“You didn’t know that?”
PB means Preston Brother, Dante realized. He sat back in his chair as he recalled the passages about Preston in Julie’s journal, but there wasn’t much information about the man. At least not anything that would help Dante track him down.
“No, I didn’t know that,” Dante said.
“Shit,” Paris said and sipped her concoction.
“Does Mrs. Abbott know he exists?” If she did, she never mentioned it to him.
“I’m not sure,” Paris said. “The last I knew, Julie hadn’t told her about him, but that was a few weeks ago. He contacted Julie after their dad died, and they started talking. She was so excited. I think she almost felt like she was getting a piece of dad back with Preston, but he was so weird I didn’t understand how she could be excited.”
“Was Julie sure he’s her brother?” Dante asked. “The Abbots have a lot of money; he could have made it up in the hopes of getting some of that money.”
However, Zan did say Preston was a vampire, and Dante didn’t know many vamps desperate for money. They always had a way of getting it. Trying to scam it out of a sixteen-year-old girl was going to a lot of trouble when he could take money off any stranger on the street, and they would never remember it.
But maybe Preston got his rocks off by toying with people’s emotions and scamming them out of money. He wouldn’t be the first vamp who enjoyed fucking with people’s heads before killing them. Was that what happened to Julie? Preston got bored toying with her and decided to kill her?
Dante ground his teeth together and tried not to snap the pen in his fingers. If that were the case, he would make sure Preston paid.
“I said the same thing!” Paris exclaimed and slapped her hand on the table. “But that made me the idiot again!”
“So, Julie has no proof he’s her brother, but she’s convinced he is?” Dante asked.
“Yeah. I have to admit he looks a lot like their dad, and I do mean a lot. Still, it could be a coincidence.”
Dante set his pen down as he contemplated what Paris had revealed. Preston, a vampire, had walked into Julie’s life after their father died, but why? What did a vampire want with his human sister… if she was his sister?
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Do you know why he contacted Julie after their dad died?” Dante asked.
“At first, I thought it was because he was trying to get money, or into the will, or something along those lines,” Paris said. “But Julie said he never asked for money.”
“Do you know anything about his mother?”
Paris glanced nervously around the coffee shop before leaning closer to them. “Are you going to tell Mrs. Abbott about this?”
“This conversation will stay between us,” Dante assured her. He saw no reason to upset the woman further by revealing her husband possibly had another child out there. If it became necessary for him to confront her about Preston, he would keep Paris’s name out of it.
“Julie said she used to work for her dad; she was a nurse or a receptionist or something like that. Soooo cliché if you ask me.”
Paris paused as if she were expecting a response, and Cassidy jumped in. “It totally is.”
Paris gave her an approving nod before continuing. “Anyway, her name was… Lydia, Linda… no, maybe it was Lindsay. Anyway, it was something like that. Apparently, he dated her before Julie’s mom, and there was an overlapping, but he broke it off when things started getting serious with Mrs. Abbott. However, the woman told him she was pregnant a month later.”
“I see,” Dante said as he made a couple of notes in his book. “Do you know what happened after that?”
Paris sipped her drink as she sat back and glanced nervously around again. “Julie would be so mad at me for telling you this.”
Dante didn’t push her, and Cassidy didn’t speak as the young girl fiddled with the earpiece of her glasses. If what Paris was saying was true, then Preston might have a bigger reason than money for contacting Julie.
Preston was the tossed aside child, the unloved one, and Julie was living the high life with their dad. He might have decided to mess with Julie for revenge, and he might have killed her for the same reason.
“But then, Julie doesn’t talk to me anymore anyway, so what does it matter?” Paris said, and fresh tears filled her eyes before she ducked her