Then he disappeared through the doorway and left me to the startling loneliness. You’d think it would be impossible for something so barren to feel so alive.
Lost, I wandered to the bed, fingertips tracing along the sheets long since cold, and I gathered up the blanket and pressed it to my nose to take in more of him.
Sebastian.
I wanted to be angry. Curse him for being so reckless.
But I saw him for who he was.
A guardian.
Unsettled, I looked around the empty room, knowing I couldn’t sit idle. That I had to do something.
The nerves skittering through me promised it was to fight.
I stepped out into the empty hall, somehow drawn toward Mark’s room.
Yesterday, Sebastian and I had been texting on and off. Even with the burden of Martin on our shoulders, we’d been excited, flirting and teasing and playing while we anticipated being together again.
The last text I’d received from him had been filled with the same kind of thrill.
Score. Found Kallie all kinds of cute shit for her room. Going to have it ready to surprise her tomorrow. Can’t wait to see her face. Getting to work. Love you.
No warning or indication of anything amiss.
Fingertips fluttering along the wall, I slowly edged in the direction of Mark’s room as Ash had instructed. Silence echoed back, as if the massive house held still, whispering a hushed warning. My steps slowed in apprehension as I traversed the landing and crossed into the opposite hall.
At the end of it, a pile of shopping bags sat outside the room. I crept closer. The door stood wide open. Holding onto the wall, I peeked around the corner and inside.
A mountain of clothes were piled in the middle of the floor, and a few black garbage bags sat at the end of the bed stuffed full and tied off with a knot.
Warily, I stepped inside. My heart rate sped.
Muted light glowed through the gaps in the blinds, a thick coat of dust covering everything, the sober energy in here dampened even more than throughout the rest of the house.
It must have been so difficult for Sebastian to come in here, my brave, beautiful man.
My eyes jumped around, trying to latch onto something, a feeling or a vibe or the heart of Sebastian that had sent him running from here and into the grips of Martin.
Crossing the room to the desk, I ran my fingers over the few pictures left cluttering the surface, as if those were the things Sebastian couldn’t bear to part with. A feeling of sorrow captured my spirit as I strayed into the void Mark’s tragedy had left behind. Heaviness weighing me down, I turned from the desk and eased around the pile of clothes, my attention hooking on the yawning closet where a single light still burned from within.
I peered inside. The rods and half the shelves had been cleared out.
Unease trickled into my senses.
A job half done.
I sucked in a breath as a vibration of disquiet stirred through me, and I tentatively took a few steps deeper into the closet.
Boxes lined the floor, some shoved farther toward the room as if Sebastian were planning to get rid of them or store them elsewhere, and a couple were still tucked in the shelves and coves.
At the very back, a plastic storage bin had been dragged out onto the closet floor, the lid balanced at the side. In front of it, a few pictures were scattered about and a journal was turned upside down, pages bent as if it’d been dropped.
I sank to my knees, shaking hands and panted breaths out of control as I reached down and cautiously picked up the journal.
I hated the thought of invading the man’s privacy, long after he was gone, but I knew whatever Sebastian had found was now clutched in my trembling hands.
Another piece of me broke for a man I didn’t know as I scanned the pure and utter desolation slashed across the pages. Page after page of hopelessness and shame. The heart and mind of a terribly lost soul.
Tears gathered in my eyes as I continued on, searching for anything. Any indication of what would have sent Sebastian toward a fate I knew he didn’t want.
My attention caught on an entry nearing the back, in a place where his typically messy penmanship had become almost violent. Frantic.
Fucking Donny and his fucking mouth.
Donny?
A sinking feeling washed through me, taunting me with flickers of recognition. Vicious blue eyes I would never forget. I gripped the book, reading as fast as I could.
Always with his fucking mouth. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want any part of it. I knew Martin was sick. Both of them were sick. But not that sick. I told Martin so. I told him to go to hell when he demanded the money I owe him. Told him I’d take everything I know to the cops. I was going to anyway, money be damned. I knew what he’d had Donny do to that girl. I knew what he planned to have him do. She was a loose end. A liability. Just like me. Call me a snitch. I didn’t care. Let the asshole burn.
That girl.
That girl.
That girl.
That girl.
Oh my God.
Was this me?
A liability. A loose end?
That sinking feeling pulled me beneath the surface, like blackened waters lapping over my head.
I flipped the page. All my breath locked up in my throat, so thick and tight and suffocating. Lightheadedness tilted the room.
Donny’s gone. Dead in the water. I’m going to be next. I know it. Feel it coming. Am I scared? Yeah. Terrified, really. I led Martin on. Made him believe I’d leaked info. Ratted him and Lester out. He thinks I’m blackmailing, but I don’t have anything but Donny’s word. And Donny’s word is about as valuable as a ten-dollar whore. My only intention had been to thwart the plans he had to hurt that girl again. Only this time, make it final. Sick. Fucking sick. Couldn’t live with myself if there was any chance of it happening, so I’d rather die stopping it. I guess I finally did something in my life worth a shit.
Horror and hate collided in a cataclysm of fear when I locked on the name.
Lester.
And I knew. And I knew. And I knew.
I lurched forward, holding myself up on my hands and knees as I gasped for absent air.
I’d always thought the threat I’d made had saved Kallie’s and my life. Allowed us to live the way he never would have let us. But now I wondered if it was the stupidest thing I’d ever done.
And Sebastian…he was so protective, bore so much shame, regret, and guilt over the loss of Mark. One inciting factor would be the match. A combustion of sparks and flames and gasoline that would set him off.
Send him over the edge of the cliff on which he always teetered.
Volatile and explosive.
Just like Anthony had claimed…had asked me to accept.
Sebastian never loved lightly.
This was what Martin had wanted, wasn’t it? What he’d counted on?
Divide and conquer.
Isolate and sabotage.
His whole intent was to take Sebastian from me. To leave me the most vulnerable I could be.
Little did he know I would fight him to the death.
Shivers shook through my entire body, and I tried to swallow around the rock in my throat as I reached down and picked up one of the pictures that lay face down on the floor.
My hand shot to my mouth to cover a cry.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Mark, Austin, Donny, and my mother.
A deep, guttural cry suddenly ricocheted off the walls in the small closet, one that meshed with the devastated sadness of mine.
I jerked to look over my shoulder.
Austin.
He clutched both sides of the doorframe, holding himself up, spirit and body crumpled and broken. Confession barely decipherable, he looked at me as if he were begging me to see him. “It’s my fault. It was always my fault.”
I scrambled to face him, pushing all the way up onto my knees, my words jumbled as they poured from my
mouth. I held out the journal. “Austin…what is this? Tell me what you know.”
He winced as if the sight of it caused him physical pain. “We knew, Shea. Mark and I…we knew. Donny told us what Martin had them do to you.”
They knew.
Austin shook his head and laughed a spiteful sound. “There’s never any fucking proof, right, Shea? Assholes can just keep hurting and hurting and hurting and there’s never any proof. But Mark didn’t care. He said he was going to the cops anyway. And then Mark was gone… He was gone, Shea,” he said with all the implication he could summon.
Oh my God. Martin. He did this to Mark.
Everything spun and dizziness swelled.
Austin kept crying, words tumbling from him like a confession that had been held in for far too long. “Baz found all this shit Mark had kept…demanded to know what the hell I knew. I couldn’t keep it from him any longer, Shea. I couldn’t. I’m so fucking sorry. So sorry.”
I gulped over the reality of what Sebastian had found. Of what he had learned. My last secret. The one I’d kept to protect him.
I staggered onto unsteady feet, unable to process everything he was trying to tell me. My focus would only latch onto one thing. I shoved one of the pictures at him. “When…when was this picture taken?”
“I don’t know…maybe a year and a half ago. Not long before Mark died.”
Between the heavy, stale air, the disorganized chaos of the room, and the catastrophic discovery, I felt bile rise in my throat. My skin cold and clammy.
I took a desperate step forward.
“Where is she?”
THE HEELS OF CHLOE Lynn’s high-heeled boots clicked on the tile floor where she paced in annoyance, arms crossed over her chest, dressed in designer skinny jeans and a flowy blouse. Her mother looked poised and ready to conquer the world, while Shea knew she looked absolutely horrible, her eyes stained red and cheeks chapped from crying.
“Please, Momma, I need your help.”
She’d hidden it for as long as she could.
Four months, and there was no longer any hidin’.
Shea met the force of her mother’s disgusted glare. Cold. Cold. Cold.
Beneath it Shea wanted to cower and shrink, but she refused to be that girl for one day longer. No longer would she bow and submit.
But that didn’t mean fear wasn’t trembling through her bones.
“What is it exactly you want me to do, Delaney?”
Shea cringed, voice ragged. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why? It’s about time you accepted who you are.”
“What if that’s not who I want to be?”
Shea cringed again when her mother laughed, bitter, low, and sarcastic. “It’s a little late now, don’t you think? You have contracts. Albums to record and tours to fulfill. You have obligations. I’m not going to tell you anything different than what Martin told you. You’re going to suck it up and act like a woman. Wipe those ugly tears off your face and take care of what needs to be taken care of, and that’s gonna be the end of it.”
Pain sliced through Shea’s chest, something physical amassed from many years.
“I did everything for you. All my life spent in lessons and chasing down auditions. Me running faster and faster because you were right behind me pushing and pushing and pushing.”
“And you think now that we finally got what we’ve worked so hard for, I’m going to stand by and let you throw it all away? You go and get yourself knocked up and you think it changes anything? I’m not going to let you ruin my life. Not again.”
Shea’s face crumpled with the blow. “Is that what I was? A mistake?”
Finally, all her mother’s pushin’ had driven her right into the ground.
Laughing as if Shea were completely ignorant, her mother shook her head as she lifted the half-spent bottle of wine, red liquid billowing into the well of her emptied glass.
“Time to grow up, Delaney. Wipe the stars out of your eyes. All those dreams about falling in love and happy families you’ve always been so fond of? The nonsense your grandma filled your head with? It doesn’t exist. Go back to Martin. He’s waitin’ on you.”
Then she turned her back and walked through the arch.
Shea stood in the middle of her mother’s Nashville kitchen, the fear for her child and the loss of her grandma nearly dropping her to the floor in a broken pile. The opulence surrounding her rode on every song Shea had ever sang, the cost of a life she didn’t want to live.
In that moment, she felt the last thread of commitment she had for her mother snap.
Frantically, Shea ripped shirts from their hangers and shoved them into a suitcase sitting on the floor in the middle of the walk-in closet. Adrenaline and terror and the overwhelming urge to run coursed through her veins.
He would try to stop her. She knew he would. But she wouldn’t let him.
It was time and this time there was no turning back.
She’d overheard what she shouldn’t. Martin in a business deal with Lester Ford, the middle-aged man just as disgusting as Martin. Just as pretentious. Just as fake. Crooked. One of Nashville’s wealthiest, revered in their circles.
Now Shea knew better.
She’d been sure their business dealings slanted on the seedy side, but she’d had no idea how sordid they went.
Martin was funding Lester’s campaign with drug money.
All of this—it was a front. Martin was nothing more than a lowlife drug trafficker, sending money out west while wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit.
He’d caught her lurking in the shadows. Listening. He had pushed her against the wall and pressed his hand to her throat and a gun to her side.
“You think you know what’s going on?” he’d spat. “What you heard, you will tell no one. Do you understand? I made you. You owe me, and I will collect my debt. You’ll never be without me, Delaney Rhoads. I. Own. You. Open your mouth and all you know and love will vanish. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Petrified, I could only nod.
“I will guarantee your silence,” he’d whispered with all the menace in his black, black soul.
That’s what he’d said and that’s when Shea had decided no more.
He’d wanted the money—the money from the record deal she’d signed. The millions that should have gone to her, but instead in all her naivety, she’d signed contracts that awarded virtually all of it to her mother and Martin. He owed that money to Lester…needed it to fulfill a debt.
Her threat to leave had been returned with a threat to kill her.
She didn’t really think he would.
He wanted her scared.
Maybe she should have been more fearful.
Or maybe she was.
But she refused to live this life.
Martin thought she’d had an abortion. That she’d surrendered the way she always had.
But no.
No longer would Shea allow herself to be a prisoner to this nightmare. She was escaping before it ruined more of who she was and stole from her the one thing worth living for.
Shea filled the suitcase to bursting, dropped to her knees, and grunted as she forced the zipper closed, another wave of terror pounding adrenaline through her blood.
Desperately, she whispered to the baby growing in her belly, “I’m going to take care of you. I promise, I’m going to be the best momma you could ever have. Just you and me.”
Just you and me.
Shea climbed back to her feet and drew her phone from her back pocket. She just needed to hear a sane voice. Someone there to remind her she wasn’t completely alone in this world that threatened to rip her apart. A reassurance that what she was doing was right.
Quickly she dialed her uncle Charlie.
He answered on the first ring. “Shea Bear.” Relief was evident in his heavy exhale. “You on your way, sweetheart?”
“Almost…”
Shea looked around the closet, gauging what she could grab
in the short window she had. “I have to pack a couple more things and then I’ll be. I should be there by daylight.”
The trip from Nashville to Savannah was just shy of an eight-hour drive.
“Be careful, sweet girl. I’ll be right here waitin’.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, that simple statement filled with so much, so much gratitude to the man who she knew was saving her from this life.
She ended the call, hauling the overstuffed suitcase behind her out into the bedroom.
Moonlight filtered in through the transparent drapes, the darkened room cast in shadows and memories and regrets.
Shea’s gaze slid unwelcomed to the plush bed made up of satiny linens. Her stomach turned with nausea at the thought of ever having shared it with Martin Jennings.
But she’d be taking one good thing from this awful mess.
In the end, this baby was the only thing that mattered.
She grabbed the large duffle bag she’d already packed and slung it over her shoulder, maneuvered the suitcase over the thick carpet to the dresser against the far wall.
Her jewelry box rested on top of it.
It was chock-full of diamonds, gold, and gems—all tokens of this flashy, false life. But the only things she was after were the heirlooms her grandmother had left her when she’d passed—her ring and the matching necklace her grandfather had given her on their wedding day.
She opened the special bottom drawer where she stored them.
A noise clattered from the other side of the house. At the sound, her head jerked up. Freezing cold slid down her spine.
Then that noise was eclipsed by pure foreboding silence.
No.
Shea swallowed and slowly turned as the hairs at the back of her neck lifted. Craning her ear, she trained her attention out beyond the bedroom.
Listening.
Fear tingled as a flash of goosebumps swelled across her skin.
She could sense it.
Smell it in the air.
The stench of evil.
Something wicked coming her way.
Just outside the door, the wooden floorboards creaked. Shivers vibrated uncontrollably through her limbs, and she fumbled backward and bumped into the dresser.
The jewelry box rattled.
Drowning to Breathe Page 28
