Chapter 22 Killer #2
Because he’s Tony. That’s his name. Seeing him stand there, I have no familial feelings for this man.
Maybe it’s because, deep down, I remember that he kicked me out of his house at eighteen because I refused an arranged marriage, then dragged me back into the Order bullshit at twenty-five so that I could be married off to one of the Owed under the threat of Dallas losing his life.
I feel nothing but disgust for this man, and I only hope that I manage to conceal as Connor cuts Tony off with a shake of his head and a nod toward the couch.
Slightly disappointed, he turns and his jaw drops, shock spreading across his soft, paunchy face as he finally realizes I’m sitting here.
“Lu… Lucy?”
His head snaps, searching for Connor. “I thought I was here for Order business. Because the King recognizes that I’ve been loyal, that I should move up the ranks.”
Connor shrugs, and I finally understand what he meant by ‘incentive’. “Yeah, well, as Lucy is learning, some of the Owed lie to get what they want.” He claps Tony on the back. “Let’s see if you’re one of them. Sunshine? He’s all yours. Let me know when you’re done, yeah?”
I nod, and Connor backs out of the room, shutting the door behind him so that we have privacy.
I wait for Tony to inch toward me before he gingerly takes a seat on the couch. “I, uh, I guess you wanted to see me?” He rubs his mouth with the back of his hand. “I can’t believe it. Lucy… it’s been so long.”
I’m not in the mood for niceties or small talk, and it’s time he figures that out. “Yeah. Five years away from Harmony Heights, but now I’m back, Dad. And you know why? Because I’ve been hearing a lot of things. I had to come back.”
He exhales, almost as though he expected this. “For Dallas?”
Yes. “For the truth.”
“The truth?” He laughs uneasily. “that’s a dangerous thing to ask for in Harmony Heights.”
I’ve discovered that. “I’m asking anyway. What happened? Where did it all go wrong? Apart from when you were there and let me force me into agreeing to marry Julian.”
I don’t tell him what I suspect. I sure as hell don’t tell him that I can’t remember anything from before my accident—my attempted murder—except for flashes of memory, like the time I watched him sit by on a couch so different from this one as Jack Collins arranged my marriage to Julian.
That was Haven’s idea. She told me never to give someone any advantages.
If Tony knows that I’m still damaged from the fall, he could tell me anything and I wouldn’t be able to confirm it.
But if I give him a tidbit that I know is true, maybe he’ll fill in the gaps for me some.
For a few heartbeats, the silence in the living room stretches. I don’t think he’s going to answer me at all, but then he sighs and I have to hold my breath.
“He called me.”
My heart stops. “What? Who? Julian?”
Tony nods. “Yeah. After… he said there had been an accident. That you died. That’s why I looked so stunned to see you.
For a second there, I thought I was looking at a ghost. I should’ve known better.
He always had a twisted sense of humor, but telling me my only girl was gone… I’m sorry, honey. I believed him.”
“Which part?” I ask, keeping my voice calm even though I want to reach out and slap him. “The part when he said that it was an accident when he pushed me out of the window, or when he didn’t even bother to see if I was still breathing before he left the crime scene?”
Tony pales—and I know I’m right.
“Okay. So maybe he made it out like it wasn’t an accident and more like he was apologizing for killing my daughter. But I honestly thought he did it, and I—”
“Didn’t call the cops?”
“Cops? Oh, Luce… you know that’s not how things work here.
Not in Harmony Heights.” He ducks his head enough so that he can avoid the outrage on my face even as he mutters something I was probably never meant to hear: “Not when I couldn’t risk them coming into my own backyard and seeing what kind of bones I’ve got buried back there.
I already did enough of that when your mother disappeared. I won’t go through that again.”
What? He did? I don’t remember… but even if I had my memories, I was only seven when Mom took off. But the way that Tony says that… “What about Mom? You guys got divorced and she moved away.”
That’s what Dallas told me. That’s what Dallas told me… because that’s what I told him. Because that’s what I believed—
Tony snorts. “Honey, you’re thirty. You grew up in Harmony Heights. You grew up with the Order all around you. We don’t do divorce here.”
His flippant words echo in my mind. Don’t do divorce… I’ve heard that before. Somewhere. Don’t know where, but it’s as much of a fact of life as seeing all the guys around the Fortress with brands on their palms, and the idea that women who step out of line get pushed out of windows, or…
No.
No.
“She didn’t move away, did she? You… you did something to her.”
He could lie to me. He very easily could.
But whether it’s because he has Connor’s last words echoing in his ears or he figures that it’s not worth coming up with another story for his supposedly dead daughter, returned from the grave, I don’t know…
but instead of lying, he slumps his shoulders and twists his features into a pathetic expression.
“You have to believe me. It was an accident.” Sure.
Another accident. “Your mother didn’t want to live under the Order’s rules anymore.
She wanted out. She wanted to leave me. I couldn’t hear it.
I… I hit her. I didn’t mean to, but I did, and she hit her head.
She fell.” She fell… she fell… shefell… “She fell and she didn’t wake up, and I had to do something. So I called the King.”
“Jack,” I bite out.
He nods. “He told me that since I was an Owed in good standing, he’d take care of it. But my rank wasn’t high enough for it to be free. He’d put my name in a ledger, and when he needed a favor, he would call it in.”
From everything I learned about Jack Collins, that fit.
“Did he?”
Tony nods again. “Yeah. About eighteen years later, when I thought he’d forgotten all about it, he needed a favor.
While he established an alibi, he had me sneak up into the penthouse of the Fortress and help Reese Collins on her way out of it—and his life.
To cover up killing my wife, he had me kill his, and even that wasn’t enough… then he took you away from me, too.”
It takes a second for it to click.
Oh God. Oh God. Suddenly, everything makes sense. When Dallas turned on me, when he asked me what I knew about his mother’s death… I was under the impression that, whatever happened to her, it was—
An accident.
Another fucking accident.
But it wasn’t an accident. My father killed Dallas’s mother, and Julian somehow knew.
Before Dallas did whatever it was he did to my former husband, he must’ve taunted Dallas with it with his final breath.
He let Dallas think I knew who was responsible for Reese Collins’s fall…
and that was right after Dallas found out that Julian tried to give me the same fate as Dallas’s poor mother.
The same fate as mine.
And because this piece of shit was a serial murdering bastard, I was sacrificed in their schemes, tossing me to Julian Fairchild because Jack Collins was a sadistic monster who wanted to keep his son in line by killing his beloved mother first, then making him deal with the knowledge that the woman he loved was married to another man.
And when he finally cracked, what did I do? I ran away. I ran, and I’m not sure if I won’t keep running, but at least now I know the truth.
Even if I wish I didn’t.
But I asked. I opened that door and I asked, and now I have to deal with the fallout.
When I don’t get up and start screaming, he must think that he can make something of his confession. At the very least, he offers me a stunted, “I’m sorry.”
Fuck you, Dad.
My voice is as cold as ice when I tell him: “Julian is dead.”
His face freezes. “What was that?”
“He tried to kill me. Failed. But when Dallas went after him… he got the job done right.”
Tony blinks. “The new King avenged you?” Dumb fuck, his face breaks out in a wide grin. “That’s amazing, hon. What happened? You two get back together after Julian—”
“Tried to kill me, yes. I guess we did.”
“Then you have an in with the top of the Other. Yes! Do you know what that means? You can tell him how I’ve been loyal to the Owed all along. You can ask him to elevate me.”
He has got to be kidding. Delusional doesn’t even cover it. He just admitted that he knew I was ‘dead’ and didn’t bat an eye, then he had the nerve to tell me that he killed my mother and Dallas’s and he thinks I’m just going to look right past that?
“No. What? No. I want nothing to do with you.”
His ruddy face turns even redder as he balls his hands into fists. “I’m your father.”
I look him dead in the eye. “See, that’s the thing about falling four stories from a hotel window.
Sometimes you die. Sometimes you get lucky and your body hits an awning before the ground.
You can’t breathe real good for a while so they intubate you.
Then, when you’re conscious again, they tell you that you have something called dissociative amnesia.
Know what that means? Trauma-induced memory loss.
Couldn’t remember a damn thing, Tony.” I bare my teeth at him.
“And I guess I still don’t remember having a father. ”
That’s the last thing I say to him. After a moment where he stares at me in complete surprise, his mouth starts working again.
He wants my forgiveness, he’s sorry, he wants me to understand, he wants me to swear that I won’t tell Dallas that he’s the one who gave Reese Collins her fatal push.
I just sit there, wondering when he’ll stop, wondering if I should call out for Connor, when, suddenly, the door eases open again.
Connor walks in. His normally easygoing expression is gone, replaced by a grim mask and a darkness in his deep blue eyes that makes me shiver. When he sees that he’s caught mine, he puts his finger to his lip.
I jerk my head just enough that it might be considered a nod.
He tosses something up in the air, catching it easily in the palm of his scarred hand as he moves around the edge of the room, keeping out of Tony’s line of vision.
I can’t ell what it is that Connor is playing with until he catches it one last time, then does something to eject a three-inch blade from it.
A pocketknife, just like the one Dallas has.
Tony never saw it coming. Launching at the man who should’ve been my father, Connor covers his mouth and his nose with his hand, jerking his head back enough that he can place the sharpened edge of his knife to Tony’s throat.
His hand flashes, and Tony’s body bucks, blood spilling from the gash in his throat.
Connor doesn’t release him until Tony’s done with his death throes. Me? I watch in morbid fascination, waiting for some sort of remorse at seeing Tony Wright murdered.
Pity. It doesn’t come.
Finally, Connor lets the body slump on the couch, wiping his hand on the back of his slacks.
“Sorry ‘bout that, but I couldn’t risk him screaming. My wife is sleeping. We don’t want to wake Haven up.” He shivers. “You don’t want to see her if someone wakes her up from one of her naps.”
I blink, not sure how to react. One second, he was a cold assassin, killing Tony as easily as picking his nails with his pocketknife. The next? He’s back to being a total ‘wife’ guy, worried about disturbing Haven’s sleep.
Finally, I get out a strangled, “You killed him.”
“And he killed my bro’s mother. He’s lucky I was the one who heard him say it. I gave him a quick death. If Dallas got his hands on him first? It wouldn’t have been pretty.”
Wait a second—
“How… how do you know that?”
He glances around the room, and without saying it, I know that it’s bugged.
Video or camera, I don’t know, but he must’ve heard everything that passed in here while he was gone.
And not just when Tony was in here, either.
Before, with Haven, and I think back to how she grabbed a notepad when she first told me about the Order of the Owed.
Maybe she wasn’t just selectively mute. Maybe she was careful what she lets her husband overhear…
“Um. Is Haven aware that you…”
“I’m very protective of my wife,” is all he says. “My friends, too.”
Right. Received the message loud and clear, you psycho.
“Haven is safe with me,” I promise.
Connor raises his eyebrows. “What about Killer?”
Good question. “I don’t want to hurt him.”
That much is true.
“That’s easy. Then don’t.” When I open my mouth, he holds up his hand.
“I’m not telling you to go right back to him.
Me and Haven opened up our doors to you.
Take a day. Take two. I’m gonna have to deal with this anyway,” he says, gesturing toward Tony.
“When you’re ready, I’ll tell Dallas you’re here.
I’ll tell him about what this bozo said about Reese, too. And then… just don’t hurt him. Got me?”
I glance at the bloody blade he’s twisting around his fingers absently, not even looking to see if the metal will nick him.
I gulp. “I got you.”