by Ravenna Tate
“That feels nice. Thank you.” The words were sincere enough, but the tone of her voice told him something other than her bruised ass was on her mind.
“Clean up the best you can, but don’t wash that off. Let it soak in.” He kissed her lower back. “We need to work you up to this.”
She turned to face him, and fresh alarm shot through him. Her skin was as pale as it had been earlier, while she’d sat in his office and listened to him talking on the phone. “Merrick, I’m not sure I can go through with this.”
Why not? “Don’t you want to find out where your father might be and why he did this?”
“Of course I do, but…”
But what? What? Now what the fuck had he missed? There wasn’t time to ferret this out, so he placed a hand on each shoulder and held her gaze. “Lynda, go and clean up. Put on some clothes, and meet me in the hallway outside. I’ll stay with you when we talk to them, okay?”
She didn’t look convinced, but she finally nodded and left the room. Merrick washed up in record time, then put on a pair of dress slacks and a button down shirt. He didn’t bother with a tie. Her uncles were lucky he’d bothered to put on shoes and socks.
Something was going on here, and Merrick had dealt with too many unpleasant surprises for one day. He was likely to go ape-shit on the next person who handed him yet another one. She was waiting for him, dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and athletic shoes. His concern escalated at her choice of clothing, but this wasn’t the time to bombard her with questions. He’d have to watch her carefully and then deal with whatever revealed itself downstairs.
Her gaze drifted over him. “I’m dressed all wrong.”
She’d dressed to look as unappealing as possible, and he didn’t believe it was an accident. “No, you’re fine. Let’s go.” He took her hand, and wasn’t surprised at all to find it cold and clammy.
As they descended the stairs, he heard unfamiliar male voices and smelled dinner cooking.
“Are they staying for dinner?” she asked in a whisper.
“Do you want them to?”
“No.”
Her jaw was set, and she stared straight ahead as they walked into the great room, where Tom and Ted Shelton stood making small talk with Barry. Both men had a drink in their hands, and turned as Merrick walked in, holding Lynda’s hand.
They looked so much alike they could be twins, and both resembled Todd. He’d met all three brothers fourteen years ago, and now the memory of exactly when he’d met them came rushing back. It was the same party where he’d met Lynda, when she was only fifteen.
Ted was the youngest of the three, if memory served him. Both men had Lynda’s blonde hair, although theirs was interspersed with gray. They also had her blue eyes, but their gazes held no warmth like hers did.
Tom came forward first, his hand extended. Lynda squeezed his hand so hard Merrick was reluctant to pull it from her grip, but he had to in order to shake hands with her uncle.
“What a nice surprise,” said Tom, his voice dripping with insincerity. “Thank you for the invitation.”
Merrick gave him a dark look. Was the idiot drunk? “I invited you both over so we could try to figure out where your brother went, and why he did this to me and Lynda.”
That removed the stupid grin from Tom’s face quickly enough. Ted walked over and shook his hand as well, and then Merrick watched as both men eyed Lynda. She didn’t move or extend her hand. When she said “hello”, her voice came out low and defeated. That was the only way he could describe it.
Merrick’s skin crawled as her uncles looked her over. A nasty shiver ran down his spine as he struggled to remember anything else about that party. Like the presence of teenage boys.
Merrick forced a neutral expression to his face as he indicated the sofa across the room. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”
He placed his hand on the small of Lynda’s back, and led her to the opposite sofa. Chloe came in to tell him dinner would be ready in an hour, and Merrick asked Barry for a drink. He also asked him to bring one for Lynda, and then asked him to bring Tom and Ted a second round.
Then he faced Lynda’s uncles. “Didn’t see you two at the wedding.”
They glanced at each other quickly, and Merrick had the uncomfortable sensation they’d forgotten to rehearse this part of the story.
“We don’t exactly get along with Todd,” said Ted.
“He gave us the impression we weren’t invited,” said Tom.
Merrick glanced at Lynda. “Is that true?”
She gave him an imploring look that broke his heart. If he’d suspected things were this uncomfortable between Lynda and her uncles, he’d have met these two in his office instead. No wonder they hadn’t been at the wedding. “My father doesn’t get along with a lot of people.”
Merrick watched her face for a few seconds, then turned his attention back to her uncles. “Why did Todd do this? Take the money and flee the country?” Before they could speak, Merrick leaned forward and gave them each a look that would ensure he meant business.
“And before you answer, you should know that because this was your company, too, you’re not off the hook here. I will get to the bottom of this, and if you two are involved as well, you’re facing jail time.”
Lynda’s quiet, shaky breath next to him was the only noise in the room. Tom and Ted looked as though Merrick had just punched them in the gut. They might have had nothing to do with it, but he had to be sure of that first. Then he’d deal with why Lynda was afraid of them.
Tom slammed his drink on the table next to him, spilling some of it onto the wood. “Now wait just a minute…” His voice fell off as Barry came back into the room.
Barry placed Merrick’s and Lynda’s drinks on the coffee table, then like a flash was all over the drink Tom had spilled. Merrick told him not to worry about it, and asked him instead to return with a third round of drinks for Tom and Ted in a few minutes. Barry raised his brows so slightly only Merrick would catch the gesture, and then he left the room.
Merrick turned his attention back to Tom, who still looked angry enough to punch something.
“We had nothing to do with this,” said Tom. “Didn’t Lynda tell you about her father? He was as stupid in business as he was indiscreet about his sex life.”
“We only owned the business on paper,” said Ted, his expression and his tone of voice also filled with the need to justify his life. “As to running it, that was his from day one. We stayed out of it.”
“How long has he been embezzling from it?”
“We didn’t know he was!” Tom was the more volatile one here. That much was now obvious. “If we had, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“What would you have done to stop it?”
“What the hell do you think we could have done? We’re not his damn keepers.”
Merrick had to bite his tongue not to laugh. How the hell these three had run the company at all was a fucking mystery. “It’s been in your family for three generations. What the hell have you both been doing if not helping your brother run it?”
“We have our own companies to take care of,” said Ted.
“So, what you’re telling me is that you put this in Todd’s hands and stayed out of it.”
“Yes,” said Ted. “That’s exactly what we did.”
But they had no trouble sharing in the profits. “Where did your brother go? You must have some clue.”
“We don’t know,” said Tom, still angry. “This affects us, too, you know.”
“Why? The company transferred to Lynda on Saturday.”
“He’s our brother,” said Ted. “When this hits the media, it’ll be our reputations on the line as well.”
Ah, so that was it. Their fucking reputations. “How were the profits split if you two didn’t have a hand in running it?”
“None of your business,” said Ted.
“It is my business. I own this mess now. Did you know about the trust provisions? Did you know the compa
ny would transfer to Lynda on her thirtieth birthday?”
“Not until Todd told us you were marrying her.”
“Why didn’t Todd change the trust provisions after his wife died? Why leave the company to Lynda when she didn’t want it?”
“We didn’t know he hadn’t changed them,” said Ted. “He told us years ago he’d taken care of it. I told you we only found out he hadn’t done so when Todd told us about the wedding.”
“And you never checked before that to see if he had changed them?”
Tom drained what was left of his drink. “We told you that, too. We weren’t involved with any of the day-to-day running of it.”
And Merrick thought his family was dysfunctional. These two made his parents look like Mike and Carol from The Brady Bunch. “Where is he?”
Ted gave him a hard stare. “We have no fucking clue, Merrick. We want to find him as much as you do. Neither one of us got a dime off this transfer. It’s our money, too, that’s gone. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”
Merrick knew that. Jimmy Landers had laid it all out for him earlier. He knew how the profits had been split, even though these two claimed not to have had a hand in running the business, and he knew how much each of the three brothers was supposed to have received once the company transferred to Lynda.
Everything added up. Jimmy told him there was nothing in the books that raised suspicion Todd had been skimming off the top. Todd paid himself a hefty salary, according to the records Jimmy had, and both he and Merrick had simply assumed all that money went toward Todd’s extravagant lifestyle.
They didn’t have records of his personal spending because he wasn’t required to account for it. The records that had been turned over as part of the paperwork reflected the money coming in and going out of the business, which meant they were fake. But how far back had he been doing that? And what different would it make now even if they could get to his personal accounts? He likely had hidden this well.
Despite all that, Merrick still didn’t know the truth. He still wasn’t sure if these two had been part of what Todd and Dean had done, but he also realized he wouldn’t find that answer this evening.
He leaned back against the sofa again as Barry came in with the next round of drinks. Once Barry left again, Merrick addressed Tom and Ted. It was time to deal with the second matter. “Looks like I asked you over here for nothing.”
Tom’s fake smile graced his face. “Not at all. We haven’t seen our beautiful niece in years.”
Next to him, Merrick felt Lynda stiffen, and his skin crawled again. Why hadn’t they seen her in years?
“Marriage agrees with you,” said Ted, his gaze creeping over her slowly. Too slowly for an uncle. “You look happy.”
“I am happy.” Her voice was flat and her answer automatic. It reminded Merrick of the way she’d recited her wedding vows.
Ted narrowed his eyes slightly. “We didn’t realize you and Merrick had kept in touch all these years.”
Merrick swallowed hard as more memories from that evening fourteen years ago came back. He recalled meeting Lynda, and he recalled these two, drunk off their asses. But he didn’t recall seeing Lynda or her uncles after he was introduced to all three. He wouldn’t have had any reason back then to think twice about it, but he had one now.
His pulse raced. “We kept in touch off and on.” It was a bald-faced lie, and he prayed Lynda would play along. His prayers were answered when she said nothing. She barely moved at all. An overwhelming urge to protect her bubbled up, and Merrick put an arm around her shoulder. When she flinched slightly at the touch, he was reminded again of their wedding day.
Everything fit now. There was so much he hadn’t known last week, and now that he did know it, he realized how horribly his treatment of her that first night, and during the past three days, must have affected her on an emotional level. Rey Santos wasn’t the only man in Lynda’s past who’d left scars on her psyche.
“When she met you at that party,” said Tom, “she was all shy and giggly over it.”
He’d kill them. He’d fucking kill them both right here in this room with his bare hands. And then he’d put the bodies where no one would ever find them.
“She was only fifteen.” He kept his voice neutral, but doing so took every ounce of effort.
Ted drained his drink then picked up the next one. “Yes, she was. So ripe. So filled with possibilities for the future.”
Lynda let out a soft grunt and stiffened again, but Merrick kept his gaze on Ted’s and Tom’s faces. It would be no fun to reveal the fact that he knew the truth. Not yet. In his mind, he saw red. He’d only been this disgusted and this fucking angry once before in his life. But this time, he held the upper hand.
“That was also where I met you both the first time, wasn’t it?”
“Sure was,” said Tom, leaning back against the sofa cushions now. He thought he was safe at last, and Merrick was fine with that. It was what he wanted them both to believe. “That was quite a party.”
The fucking scumbag wasn’t even trying to change the subject. “I don’t remember seeing you two during the evening though, after we met.” The urge to beat the shit out of them was so strong, Merrick’s arm muscles began to twitch.
Ted averted his gaze. “Oh, well, we were around.”
Yeah, you certainly were. You were busy raping your niece.
Merrick took his arm from around Lynda’s shoulder and pulled out his cell phone, pretending a text had come through. “I had this on vibrate. Will you excuse me for a moment? I have to answer this text.”
He sent a text message, then placed the phone on his lap to wait for Andy to respond. Andy Benson was an ADA who worked with the Special Victims Division in Manhattan. He and Merrick had known each other since middle school.
Merrick had asked Andy in the text what the statute of limitations was on cases of rape against a fifteen-year-old girl by two men in their mid-thirties. He also told Andy there was no DNA evidence, the rape had never been reported, and the victim was now twenty-nine.
He remembered Alan telling him it had expired, but that was when he’d believed Lynda’s attackers had been teens. Merrick wanted to be certain these two couldn’t be prosecuted before he took care of them on his own.
“Refresh my memory,” said Merrick, addressing Ted. “Who did Todd give that party for? I can’t recall.”
Ted and Tom launched into a conversation that was mostly between the two of them, as they recalled names of business associates and their former wives or girlfriends who had been there that evening.
Merrick let them talk without interruption. For two men who claimed to know next to nothing about a business that had been in their family for three generations, they had amazing recall of the people who had attended a party fourteen years ago. Merrick recognized most of the names they mentioned, but not one of those people they mentioned had included a teenage son.
The longer they talked, the angrier Merrick became. When Barry came into the room again, Merrick motioned him to lean down so he could whisper a quick set of instructions. Merrick wanted his security staff in the hallway, on standby, but he didn’t want Tom or Ted to know they were there.
Merrick was certain he could take Lynda’s uncles down on his own, but not both at the same time.
When Andy finally texted him back, Merrick read it without picking up the phone. He was disappointed in the answer, but not surprised. The laws in the state had changed regarding rape cases, but the new ones likely wouldn’t help in this instance.
Because Lynda had been fifteen at the time, and her uncles had each been over twenty-one, what they’d done to her was considered third-degree rape. But Andy texted that without DNA evidence, it would be very difficult to prosecute.
That meant only one thing. Merrick would have to take care of her uncles on his own. After he got them to confess, of course. Before they died for what they’d done to his wife, he wanted them to know that he knew about it.
Merrick glanced toward Lynda, who looked like she wanted to be anywhere but in this room. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring look, then put his arm around her again and pulled her close. Before this evening was over, his wife would find out what kind of a man she’d married, and just how far he would go to protect the things he cared about.
Chapter Nineteen
Lynda had no idea what kind of game Merrick was playing, but she wished he’d stop it. She should have told him the truth. Based on what little of this bizarre conversation she could follow, she had a horrible feeling he’d guessed it already. But instead of being angry that she’d withheld yet one more important event about her past from him, he seemed to be enjoying this cat and mouse game.
And unless he was putting on one hell of an act for her uncles’ sake, the affection he showed her was surprising. She only wished it was happening under different circumstances because then she might believe it was sincere and not merely a ruse.
“Did anyone bring their kids to that party, or was Lynda the only teen there?”
She tried not to jerk her face toward him at the question, but couldn’t stop the gesture in time. She stared at him horrified as her worst suspicions were confirmed. That was the party where she’d met him, but she had not told him it was the same party she’d referenced when she’d told the lie about the teen boys.
He didn’t return her glance. He was staring down her uncles like a man about to commit murder. Part of her wanted to pump her fist in the air and shout for joy. His anger wasn’t directed at her. It was directed toward them. Enough anger to do them some serious harm, if the set of his jaw was any indication.
Was this for her? Was he defending her against them? That meant he wasn’t upset with her. It meant he understood why she had lied.
Lynda glanced at her uncles, no longer afraid to look them in the eyes. Merrick’s strength and determination gave her courage she’d never felt where those two were concerned. She snuggled closer to her husband as she watched the two men who had ruined her life fourteen years ago exchange identical looks filled with caution and suspicion. They didn’t know what he meant by that question, but clearly they knew something was wrong.
