chipping away at who he was.
Three weeks after he was put away, I got a call from the prison telling me Jamie was in the hospital. I had to leave a message for Lorna because she wouldn’t answer my calls, and she, thankfully, listened to my message and got the next flight to LA. We found ourselves paying vigil at his bedside for the next few days as he recovered from a stab wound to the gut.
It was only after he was back in prison that he told me he’d deliberately stepped between the attacker and a guy called Irwin Alderidge.
I’d googled Alderidge after our conversation.
He was this billionaire real estate mogul. He had properties all over the world, but his home was in Los Angeles. He’d been tried and sentenced to seven years for paying millions in bribes to two elected officials to be his eyes and ears in California’s