Chapter 13
Nash
As the door on the left opens with a loud clang, a man in a dark suit enters the room.
Behind him, the deputy sheriff who booked me in and showed me to my cell retreats and closes the door behind him
“Uncle,” I say, only because I know he hates it.
The old Nash would have sat quietly on the too-thin, too-hard camp-style cell bed and used my silence as a shield against a man who hates me. After years of having Makhi and Vonn watch my back, silence is no longer a shield I hide behind.
Sometimes it’s fun to prod someone knowing they can’t do a thing in return to get back at you. Makhi taught me that.
His lips flatten. “Are you ready to admit your crimes?”
I arch my brow. “My crimes?”
“Murder,” he says louder than he needs to.
I don’t glance at the door behind him, but I have a feeling the deputy—or even the sheriff—is lingering close enough to listen, probably with a recorder to capture me admitting to murder.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He steps up to the bars of my cell, his eyes cold and flinty. “The murder of your uncle. My brother.”
Getting up from the hard bed, I walk over to stand inches from him. “I never killed him, and I told you as much the last time you had the sheriff fling me in here.”
“I know you did,” he hisses through gritted teeth.
“Then you’ll have no trouble finding evidence to prove that I did what you’re accusing me of.”
His nostrils flare, and his eyes burn.
“You won’t get away with this,” he grinds out.
I walk back to my bed and sit down. “Let me know when my attorney arrives.”
He leaves with a loud slam of the door, and I release a quiet sigh of relief as I tilt my head back and rest it on the wall.
Ten minutes.
That’s the time it took for my uncle to lose everything and resent my dad for having what he believed should have been his.
They’re fraternal twins. Born on the same day, but not identical. If he’d been born ten minutes earlier, the house and the Gabriel fortune would have been his. Once my dad married and had me, I became heir, and he knew he was never getting the fortune or the house.
The Gabriel fortune has always passed down to the eldest son. Once the eldest has a son, then the fortune goes to him. It’s how it’s always been for generations.
At the will reading, he learned he wasn’t getting anything but a token amount. For most people, $100,000 is a life-changing amount. It wasn’t enough for him. He wants it all.
“Ready to talk?” a male voice calls out.
I lift my head, meeting the sheriff’s gaze as he stands in the open doorway on my left.
That door is loud enough for me to have heard it open, and I didn’t. It’s not a good idea to let my mind wander in enemy territory. I need to keep my mind focused, at least until my attorney arrives.
“About?” I ask.
His wide, amiable smile is false, though it’s the best attempt he’s made so far. My uncle must have promised him a bigger bonus if he gets me to incriminate myself.
“The crime. Fess up now and it’ll go easier for you.”
“No comment.”
“If that’s how you want to play it.” He turns to the deputy, who comes into view. “Get him into interview room five.”
“No comment,” I say for the tenth time.
There’s no clock in this room. Just a wall of glass on my left, a wooden table in front of me, and the sheriff on the other side of it with a black tape recorder that has spent the last twenty minutes recording a list of questions and me repeating “No comment.”
The sheriff doesn't seem to understand I'm staying silent until my lawyer gets here, then I'm leaving.
He leans across the table. “No one else had a reason to push him off that roof.”
“No comment.”
“Had he cut your allowance?”
“No comment.”
“Maybe you didn’t like the fact that he wasn’t going to leave you everything.”
“No comment.”
“You were heard arguing by a member of your household. And that same night, he turns up dead.”
I look him right in the eye after his barefaced lie when I tell him, “No. Comment.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw.
He leans closer, opens his mouth and—
Knock. Knock.
He turns in his seat as someone twists the door open, and my attorney walks in, his eyes flicking from the sheriff to me and then to the recorder.
His attention returns to the sheriff as he asks him in a casual tone. “I hope you’re not questioning my client without the legal representative he requested, sheriff?”
With a muffled curse, the sheriff stabs his finger on the recorder off switch and shoves himself to his feet. “I was just chasing up a lead.”
“Of course you were,” my attorney says dryly, then looks at me. “Are you ready to go?”
I stand up.
“Now, wait just a second.” The sheriff’s back stiffens, and he glares at my attorney. “You can’t just—”
“Unless you have material evidence rather than hopes and dreams tying my client to an accidental fall, I want him released in the next two minutes. And if you make me do this pointless drive again, sheriff, I’ll be filing a case for harassment.”
The sheriff steps aside, and I walk out with my attorney.
“Are you okay?” Otto asks me.
“Good. Sorry you keep having to make this drive every couple of months.”
He shrugs. “It gets me out of the house, and I don’t mind the drive. It’s scenic.”
I chuckle. “There is nothing scenic about Massey, except maybe seeing it in your rearview mirror.”
“So leave.”
“And have my uncle poison another town against me? No, thanks.”
“Need a ride?” he asks outside the sheriff’s department.
“Please.”
As we get into his dark gray Honda, I ignore the dark, suspicious stares from the people on the other side of the street. It’s why I avoid coming into town unless I have to.
“What set him off this time?”
“I left town to look for someone,” I say, snapping on my seatbelt. “My uncle probably thought I was distracted, and it was a good time to pull me in.”
Otto starts the engine, and we leave the stares behind us to head to my house, where it’s easier to pretend the whole town doesn’t hate me. “You really could leave, you know? If your uncle started any trouble wherever you moved to, I could file a harassment charge, and he’d have to drop it.”
“I could, but this would only follow me wherever I went. If I sold the house, he would turn vindictive, and right now, he’s bad. That would set him off like nothing else.”
Otto and I went to college together. He wound up working as a BigLaw attorney in New York until stress and ninety-hour weeks left him so burned out that he was barely sleeping. He was living on cocaine and takeout when he started having heart palpitations and chest pains at twenty-three.
He decided small practice would mean he lived longer, and he’s happier with less money, fewer hours, and an actual work-life balance with a wife and toddler.
I could afford a high-powered criminal defense attorney from New York, but I trust Otto, and he takes perverse pleasure in legally slapping my uncle down, which is something I always appreciate.
“Call if your uncle is a dick again,” he says, pulling up outside the mansion gates.
“Will do.”
He leans out of his window and yells. “And move. I recognize a toxic environment when I see it, and this place is nothing but toxic for you.”
He’s not wrong.
I wave but don’t respond.