Jaxon asks, his hand pausing on the folder.
Liam shrugs. “I still need to access the other half, but this is what I have so far. The disc I’d wait to watch. It isn’t exactly something you forget. It seems Mr Black loves to record himself fucking younger women. I bet his wife doesn’t know about that.”
“What about this?” I ask, pointing to the folder.
“That’s stills of another recording I’m still downloading, but I thought you should see since it seemed off.”
“How so?” Jaxon asks, opening the file.
The blood drains from my face when I see a still black and white image of Evie outside her house, Black gripping her chin tightly, his face a mask of anger.
The next image is of her in her knickers with a white tank top on as she stands at the counter, spoon in hand.
The next is from her front door… Fuck, Rebecca was right.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
“What?” I reply, dread hitting the pit of my stomach.
I definitely need that drink.
“I knew who Evelyn was.”
“What the fuck?” Jaxon growls, slapping the file closed, having seen enough, just like me.
Liam holds his hands up. “Not that it had anything to do with you, but a client I do work for has a daughter. She called me to check an apartment for cameras and I found a few, not counting the ones she found herself. I installed new ones for her to keep an eye on who was coming and going. When I found out who that was on the video feed, I contacted you.”
“She was telling the truth,” Jaxon murmurs, his voice low.
I grip the back of my neck, stepping away from them, my chest hollow.
She was telling the truth, and I had been a massive prick towards her.
“Wyatt,” Paisley whispers, taking a step towards me.
I harden my emotions, shrugging it off. “It doesn’t excuse her betrayal. If you don’t mind, I think I deserve a drink.”
I storm off towards the main house, my hands clenched tightly when I hear my brothers calling me back.
They don’t get it.
None of them.
And instead of explaining it to them, I’m going to drink myself into a slumber. It’s the only way I can cope with losing my pride, my dignity, and the love of my life in one day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
EVIE
Driving over the bridge has never fazed me. It never looked high up from the driving point of view. But sitting down on the ledge, enraptured by the shallow water washing over the rocks on the river, my stomach twirls with nerves. I’m not sure if it’s from the height or from what I’m going to do, what I need to do.
A soft breeze picks up my hair, stirring strands around my face.
People see suicide as a weakness, as the easy way out. They don’t see that a person who ends their own life are driven by a pain so strong that it overpowers the fear of death.
It’s like trying to stay under water without an anchor. The second your lungs fight for air, your body’s instincts take over, and you automatically reach for the surface.
The pain a person feels during suicide, that’s their anchor that keeps them from fighting to breathe.
I never truly got it until today. Life has taught me never to judge someone unless I’ve walked in their shoes. And for years, I had judged, I had been misguided.
Today, that changed.
My anchor is already pulling me down, and I can feel the life being pulled from me. I want the pain, the all-consuming grief and heartache, to stop. I want it to stop so badly. It’s rooted into my blood. It’s in every fibre of my being.
And to make it stop, it has to end. It all does. I do.
There is a ringing in my head and in my ears, making everything foggy. I can’t think straight. Nothing makes sense anymore. I can’t compartmentalise my grief from my heartache. Instead, they’re manifesting together, and it is ripping me to shreds from the inside. All I want to do is make it stop.
Stop!
I desperately want my mum. Fear churns in my stomach at the unknown. She was everything to me: my mum, my dad, my grandparents, my best friend. Although there were times when I wished she had acted differently, told Andrew where to go, my love for her never changed. She was my whole world.
And she’s gone.
How can I go on without her? How do you live without the person who birthed you, who