24. River
RIVER
I ’m on my third glass of whisky when the door to my home office opens and Oz and Eli come in. The leather on my desk chair creaks as I take another sip from the glass tumbler.
“Where’s Freya?” I ask, my voice rough and burning from the alcohol.
Oz stands by the bookshelf and trails his fingers over the spines. “In Jude’s room.”
Eli leans against the door, his arms crossed as he eyes me.
I drag my teeth over my lips, the smoky remnants of the whisky lingering on my tongue. “I crossed a line.”
Oz’s hand drops from the books. “We all did.”
I shake my head. “It was my decision.”
Eli cracks his neck. “Yeah, but we could have fought harder against it.”
I stare into my glass. The brassy liquid catches the light from the only lamp I bothered to turn on in here. I’m better off in the darkness. “I didn’t even realize I’d gone too far.”
The look on Freya’s face when I shut her in her room that first night haunts me. How did I not see what I was doing to her?
I knock back the rest of the whisky and hit the glass down on my desk. I wipe the back of my hand over my mouth and concentrate on the burn in my throat.
My chest heaves as I breathe in. “You know that’s how it started with my parents too. At first, they only stole from those who deserved it, then it became anyone who didn’t need it. The lines kept blurring until it no longer mattered who they hurt as long as they got what they wanted.”
My lips curl in disgust only this time I don’t know whether it’s directed at my parents or myself.
“You aren’t your parents, Riv,” Eli says.
It feels like my ribs are pressurized and any second now they could explode. I lean over, resting my elbows on my knees and scrunching my hands in my hair. “She’s never going to forgive me.”
I locked her up. I treated her like her father did, made her relive the trauma she endured throughout her childhood.
I don’t think I ever once saw my need for control as a bad thing until right now.
The strict rules, the boundaries, all of it was supposed to stop me from becoming like my parents.
Instead, my obsession with Freya took me so far over the line I didn’t even realize it had faded behind me.
Not only that but I’ve been so worried about Freya I haven’t been focused on the case. Freya told me what her brother would do if he found out she came back. I should have known my team was at risk and put security measures in place.
The fact that Angelica was able to just walk up to the house and pull a gun is unacceptable. It’s my job to lead this team, to make sure everyone is safe, and I failed.
I lock my hands behind my head. The alcohol had been doing a fairly good job of numbing my emotions but now they’re all breaking through. “It’s my fault Jude was shot and Freya’s right, if she hadn’t been stuck in her room maybe she could have helped him.”
“Jude’s going to be fine,” Oz says.
Eli pushes away from the door. “And you’d be surprised at how much Freya can forgive.” He snags the bottle of whisky off my desk and grabs another glass from the side table. “I was always going to kill Maxwell,” he confesses as he pours. “Freya knew that. She gave me that.”
I sit up and lean back against the chair. “You think I didn’t know that was always your plan? I’ve spent the last fourteen years trying to make sure you didn’t do anything you’d regret.” My head spins a little as I shake it. “Guess I should have been more focused on myself.”
“I don’t regret it,” Eli states, his back still facing me as he puts the bottle down.
I wait till he turns around to respond. “I know. If I thought you couldn’t have handled it, I would have shot him myself.”
Eli tilts his head. “I know you feel like you’re a shitty person right now but the fact that you’d do that for me just proves you’re not.”
I raise a brow. “Me being willing to commit murder makes me a good person?”
“It makes you human, which I think sometimes you forget is what you are. You’re allowed to make mistakes, Riv.”
This was more than a mistake. This was betrayal. For someone who demands utmost loyalty, I never thought I’d be the one breaking Freya’s trust.
Oz watches us, his hands in the pockets of his chinos. “Eli’s right and his point is that Freya can forgive a lot. We just have to make sure she knows we didn’t mean to hurt her and that we won’t ever do it again.”
“And how exactly do we do that?” I ask.
Eli knocks back his shot of whisky. “We grovel like hell.”