“That can’t be a coincidence,” he muttered to himself, looking at his handcuffed wrists. “They must’ve planned it…all this shit. They plotted against me to put me in here and make sure I wouldn’t see the light of day again, and they got Cat out of the way at the same time.”
“Robert had nothing to do with the case,” Chloe replied in a small voice, and I was about to back her up when James erupted in a new wave of curse words, each one nastier than the one before. “He didn’t even work on it, it was his colleagues. It would’ve been a conflict of interest to have him involved in the case at all.”
“But still,” James insisted. “God, Chloe, how can you be so fucking stupid? Think for a second, girl. Robert St Clair owns the firm that prosecuted my case. Even if he says he wasn’t involved in the case, I bet he was. He’s always had a thing for your mother. I’ve seen him eyeing her at events. I’m not a fucking fool.”
Christ, I was tempted to punch the man for saying such utter shit about my father, but by the looks of him he’d been beaten enough in the prison yard. Also, I didn’t want him to know who I really was, and punching him might give him half a clue, unfortunately.
“It was a coincidence,” I cut in instead, but he merely shook his head in my direction as if my words had no meaning to them at all.
“It was a vendetta,” he insisted. “He wanted Victoria, and he decided this was the best way to fucking get her. I can’t fucking believe it, I fell for it, I let them put me in prison; let them sentence me to rot here in hell. But no fucking more. I’m not gonna go down that easily.”
He was getting erratic; his words almost slurred and so fervent it made me worry for his sanity. If I found it difficult to speak up a moment ago, now I found it hard to stay glued to my chair when I really wanted to get the fuck out of here. If I had it my way, Chloe would never be allowed to visit again. The man was clearly unstable.
“It was the evidence,” Chloe said softly, trying to console her father. “There’s nothing anyone could have done, Dad. There was just too much of it, too many coincidences, all pointing in your direction and painting you as the culprit.”
“So you fucking believe them too?” James snapped. “Those fucking vultures of Claremont Bay, you’re gonna take their word over mine, are you?”
“No, of course not,” she said, giving me a helpless look. I started to get up to get a guard despite Chloe’s eyes pleading me not to do it, but this was getting completely out of hand. James was losing it, and I didn’t want to deal with his craziness for a second longer. “Daddy, I never meant to—”
Again, James’ behavior switched completely as he saw me get up and motion for the guard to come closer. He made a desperate grab for Chloe’s hands, and I managed to pull her off her chair and into my arms before he could hurt her.
“I won’t last much longer in here,” James said in a low, desperate voice. “You know I fucking won’t, Chloe! You have to get me out of here, I can’t stand being in here, I need to get the fuck out!”
Two guards grabbed him from behind while Chloe’s small, frail body sagged against my own. She was shaking, silent sobs racking her body, and I held her as tightly as I possibly could. Her father was spewing nonsense now, anything to get us to listen to him, to get the attention and the justice he believed he deserved.
I tugged on Chloe’s arm gently and she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—move. I started leading her away gently, from the cries of her father and the oppressive air of the visitors’ room toward the fresh air outside. She took one shaky step after the other and slowly, we left the dull grey corridors and the closed gates of the prison behind us.
Chloe didn’t say a word as we reached my car, apart from a small ‘no’ when she broke free of my grasp and ran her fingers through her silky dark hair. She was beautiful, but the things she’d seen in her time were ugly, and the expression on her pretty, heart-shaped face was broken. I realized the visit must’ve been much more upsetting to her than she cared to admit, but I also knew she wouldn’t want to talk about it. I swallowed every word, every comment I wanted to make, and I helped her get in the car, shutting the passenger door behind her and getting into my seat in complete silence.
We drove back without saying a word, and I found my mind drifting into dangerous territories as we put more and more distance between Chloe’s father and us.
Could Chloe really believe her father’s theories about being set up? Did I believe them? They mostly seemed like the ramblings of a madman, but still, the vehemence with which James insisted on his innocence made me want to think twice before pegging him as a coldblooded killer.
But the truth was laid out, plain and simple, during the court proceedings. All the evidence pointed to James, he had no alibi, and he had reasons to get rid of my mother. It had to have been him. There was no other way to explain what happened the night she died. It was only made more obvious by his outburst today and the way he’d almost become violent toward his own daughter.
As we drove home, I decided there was no doubt about it—James really was the killer, and his own guilty mind made him believe he was being given a raw deal. Hanging around Chloe and listening to her drone on about his supposed innocence wasn’t good for me, and it never would be. Her father killed my mother, and she damn well needed to accept that, because if she didn’t, it would come between us sooner or later. On top of all that, there was another thought stuck in my mind, too, one I didn’t want to admit but couldn’t stop from becoming painfully obvious as time went on.
Chloe and I could never be together.
Ever.
The situation with our parents was complicated enough without adding the stepsibling element, and there was just no fucking way things could work out between us given the nonsensical bond she still shared with her killer father. I had to keep my distance from her, stay away as best as I could, even though she was proving to be quite irresistible.
There had to be a way to do that, no matter how tempting she was. An affair between the two of us would be the most shocking thing to hit the snooty assholes of Claremont Bay after the murder of my mother and her unborn child, and the last thing I wanted in my life right now was another fucking scandal.
I sneaked a look at Chloe, and her ethereal beauty took my breath away. A tear slid down her pale cheek, and she reminded me of Snow White, so beautiful and so broken after everything that had happened.
It was true—I didn’t want another scandal.
But I was very, very bad at staying out of trouble…
Ten
Chloe
Briarwood had been my summer home for just over a week now, and I was slowly getting used to it. Very slowly. The place was enormous so I only knew my way properly around one wing, while my knowledge of the rest of the house was hazy at best.
There was also the small matter of my new ‘family’. Since the prison incident, Asher and I hadn’t seen each other—he’d been busy with friends and other commitments, I presumed. I knew he wasn’t avoiding me, because it seemed like our experience during our prison road trip and diner hangout had sparked a friendship between us, no matter how small.
I’d also been trying to make an effort with Robert, as much as it killed me. I guess it wasn’t his fault that he owned a law firm—among all the other many things he owned—and like I’d tried to reiterate to Dad the other week during our visit, it wasn’t like Robert had had anything to do with his trial at all. I still found it very strange that he and Mom would want to have any sort of relationship with each other, let alone get married, given the connection they shared courtesy of their ex-spouses, but it was happening whether I liked it or not, so I’d started to accept it and move on, and part of that meant being civil to Robert and building a relationship with him.
Right now I was wandering around the southern wing of Briarwood, once again exploring and trying to get my bearings. It seemed ludicrous that one family could possibly need a house this big, and I was starting to think the place was somewh
at akin to the Rose Red mansion from that Stephen King miniseries—every time I thought I knew the layout, it seemed to magically grow another wing along with an extra ten rooms.
It felt like old secrets were preying on me with every step I took in the sitting room of the southern wing as I entered and looked around. This part of the house had obviously once been Catalina St Clair’s domain, judging by the photographs and paintings of her hanging around the place, and I wondered why they’d never been taken down. Perhaps Robert had simply forgotten about them, given how damn big the place was, or maybe he kept them around for Asher’s sake, hoping his son would feel slightly less abandoned by his mother if he could see her picture every so often.
I had a feeling that wasn’t the case, though. Seeing pictures of the woman who left him alone as a baby probably did quite the opposite to Asher—it likely reminded him of what happened and made him even more bitter toward her.
I drew to a halt near an enormous stone fireplace in the sitting room, gazing at the large portrait above it, entranced. It was a painting of Catalina, and judging by the date near the artist’s scrawled signature at the bottom, it had been created twenty-three years ago, just after she married Robert at the age of nineteen, and only a few months before she fell pregnant with Asher.
She had dark eyes which seemed to twinkle slightly despite their overall serious expression, glossy black hair, a straight nose, and full lips. She was beautiful. I could see why Robert had married her despite her young age at the time, and I could also see why my father had taken up with her decades later. Even though their affair had begun a couple of years ago, making her twenty years older at the time than she had been in this painting, I could tell that her beauty would’ve been ageless. She would’ve looked just as imperious and stunning in her late thirties and early forties as she had when she was younger, and as much as I would’ve liked to see her as the man-eating harpy who’d abandoned her own son—Asher —and also stolen my father away from my mother and torn our family apart, I couldn’t, not now that she was dead.
It was likely because she’d died so terribly. None of the awful things she’d done while she was still alive were enough to mean she deserved what happened to her. As I stared into her eyes in the portrait, I wondered who had taken her from this world so heartlessly, doing away with the life of her and her baby in just minutes. My father could never do something so callous, so cruel.
Considering what Asher had told me about Catalina at the diner last week, she’d had a lot of affairs and lovers over the years, and there were likely a few people who had grudges against her. My father’s defense lawyers had tried to explore other avenues like that to get him off the charges, but unfortunately anyone who was known to have a problem with Catalina had watertight alibis for the night of her murder, and my father was the only one without one. He claimed he’d stopped by a bar after a particularly harrowing late business meeting that night, but no one at the bar remembered seeing him.
And so the charges had stuck, along with the other so-called evidence, and the rest was history.
“I’m so sorry, Catalina,” I whispered to the painting. “No matter what kind of person you were, you didn’t deserve what happened to you and your baby, and I know my dad didn’t do it to you. I’m going to do everything I can to find out who really did it and get him out of prison. I know it’s what you’d want.”
“Who are you talking to?”
I whirled around to see Asher standing in the doorway on the other side of the room, staring at me with one brow raised in an inquisitive expression.
“Um…no one. Just talking to myself,” I said hurriedly, not wanting him to think I was completely cracked in the head.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked, stepping closer to me.
“I was just exploring, and I saw this portrait of your mother. Did she really look like this in real life?” I said, gesturing to the painting above me. “Her eyes look so luminous.”
Asher’s eyebrows furrowed in a frown. “Why does it matter? She’s not around now, is she?” he said sharply. “And why do you care, anyway? She fucked your father and wrecked your family. You basically said so yourself in the prison the other day—your family’s fallen apart.”
With that, he turned to a nearby bookshelf, located a book he’d obviously come in here to look for, and then abruptly turned to leave without another word.
I stared at his retreating back, mystified by the odd exchange. Why was he suddenly being such a jerk to me again? I honestly thought we’d become friends the other week, but now he was being cold and rude all over again. I guess I’d been wrong in thinking he hadn’t been avoiding me during the last week. Obviously he had been. The prison road trip must’ve been a one-off thing, and he had no intention of being friends with me.
Damn. I really thought we’d made some progress, but now we were back to square one.
Just two more months to go, I thought, longing for the day that college started. The other day I’d decided that when the semester began, I’d go to stay in the college dorms. That way I didn’t have to worry about feeling unsafe in that apartment, and I would also be right near all my classes. Unfortunately the dorms were closed over the summer, so I couldn’t go there right now and give up on this whole ‘sticking it out at Briarwood’ thing.
I guess there were far worse places to spend a summer, though.
I headed back to the main wing of the house and nearly bumped into my mother, who was racing around in a frenzy. “Mom, what are you doing?” I asked.
“Just trying to make sure I have everything. I can never find my darned keys in this place.”
“Everything for what?”
She gave me an exasperated look. “Rob and I are going away this afternoon, remember? We’ve booked a suite at the Rosemount Hotel to see how we like it for the night of our wedding.”
“Oh, right. Good luck. The Rosemount is a nice place.”
“Yes, I think it will be to our liking. Anyway, the cooks have the night off while we’re gone, but there’s plenty of leftovers in the fridge, and there’s also plenty of things for you to cook if you get particularly hungry later.”
“Okay. Are you leaving now?”
“In ten minutes. But I’ll say goodbye now, sweetie,” she said, giving me a quick hug before drawing back and looking down at me. “Thank you for making such an effort with Rob over this last week. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. I’m proud of you, Chloe.”
I knew she wouldn’t be as proud of me if she knew I’d sneaked off to visit Dad in prison last week, but what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.
I trudged back upstairs and did a couple of hours of reading, and when I got hungry at about four o’clock, I headed downstairs to grab an afternoon snack from the kitchen. Alex was in there, wringing something over the sink with a drawn-looking expression on his face, and I stepped over to him.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked.
He looked up at me with a dejected sigh. “Oh, hey, Chloe. Just problems with Asher, as usual.”
“What did he do?”
“Well, apparently he’s decided to host a huge masquerade party here tonight. He and his friends are setting up the drinks in the eastern ballroom, and someone already dropped a vintage bottle of wine from Robert’s personal collection from the cellar. So of course, I’m the one who has to clean the damn mess, and I’ll have to explain the missing wine to Robert too,” he said, holding up the sponge he’d been wringing out. “It was a thousand dollar bottle, too.”
Crimson droplets were still spilling from the wet cloth like blood, and I sighed. “Can I help?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not really. You didn’t know about the party, did you?”
“No, and I won’t be going.”
“Actually, it’d be good if you did. Then at least I’d have another person to watch the place and make sure nothing gets destroyed. Robert left me in charge of the manor for the night as a sort of test, and I do
n’t want to lose my job. So of course that’s when Asher decides to throw this fucking party.”
“He can be a real dick when he wants to be, can’t he?” I said. “Anyway, sure, I’ll come to the party and help you keep an eye on things if it’ll help.”
“No you won’t.”
Alex and I turned to see Asher standing behind us, clutching two bottles of scotch which he’d apparently just grabbed from the far side of the kitchen. Neither of us had heard him come in.
“You’re not coming, Chloe,” Asher repeated.
I gave him an incredulous look. “Seriously? I can’t go to a party that’s being held in my own house?”
He snorted. “This is hardly your house, and you made it pretty clear when you first arrived that you don’t even want to be here.”
I folded my arms. “That was before. I’m trying to make an effort now. I thought you were too, but I see I was wrong about that.”
“Well, make all the effort you want, but there’s no way you’re coming to this party. You can stick to your own wing of the house. Have a cutesy little slumber party with your friends for all I care, just don’t go near the eastern wing.”
“You can’t stop me,” I said, narrowing my eyes while Alex stood awkwardly next to me, avoiding eye contact with Asher. “And there’s no reason I can’t come.”
“Actually, there is,” Asher replied. “You’re under twenty-one, and there’ll be alcohol there. I’d hate to have to call your mother and tell her about your underage drinking.”
I rolled my eyes and waited for him to stalk out of the kitchen, thinking he had the upper hand.
“You’re not going to listen to him, are you?” Alex said, turning back to me and running a nervous hand through his fair hair.
“Hell no. I’m going to that party,” I replied. “I don’t even like parties all that much, but someone needs to help you, and honestly, someone needs to make a point to Asher. He’s acting like such a controlling prick.”
Scandal (A Dirty Money Novel) Page 9
