her in the back. She fell.” She’d seen every moment in the footage. “Then he flipped her over and stabbed her four more times. And then I found him, standing over her body.”
“Baby. Tell me you ran. Tell me you got the hell out of there!”
She looked into his eyes. “He could have killed me. He didn’t. He took the knife from our mother’s body. Told me he was sorry, and he shoved it into his chest.”
“Fuck.”
Her family’s story wasn’t some warm, fuzzy memory. It was a nightmare that never stopped. That replayed in her head late at night.
“He wasn’t dead. I ran to him.” Not from him. “He was still alive. I grabbed the handle of the knife because I was going to pull it out. I was going to save him. I didn’t even register what he’d done. He was just…he was my brother. But he said…” She was choking. Suddenly so far in the past that she could barely breathe. “P-please…He said please. My hands were around the handle of the knife, and he was saying please and he was staring up at me and asking me to kill him. His fingers curled around mine, squeezed, and the knife…” A tear leaked from her eye. “I shoved it deeper into him. I killed my brother.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Joel yanked her against him. He pulled her into his arms and held her as tightly as he could. So tight. I never want to let go. She shuddered against him. Seemed to go boneless as she hung in his arms. And he didn’t speak. What the hell was he supposed to say? He wanted to make things better for her, but there was no way to change the past.
I wish I could. I wish I could have been there.
To help thirteen-year-old Chloe.
Was it any wonder she shut people out? That she studied everyone so carefully? That she was so obsessed with discovering the secrets that everyone possessed? He understood so much about her now. Could see so much.
She’d trusted him with her darkest moments. Trusted him because Chloe loved him?
I will never betray her trust. I will never betray her.
He kept holding her. Pressed kisses to her hair. Sheltered her in his embrace. Until she drew a shuddering breath. Then her head lifted. “The cook was the first person to arrive the next day. When she…found everything…” Chloe’s voice sounded detached. Weak. “She called my grandfather. Not the authorities. Him. And he called his very good friend, the chief inspector.”
“They covered it up.”
A nod. “It was better for my grandfather. Better if a random stranger committed such terrible acts instead of the world thinking his grandson had been a twisted monster. The chief inspector knew it was wrong, but he—I watched as he got rid of my brother’s body. Dragged him out. Made him disappear. There was never even a funeral for him and I…” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I’ve had a lifetime of lies. I try not to lie outright. I swear, I do. So I just—I leave things out because I don’t want to be like them, but it’s so hard.”
“Look at me.”
Slowly, her eyes opened.
“You are nothing like them.”
She started to shake her head.
“Nothing.” He bent his head and brushed his lips across her mouth. “You are the strongest, most determined woman I have ever met. You want to stop monsters. You don’t want to make them. You are good. You’re nothing like them.”
“When my grandfather died, guess who was supposed to become my guardian?”
He tried to remember the articles he’d read. Truth and lies, blended together. “It was a family friend.” But Joel couldn’t remember the name. Didn’t think it had been reported.
“The chief inspector. The man who’d buried my brother in an unmarked grave somewhere. I wasn’t going to live with him. So I found another solution.”
Holy shit. “You found Reese, didn’t you?” Only Reese wasn’t the man’s real name. Joel wondered what was. Who the guy truly was.
“I found him. He found me. We fit each other.”
She’d found Reese. The same way she’d found Marie? The same way she’d found me?
“His life wasn’t easy. He grew up hard and rough. He tried to find a new life. He heard about my brother’s disappearance. Did some research and realized that he bore a physical resemblance to the man the world had known as Charleston Reese Hastings.”
“He’s a good actor,” Joel said, thinking of the accent that could be perfect. “That’s what he did. He pretended to