Chapter 23
Dixie
I sank my head into my hands. “What the freak is wrong with me? I can’t be jumpy at every person who talks to me.”
Lovelyn linked her arm through mine and hugged it. “You can be whatever you need to be. No one here is judging.”
The other women echoed her words.
At some point, I’d find Molly and apologise for being a weirdo, but right now, with the company of women and a taste of a cocktail, I owed them an explanation.
Or I just wanted them to understand.
Cassie had come to collect me a few minutes after Tyler left, during which time I’d recovered.
That cry had done some good to my system.
Cleared my head. She’d escorted me across the hall, blowing a kiss to her boyfriend who stood guard, then I’d had the loveliest greeting from the other women.
Genevieve had hugged me, and Everly had laughed when I’d complimented her boobs.
When we’d first met, I’d done the same, and the girls were banging now she was pregnant.
Mila and Lovelyn had me sit between them, cosy and warm.
It made me wonder how I’d felt so alone when so many cared about me. I wouldn’t waste the chance this time around.
I squeezed Lovelyn back, took a deep drink of the coffee cocktail, then sat up straight, a decision made. “Do you all know what happened to me? Before I ran?”
Five faces watched mine. I had to be brave.
“A client tried to rape me. One man with his two friends. I was already a mess, but it pushed me over the edge of reason, and I was outta there, no looking back.” The telling was easier now I’d done it once.
Which felt wildly unfair, considering it was the kind of thing you should never have to practice saying.
Cassie’s eyes showed her pain. “Oh, Dixie. I guessed it was bad, but fuck. Then that’s why Tyler took Sullivan.”
She hadn’t asked it as a question, but I nodded to confirm the name of that particular devil. “I told Tyler, and he handled it on my behalf.”
Her lips pressed together in anger. “If Sullivan wasn’t under lock and key already, I’d string him up by his balls.”
“I’d help.” Mila said it like she already had gloves.
The others repeated the same, then took turns in saying kind things. How strong I was. How awful the experience must have been. Everly and Lovelyn both wiped away tears. My sister hugged me.
Genevieve took a deep breath. “On Arran’s behalf, and mine, I’m so fucking sorry. That should never happen here. He knew from Manny that security fucked up that night, and that Shade had caged the guard in question, but he didn’t know the details.”
Because Tyler had kept my secrets. I’d never doubted him, but that cemented him as my man in my broken little heart. “You can tell Arran. If it helps another woman get the protection she needs, I want him to know.”
My bravery just kept going. I spread my hands, feeling oddly like I was in a bubble of safety.
Nothing could touch me here. “It was traumatising, not gonna lie, but I’m working through it.
I won’t let those men stop me from living.
And definitely not from joining in with your detective work, if that’s cool? ” I peeked around at them.
A chorus of ‘hell yeses’ was my answer.
Warmth filled me up from my cute heels to my high ponytail. Possibly the alcohol helped.
To catch me up, Cassie gave an update of what the skeleton girls had uncovered. Relevant because Presley, who might be discovered tonight by Tyler’s team, could be a murderer.
He’d been into skateboards and video games when I last saw him. But the real gateway drug for crime wasn’t gaming—it was being a Marchant.
Of the two women who had been killed, the first, Esther, had entered a sex auction, as had Mila, which was wild to hear.
The assumption was Esther’s unidentified buyer killed her, but that was a reach as she’d later been seen picking up another auction girl, Becky.
Becky had done a runner, so that was a dead end.
Karla, who I couldn’t stop remembering as kind of a bitch, God rest her, had come to Deadwater for Kane. The nerve of the woman. She’d known who he was when he came to Heaven, the club we’d both worked in. She’d told me he was a bad guy. It had been part of why I’d bolted.
As we talked, it was only too obvious how I’d been hurt in a similar way to the dead women. It had been on my mind since Mila told me my record was missing from the Marchant family vault. More, it brought back the questions Tyler had about my list of all those I thought might be hunting me.
I couldn’t deny it felt like a pattern.
I turned to Cassie. “Last year, you handled the Deadwater serial killer.”
Her mouth turned down. “I wanted to talk to ye about that. I was so sure ye were their victim.”
“But it’s possible I wasn’t, right?”
She shoved her fingers into her black curls, pushing them off her face in clear frustration.
“I’ve racked my mind over exactly what happened.
I said your name alongside the other women’s when I read out my death sentence.
All badass and stuck on bloodlust. I took vengeance for ye.
But I could’ve been wrong.” She held my gaze. “I’m sorry.”
“Aw, hun. Don’t apologise. You did that for me, and that means the world when I didn’t have anyone else.”
Cassie’s gaze turned curious. “Now you have Tyler.”
“I do. He’s amazing.”
Something softened in her gaze. A degree of the hostility she’d carried around him easing up. “I’m glad.”
I was, too. I also trusted him enough now to explain everything he’d asked to know about what I remembered of that night.
Conversation in the room continued, Genevieve and Everly talking with Lovelyn about an update to the police activity.
I rifled through the papers on the table. One was a schedule, the number three drawn in the corner.
I picked it up. “What’s this?”
Mila did that same cute nose wrinkle that I was quickly learning showed her discomfort. “The solicitor’s calendar for all the Marchant business. We don’t need to pay attention to that.”
I traced a finger from one date to the next. The three referred to the number of days until the vote on the family business. There was a will reading alongside that.
“It’s out of date anyway,” she added.
Cassie snorted indelicately. “Yeah, considering Sullivan signed his own death warrant and took himself out of the equation.”
I looked between them. “Meaning?”
Mila bit her lip and glanced away.
I touched her arm. “Please? I want to know.”
“The vote can’t happen. Sullivan Property Solutions can’t provide their voter, and the rules are that they only have one nominated person, so the solicitors are in freefall. They don’t have a backup for the failed backup plan. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing for you to be concerned about.”
There was tension in her tone. She was worried about scaring me. It was fine. The wind-up of the company was far from my radar. If I kept that in mind, I felt completely safe from the whole saga.
I carefully set the calendar sheet down.
Mila followed the movement. “Do you know how the trusted companies started, if that was operating when you were there?”
I nodded, and Lovelyn moved in to listen.
“Our grandfather, Austin, had a health scare which put him in hospital for a week. His heart.” I touched my chest.
Mila paled but nodded. “That’s what took his life in the end. He drank pretty much every night and ignored the doctors telling him to stop.”
“My enduring memory is of him with a glass of whisky in his hand, or rum, if he was down on the docks and talking to ships’ captains.”
She gave a soft, sad laugh. “Same. I can’t even smell spirits without summoning his office.”
“When he came out of hospital, he had the solicitors around for meetings, then told me how he had put measures in place in case anything happened to him. It was then he told me I had siblings.” I swallowed a hit of sadness.
“The news didn’t sting at that point. I was excited.
It was only later that I resented how he’d told me for his purposes, not mine.
Anyway, he explained his close working relationship with those business owners.
All four agreed to help each other in the same way if the worst happened.
They already had joint ventures, so it made sense for them to support each other. I guess they didn’t anticipate this.”
Cassie cocked her head. “So he gave five votes to family, and one vote to be shared among his friends should a family member abstain and there be a tie?”
I nodded, because that was pretty much it.
“If ye want it over, we can just kidnap another trusted company person. Make the vote even again? That way the company can just fold and die.”
Cassie said it the way other people suggested ordering a takeaway, but Mila burst out in a sob and rushed from the room.
The rest of us stared after her.
Cassie stood. “Ah fuck. I’ll go after her.”
I climbed to my feet. “Let me?”
In Cassie’s guest bathroom, Mila perched on the side of the tub, her fair hair falling over her face.
She gave me a shaky smile and wiped her eyes with the edge of her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m like this. For so long, I fought to get the company up and running again. It isn’t easy to just flip that switch to hating it all, even if I hate what it hid.”
“I get it. The business was your life, right?” I settled next to her, shoulder to shoulder.
“It was. I pride myself on being strong, but I’m cracking under the pressure.
All that self-worth I had from being part of Marchant Haulage is gone, and now it makes me sick.
Sick for all the things that were going on under my nose.
Then selfishly, because people are out there forming the worst opinions of me because they think I’m guilty by association. ”
She shook her head, cheeks shining. “I’ve been interviewed twice by the police, both times voluntarily.
I gave them everything I knew, which isn’t much.
From what I can tell, there’s nothing to be found in the regular business operations, which have been gone over by a forensic accountant.
And I should know, because I was all over that, too.
Even before I left university, I was an expert in the contracts and shipping routes.
Except I wasn’t. I was completely blind. ”
She lifted her head to me. “I didn’t know anything. Every revelation has been the worst kind of shock, and I accepted it badly.”
“I know, sis. I believe you.”
She managed a single bob of her head, as if my acceptance was important to her. Mila palmed her phone, unlocking it. Onscreen, a map displayed with a green blinking dot, the location down near the lakes.
Mila held it up. “They’re almost there.”
I goggled. “You’re tracking them?”
“Only Convict. Both of us feel safer if we know where the other is at all times. I just needed that reassurance of seeing him moving.”
I took a deep breath, my mind wandering to a time where I might not know where Tyler was. I didn’t like the feeling. I shook it off and returned to the moment. Shit was about to go down.
“If the Marchant-Smythes are there, and they really are the ones who carried out all the bad stuff, we need to hand them over to the police. It’s the only way to clear your name, right?”
Mila nodded. “I think so. We already told the cops about the family vault, and they brought in many Marchants for questioning. But most are elderly now, and a couple have even died. No headlines have sprung up about them. Lovelyn has a contact with the police. We should talk to her.”
We both stood, but Mila paused me at the bathroom door. “The reason you left, the reason why you didn’t stay on as the heiress they made me into, it was really bad, wasn’t it?”
I managed a nod. A rush of explanation wanted out of my mouth. I kept it in, only managing, “Enough to make a fourteen-year-old homeless and dependent on my looks to survive.”
“I hate that.”
I had, too.
She swallowed. “Was it at our grandfather’s hand?”
At least in that, I could make her feel better. “No, it wasn’t.”
Mila’s relief brought tears to my eyes again.
Cassie called from the living room. “They’ve reached the compound.”
Perhaps that was something else I could tack on to my explanation to Tyler. If I could say the words that condemned me a lifetime ago.