Chapter 25 Daniel
DANIEL
I haven’t said those words out loud in more than a decade. The last person I said them to was Cole when we were in university in the United States. When I was young, when I was still emotional, when I was still a wreck from everything that had happened.
My role in it, my complicity.
Cole listened, understood, and knew who I was. Who I still am. But no one else has ever needed to know. No one else gets to see me.
But Scarlett.
This is the effect she has on me. She’s weaved her way into my heart, under my skin, loosening all the iron walls I’ve built, all the bricks I’ve stacked sky-high, all the steel barriers that have kept my emotions locked up.
Because locked up is safer. Locked up is always safer.
When truths come out, when people are known, when love is revealed, that’s when it can be stolen, bludgeoned, and destroyed.
But Scarlett is my river. She makes me want to tell her things. She makes me want to share parts of myself that I don’t like sharing.
I want to tell her my truth, and I need to tell her. She deserves to know. But there’s more than that at play—I want her to know me. I want to tell her because I’m falling in love with her.
When you fall for someone, you don’t want iron walls and steel barriers. You want there to be bright windows and wide-open doors. For better or for worse, this is who I am. I can’t hide it any longer.
“Daniel, I’m so sorry to hear that,” she says, her voice full of emotion, her eyes full of sympathy.
But there’s no pity in them.
Good.
I don’t want pity. But is that what she’ll feel for me when she learns the rest of the story?
Time to find out.
I grip the railing, my knuckles going white as I curl my fingers around it. I will tell her the rest. I can say this. I stare out at the water, then rip off the Band-Aid of truth.
“They were murdered in our home,” I say, turning to her because I don’t want to say it to the river. I want to say it to the person I’m falling madly in love with.
Love is such a dangerous thing. Love drives people insane.
It makes them mad. That’s what I’ve always believed, until I felt it for the first time with her over these last few days.
Maybe, just maybe, love isn’t as dangerous as I’ve contended.
Maybe love is safe. Maybe love can make it okay to utter unspeakable truths.
That’s all I want. I want her to know who I am. Why I am. “He was my violin teacher.”
The look that crosses her green eyes is one of sheer horror.
“That’s terrible,” she whispers. “And I know that’s an awful understatement. And there’s nothing I could say that will give it the weight it deserves, but that’s terrible.”
She doesn’t know the half of it, but I’m about to tell her.
My God, this is so fucking hard, but it’s also so incredibly necessary.
I reach down deep inside myself and test out the words for the first time in ages.
“I asked them to hire him for me. I tracked him down. He was the best in the country. He had been my teacher for the last three years before he killed them. A crime of passion.”
“How?” she asks carefully.
“He fell in love with my mother. It was sort of obvious to everyone. We thought it was a crush.” Like it was yesterday, I remember the jokes.
William has a crush on your mother, my dad would say.
My mother would laugh it off. He hardly has a crush on me.
I’d chime in too. He must have a crush on her because she makes him tea and biscuits every time he comes over.
“That was it. A silly crush from a man twenty years younger than my mother. A mere twenty-five-year-old. Wide-eyed, awkward, and obsessed with music like I was,” I tell her, keeping my tone even, controlled.
“A great teacher. He taught me how to become better, more nuanced, more precise. He taught me how to find emotion in the music.” I close my eyes briefly, squeezing them.
When I open them, Scarlett’s gaze stays locked on mine.
Her focus is intense and reassuring too.
Searching for more words, I come up short. She reaches for my hand, threads her fingers through mine, then runs her thumb over the top of my hand. She says nothing. She simply waits.
The river of Scarlett.
I begin the tale of blood.
“One night, he came over for dinner,” I say, taking my time with each word.
It was a night I will never forget. A night that still blazes with cruel clarity.
“He sat at the dinner table with us. We had chicken, a green salad, and asparagus.” I push out a forced laugh.
“Such a simple meal. Some wine too, of course, for the adults.” I swallow past a painful, horrible lump in my throat.
“We were celebrating. A concert in Vienna.”
Understanding flickers in her eyes. “Was that when you played Adagio for Strings?”
I nod, my heart thundering toward her because she remembers the music, the night. “We were celebrating. And he said that he forgot to pick up the cake at the bakery around the corner from our house.” I wince, bring my hand to my forehead, and drag it down my face, drawing a deep breath.
An image of William, his horn-rimmed glasses, his baby face, his simple but awkward laugh, taunts me. His words too. The last ones I heard from him before he changed my life.
I forgot the cake.
Another picture flickers in front of me. My mother flashing her warm smile, asking me to go fetch the dessert. “My mother said, ‘Daniel, why don’t you run down the street and grab it for William?’”
Scarlett winces when she hears his name. “And you went to get the cake,” she says, filling in the pieces, helping me as the tale turns bleaker and more grueling to tell.
I see it all unfolding.
The walk, the bakery, the familiar, jolly woman behind the counter who knew me by name. Who handed me the cake, saying, “For you, Daniel. Our superstar.”
I thanked her, turned around, and returned home, carrying the cake.
“A simple chocolate cake. That and me—that was all he needed to commit the crime.”
“You were only seventeen,” Scarlett says gently, her thumb still rubbing the top of my hand. “You were so young.”
I grit my teeth, staving off my emotions. “I was old enough to know better.”
“No, you weren’t. He was your teacher. You trusted him. Your parents trusted him,” she says softly. “You had no way of knowing.”
I soldier on, hell-bent on finishing, needing her to know.
“I went back to my house, unlocked the door, and called out to Mum and Dad. It was eerily quiet. No one made a sound. All I heard was a gasping coming from the other room.” The entire tableau of horror slams back into me.
“I walked into the kitchen, the hair on my arms standing on end, dread filling my whole body. My blood turned cold as the gasping voice croaked, ‘Help me.’”
Her grip on my hand tightens, her eyes fluttering closed for a second before they open again, and she asks, “Was it your mother or your father?”
I press my lips together, draw a fueling breath, and shake my head. “It was William. He was the only one still alive. He’d stabbed them both with a kitchen knife. And then he’d turned it on himself and sliced his own neck.”
Scarlett’s entire body nearly doubles over, but she straightens quickly, clasping her hand to her mouth, gasping. “Oh my God.”
“He lived,” I say coldly. “He survived. I called the ambulance right away. They came quickly. They found me in the kitchen, covered in blood, crying over my parents’ bodies. And William, half alive.”
Her eyes flash with complete understanding, in all its awfulness. “The medics took him to the hospital and he lived?” she asks, like she needs to be sure of that one terrible fact.
“He survived the knife wounds to his own neck. My parents didn’t,” I spit out, the bile rising in me, thick and black. “I wish the bastard had died, Scarlett. Every day, I wish he had died.”
She takes my other hand, holding both of them, her voice fierce. “Of course you do. Of course you’d feel that way.”
“But he didn’t die,” I hiss. “He lived, and he went to trial. A year and a half later. I kept playing music—it was my balm, my salve. It was the only thing that didn’t hurt.
And then the trial began. But the trouble was, the case was high-profile.
Because of me. Parents of noted young concert violinist Daniel Culpepper. ”
It’s the first time I’ve ever used my birth name with her, and she connects the dots, saying gently, “You changed your name after.”
“I did. I didn’t want to be associated with my past self. With who I was before. Because that person led to my parents’ murder, and to their killer’s mistrial.”
“How so?” It comes out haunted.
“Turned out the jury was chosen improperly. They watched the news. They read the papers. When the judge found out, he declared a mistrial,” I say, tension radiating in my bones.
“The man killed my family with their own kitchen knife and got a second chance when he bungled stabbing himself, then a third with the luck of a mistrial.”
Her eyes well with tears. Righteous ones. Tears of fury. Tears of How the hell could they? “That’s when you punched the wall,” she says, putting all the pieces together. “You said you punched it when you got some news about your parents’ deaths. That was the news, right?”
“Yes,” I bite out. “I was heading to university on a music scholarship, determined to honor their memory, their support. And when I heard, I lost it; I just fucking lost it. I slammed my fist into a wall, and I lost the other thing I loved the most.”
I close my eyes, having done it, having said the hardest things I’ve ever had to say.
I sway lightly on the bridge, right into her arms.
And it’s as if she catches me.
Or maybe we catch each other.
I wrap my arms around her, drag her close, and clasp her against me like I don’t ever want to let her go.
That’s the trouble.
“Was there another trial?”
I nod against her. “Yes. Guilty. He’s in prison for life.”
“Thank God,” she whispers against my hair.
But the damage had already been done.