other for Anna.”
“Motherfucker!” Nathan explodes. “He really did kill them both!”
Chapter 44
Nathan
I pace back and forth in the dining room as Claire keeps talking, my mind clicking through the past.
It feels good to put a face with the crime, to know who snuffed out my father’s life. Despite all the hard feelings I have for him, for all the stress as I figured out how to recover the company he was running into the ground, and so many nights as I lay awake in bed, the little boy inside me still angry over a dad who’d left again.
I’d expected to feel relief, but instead the answer only provides more questions. It’s a never-ending quagmire, just like how my dad lived his life and that infuriates me.
I need to stop.
I need to break myself free of this cycle, caring about what he did or didn’t do. If I’m going to be a man worth a damn, I need to stop living in the past.
Especially when my present and my future is right here beside me. She deserves more. I deserve more.
“Enough. That’s enough,” I declare, standing up. “Matt killed my father, something he probably deserved a hundred times over. He killed Anna, whose only misdeed was in knowing Michael Stone. And for that, Kyle, I grieve for you from the bottom of my heart. But Matt is dead, my father is dead, and Anna is dead. No more. It ends here tonight. No more death.”
I turn around and drop down to my knees at Emma’s feet, taking her hand as I look into her eyes. “You and me, Emma. No treasure hunting, no past. It’s over. From this moment, it’s just you and me and forever. I want a new life, one where I’m yours and you’re mine, and we build a life around that. Around us. I love you.”
The words come easily this time, the label more certain but the need just as all-consuming.
Emma hugs me to her, dropping to the floor beside me to wrap her arms around my neck, squeezing tight. “I love you too, Nathan.”
Vaguely, I realize we’re putting on just as much of a show as Kyle and Carly did, but I can’t seem to care.
Claire clears her throat, piercing the fog of happiness but sounding reluctant to do so. “As touching as you two may be, there’s one more thing you need to know.”
I shake my head, turning to look her in the eyes. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
“Nice sentiment, but you think whoever sent Matt here tonight is going to feel the same way? It doesn’t just end here,” Claire argues, her voice hard and accusatory.
“If it were just Matt, I’d overlook all this, let Caleb do . . . whatever the hell he’s doing . . . and put all this shit back in his apartment and let the DOJ think he’s a dirty agent who got double-crossed by his employers.” She chokes the words out, and I wonder about her relationship with her partner. “But you’re putting my sister at risk by stepping away from the plate at the bottom of the ninth. You need to see this shit through.”
I sigh, wishing she were wrong, but she’s not. Though I might wish to stop playing this twisted game, be unwilling to gamble when the stakes are so high, I’m not the only player in the game.
“Fine. What?” I say, rising and helping Emma back on the chair next to me.
Claire points again at the screen, her voice once again professional. “The payments come from a shell company. I’ve never heard of it before tonight, but Matt knew a lot.” She clicks into a Word file and a document glares brightly on the screen. “While you four have been playing house, I’ve been working.”
A quick scan tells me it’s Matt’s full confession about how he didn’t know who he was getting into bed with when he borrowed funds to cover a gambling debt. It details out jobs, favors he was asked to do, evidence he was told to lose or cover up. And lastly, it shows his work in deciphering who was the puppet master pulling his strings.
“Son of a bitch!” I swear, seeing the name on the screen.
Kyle is just as quick, his voice acid as well. “He’s untouchable. No way we’ll get close enough to him to take him out.”
To her credit, Claire doesn’t so much as blink at our plotting to murder a man in front of her. Instead, she