by Keri Lake
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
I should’ve been more terrified than I was. After all, he undoubtedly planned to murder my father in some vomit-worthy act of justice. The only urgency I felt in that moment, though, was the real possibility that Ty’s plan would backfire on him.
Ty had been the trigger my father had mentioned. The reason he made me stop going to Jo’s.
“He knows you’re coming for him. He’s waiting for it. And when you do, he’s going to strike. He’s going to use all his power, and all his connections. You have to leave.”
He shook his head, the conviction in his eyes piercing my heart. “I’m not afraid of him, Sera.”
“You should be.” I willed myself not to think about a world where Ty no longer existed, because it’d crush me, and I needed him to listen. To trust what I was telling him, without my emotions speaking for me. “Lawyers, judges, police, criminals …. It’s too big for one person, Ty. He won’t let you destroy what he’s spent his whole life constructing.”
“And I won’t let him destroy what I’ve spent my whole life searching for.” He leaned forward and kissed me, but something felt off—as if I was kissing him for the last time. “I want you to go back home and pretend that everything is normal. You go back to school, and you forget about me and all of this. And don’t come back here.”
I frowned at that, the stubborn girl inside of me refusing to give in so easily, to let him go as if nothing had ever happened between us. To let my father rob me of one more thing. “No. I’m not letting you do this. I’m not letting you get yourself killed. You and I can leave. We’ll both go somewhere safe.”
He shook his head, and goddamn it, I wanted to smack some reason into him. “The police will be looking for me. And when I hand that ledger over, a whole slew of fucking criminals will be looking for the snitch. I won’t put you in harm’s way. I’m not going to tell you where I go from here, and you promise me you won’t come looking for me.”
I squeezed my eyes and mouth shut, shaking my head, and felt the tight grip of his arms give one hard jerk.
“Don’t be so fucking stubborn!”
My eyelids flipped open to him, the anger stiffening my jaw. “The last time I made a promise to someone, I regretted it. I’m not making any promises to you.” The pause of quiet in between failed to calm my resentment. “You never intended to stay, did you? That’s why you left the money.”
His silence answered for him, and I tipped my head back, trying to keep it together, trying not to break yet. I didn’t want to let him see how his words splintered my heart. I’d let it all wash over me later, but not yet. Not in front of him.
“Just answer one question. Do you regret it?”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
I cleared my throat and exhaled a shaky breath. “Just answer the question.”
“Yeah. I regret it. I regret hurting you. And I regret that I’ll never see you again after this. Go home, Sera.” Without a kiss, or a glance back, he opened the car and left me there.
Even if I knew he was lying, even if I could see the agony in his eyes as he’d said the words, telling me what he had to in order to make me leave, it didn’t wound me any less.
But I wasn’t about to go home and return to my life as if nothing between us had ever existed. If I could get to that ledger and hand it over to Dax, maybe Ty wouldn’t have to go after my father. Because if there was one person I knew scared the shit out of my father, it was the man named Tesarik. Whoever he was, he held more power than Karl Kutscher—that much I could discern in my father’s nervous fumbling.
And after what he’d done to Eli, I was happy to hand his ass over on a platter.
* * *
I contacted my father’s secretary, Jane, under the guise of wanting to discuss Jo’s situation again, and through her, I learned that Karl had taken a two-day business trip to New York and wouldn’t be home until Tuesday afternoon.
As if I’d planned it myself.
That wasn’t to say getting my hands on the ledger would be a breeze, by any means. After all, Karl kept his office about as tightly sealed as the Smithsonian vault. Not even Jo had ever been permitted to enter and clean the downstairs office without his being present the whole time.
Arriving at the Kutscher Estate gate, I punched in the security code, and waited as the iron bars slowly opened before driving through. Sickness churned in my stomach as I approached the charming Tudor, edged in perfectly manicured shrubs that lined the half-circle drive in front. Floodlights climbed the brick exterior that was covered in browning vines, giving the impression someone was home. Karl had a thing about appearances, even when he wasn’t present.
I skipped up the stairs to the entrance, popping in yet another code, and raised my brow to find he hadn’t changed it after I’d left. Thought for sure he’d have erased me completely, first chance he got.
The house stood quiet, save for the low classical music that always played whenever he went out of town for a few days. I remembered truly loving those weekends, when he’d arrange to have his assistant, Melinda, stay with me. We’d stay up late watching movies my father would’ve never approved of, and ate more chocolate than the greedy kid at the Willy Wonka factory.
Crossing through the foyer brought me standing in front of Karl’s office.
His door stood wide open.
The entire drive, I’d schemed how I might get inside, going so far as to question whether, or not, I could climb through the heating and cooling ducts without getting stuck, or having a panic attack.
And all for nothing.
“I’m fucking hurt, Karl,” I muttered, stepping inside the dark office.
With me out of the picture, he must’ve assumed he had no reason to lock his doors, or to suspect that I’d be going back there any time soon—which would’ve been the case for sure, if not for the little task I’d been given.
I didn’t even know where to begin. So many places he could’ve hidden the ledger, and I’d had to Google the damned thing to even know what the hell I was looking for. He could’ve had it on him, for all I knew, but if retrieving it meant keeping Ty from getting annihilated, it was worth the time to look.
Even if the place made my skin crawl.
Knowing Karl, he’d have it kept in a safe, or something, so I searched the room for one of those first.
Nothing.
Next I searched for a lockbox. Perhaps something more portable, something he’d carry around.
I rummaged through drawers, filing cabinets, his credenza, and the liquor cabinet.
Minutes passed, and I’d not come across a single thing in his office where a ledger might’ve been stored. I slumped into the brown leather chair, exhausted with defeat, and my mind drawing an absolute blank.
I closed my eyes, spinning around in the chair, as I’d done as a young girl, loving the drunken dizziness.
Memories drifted through my head. Giggling. Spinning. Karl standing in the doorway with an angry expression. One that promised punishment and the pulling down of my panties, as he’d often threatened to do before telling me he’d spank my bottom red.
I threw out my legs, stopping the chair, and flipped my eyes open to break from the visual. A shudder beat down my spine at the thought of him holding me over his knee, as he once had. My lungs felt as if they might shrivel in my chest, the way I cringed at the sounds he’d made in his throat the whole time.
I lifted my gaze, searching for distraction, and found it in a book set on his bookshelf.
To the naked eye, the leather-bound cover blended seamlessly into his impressive collection of reference books stacked at either side. Shelves upon shelves of books that lined the wall behind his desk.
No, it wasn’t the book itself that snagged my attention, but the title of it.
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi.
My father once told me that fairytales were for those who couldn’t bear to face reality. Seeing the book on his shelf st
ruck me as odd, since he’d never read me those books as a child and had refused to keep them in his library.
I slid the book from its tight fit as far as it’d pull. Grasping the thick spine, I tugged again, but the damn thing felt like it’d been welded into place. Scratching my head, I studied the leather spine of it, running my finger over the worn skin, until I reached the base, where my finger dipped slightly. I rubbed the hollow there, and a small flap lifted away, exposing what appeared to be a circular lock of some sort.
What the hell?
Spinning on my heel, I nabbed one of the pens from a cup on the desk, and made the foolish attempt to pick it, as if I had any clue how to pick a damned lock. Rifling through the drawers one more time failed to produce a key. Even if the ledger wasn’t in the book, something important must’ve been.
I stared down at the silver lock and a thought pinged through me. Shoving my hand down inside my shirt, I pulled the delicate chain from inside and held the oversized lock charm in front of me. I’d only worn the damned thing in the horrific event I’d run into my father. I twisted each ring on the lock to spell out the word, trust, separating the tubular-shaped key from the dials, and unfastened it from my neck, letting the chain dangle as I held it up. My reflection stared back in the polished silver, and I pushed the key into the lock, breathing excitement when it popped.
I’d had the key the whole time. Go figure.
Gears hummed. My eyes went wide, and I took a step back.
The entire bookshelf slid to the side, all the books stacked there nothing but a guise, opening onto what appeared to be the innards of a safe. Not that I ventured into my father’s office much, but in the years I’d lived with him, I’d never seen that.
Waiting for the wall to silence again, I stepped forward and examined the inside.
A stack of papers sat before me, and I lifted the one on top, opening it to find a spatter of what looked like bloodstains and letters glued to the page that read: Gideon sends his regards. Folding it up, I fished through other papers and found a driver’s license.
One look at the face, and I dropped it back into the box with a gasp. The kid who’d kidnapped me back when I was fifteen. Why did my father have his license?
Another paper appeared to be a birth certificate, the name on which matched the one on the license. My eyes scanned down to the mother—a woman whose name I didn’t recognize, listed as age seventeen. The father was Karl Kutscher.
A creeping cold branched through my veins, tightening my lungs as I stared down at the page. The date of birth was three years before mine.
A memory struck me just then, something my kidnapper had said that night, seconds before taking his life in front of me. It hadn’t made any sense to me at the time, but as I stared down at the page, it became crystal clear.
“This is what happens to the throwaways.”
I stared down at his name again. Shawn Michael Kutscher. My half-brother.
Clutching my stomach, I tried to remember the circumstances of his case, what little my father told me, as well as what I’d gathered on my own afterward. His father had been accused of molesting him for years, but my father managed to get the charges reduced, significantly cutting his prison time.
I weeded through the papers to another birth certificate, nearly identical to the first, except the father had been listed as a Frank Robinson, and Shawn’s name changed to Shawn Michael Robinson.
He’d doctored the birth certificate.
A paralyzing realization settled over me—my father really did have the power to erase someone’s entire life.
Urgency beat down my back, and I abandoned my investigation and patted around for the reason I was there to begin. So I could get the hell out and process all this shit.
Finally, I found the ledger and stuffed it into my pocket. Beneath it was the sheet that held twenty-four words, just as Ty had detailed, which I folded and slid in beside the ledger.
After stacking everything as it’d been before, I stood before the Pinocchio book again. Turning the key inside the lock the opposite way from before sent the shelf sliding back into place, like it’d never even moved. I pushed the book back into its tight fit and quickly shuffled out of the office, flipping off the light as I exited.
Through the foyer, I made my way to the entrance, and the moment I threw back the door, a light slammed into my eyeballs, rendering me momentarily blind.
“Ma’am? May I ask what you’re doing here?” The light lowered, showing me a police officer standing on the front porch, holding a flashlight in my face.
“I … I … I’m Sera Kutscher. I live here.”
“Karl Kutcher’s daughter?”
“Yes. I just …. I stopped in to grab something from my bedroom.”
“Can I see some ID, ma’am? I’m sorry, but Mister Kutscher never mentioned his daughter.”
“Yeah, sure.” Asshole. I tugged my wallet from my back pocket and handed him my license and student ID.
“Okay. We’ve been assigned to watch the house, since there’s been some suspicious activity going on.”
“What … kind of suspicious activity?”
“Some threats your father has been receiving.”
I wanted to tell him those threats weren’t groundless, and maybe he should’ve been more concerned with what my father had gone off to New York to do. Instead, I smiled and accepted my cards, as he handed them back to me.
“You haven’t been receiving any messages, or suspicious letters at school?”
“No, sir. Unless you consider the noise violation notices my roommate sometimes gets from the apartment manager, for listening to the Ramones a few decibels above normal?”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “No, nothing like that. I’ll let you get back on your way. Have a good night.”
“Thanks. Same to you.” As he walked back toward his cruiser, parked behind my car, I blew out a held breath, and the moment he exited the property, I got the hell out of there.
For some reason, having something so seemingly valuable in my hands had me paranoid and shaking, checking my mirrors the entire drive back to my apartment. No one, except the cop, had any idea I’d gone back to the house, let alone snagged the ledger, yet the hairs stood on the back of my neck.
I grabbed my cell and dialed Bea’s number, who miraculously picked up on the second ring, instead of letting it go to voicemail, as usual.
“What’s up?”
“Is Simone with you?” I asked, eyes glued to the road to keep from veering off.
“Define with. She’s between my thighs at the moment, so I guess, she might even qualify as in.”
“Nice. Look, can I ask her a quick question?”
“I dunno. She’s kinda hittin’ the spot at the moment. Not really—”
“Give me the damn phone!” Simone’s irritated voice mirrored the frustration beating through me. “She’s just playin’, Sera. What’s up?”
“I need to get hold of Dax. It’s important. Can you text me his number?”
“I didn’t know you and Dax were cool like that.”
“We’re not. Ty asked me to get in touch with him.”
“Ah, okay. Sure thing. I’ll text it over to you.”
“Thanks.”
“You sound rattled. Everything okay?”
Besides the fact that my father was a murdering pedophile who’d abandoned a son that’d blown his brains out in front of me? Peachy.
“Everything’s fine. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
I clicked out of the call, and no more than five seconds later, a number popped up on my screen. I pressed to dial and waited, my hands sweaty and cold.
“Who’s this?” Dax’s voice sounded like an old muscle car rumbling through the phone.
“Hi … um. This is Sera. Uh. Bea’s roommate. You might not—”
“Sera, yeah … mermaid-hair Sera?”
“Yeah, that’s me. Look, I have something you might be looking for.”
; “Where ‘you now?”
“Um … The Lodge?”
“Get off at Warren. There’s a coffee shop there at the corner of Cass. You know it?”
“Yeah. I know it.”
“Good. I’ll meet you there.”
“See you in about five minutes.”
I turned off onto Warren, as he’d instructed, and found the small coffee shop nestled on the corner beside an old dilapidated apartment building. I pulled up to the curb, near where I could see Dax inside, watching me from the booth.
The bell of the door jingled as I entered, startling my muscles, and I forced my eyes closed. Calm down, Sera. I made my way toward Dax, glancing around for any familiar faces, feeling like a damned criminal.
Dax’s big body took up most of the booth, and it occurred to me, as I approached, that it was a good thing he’d offered to meet in public. Tattoos covered his arms, beneath which tight cords of muscles told me the guy had power behind those guns, to do some damage if he wanted.
His broody brow kicked up with the half smile that cracked his frown, and he gestured me to sit.
“Where’s Ty?” he asked, looking past me toward the door.
“Just me.” I shoved my hand into my pocket and retrieved the chip, along with the folded paper that held the recovery phrase.
“I’m going to have to make this meeting quick. Don’t mean to be rude, but the moment he finds out these are missing, he can wipe out the whole damn thing if he’s got a backup ledger.”
“He’s in New York until Tuesday. You have a little time.”
“Thank you for doing this. I know it must be quite a risk for you. If you need a place to lie low, I can arrange that, until things blow over.”
Blow over. As in, murder Karl Kutscher and wait to see if they got caught.
Glancing around the coffee shop showed patrons conversing and sipping their coffees, completely oblivious to our discussion. I leaned in and lowered my voice. “He can’t go after my father.”
