Chapter 35 #2
“It was Roman,” he said. “He made the call. Roman arranged it after my mom told him what was going on. He had your father killed. Vinnie and I found out after it happened. We went along with it—I’m not saying we were guiltless—but we aren’t responsible.”
“I saw the memo Vinnie wrote to your dad. It said the plan was yours.”
“He was talking about my original plan, which didn’t include anyone dying. It was kept because it made me look guilty. They knew I had these recordings. They wanted to use the memo as leverage so I’d never do anything with these.” He shook his head and looked down at the tapes. “I never did.”
Caleb finally turned his eyes to Kelly’s pale face. “I didn’t kill your father.”
She made a kind of choking sound and stumbled backward.
Ridiculously, his instinct was still to reach out and help her.
But she jerked away from his outstretched hand and staggered back several more steps.
Then she whirled around as if something had possessed her and ran out of the office.
He followed her instinctively, without thinking it through. Their conversation wasn’t over yet. Their business wasn’t finished.
She’d still utterly betrayed him, and she wasn’t going to get away from him so easily.
She was fast—faster than he would have expected—and she was moving at a dead run, like she was being chased by demons. She knew her way through his house and grounds. He had to sprint to keep up with her, and even so he didn’t catch her until she’d gotten outside and was halfway across the lawn.
He grabbed her arm and whirled her around, trying to make her stop, and she pushed out at him with her free hand.
He huffed from the impact, but he didn’t let go. The force of the momentum caused both of them to tumble to the cool grass in a tangle of limbs and emotion.
She kept struggling to get away from him, but he was tired—tired of all of this—and held her still with his weight.
“Damn it, Caleb,” she gasped, almost sobbing in her attempt to get away. “Are you supposed to be vindicated by this? You still knew about my father’s death and did nothing. You did nothing .”
“I know it. I know it.” His voice was rough and uncontrolled, exactly as he was feeling.
Her body was soft and strong and shaking, and his body knew hers as well as his own.
He held on to her, couldn’t let her go. “But you were wrong about me, so don’t act so victimized and self-righteous.
Think about what you did yourself. You used me.
You betrayed me in the deepest possible way.
And then you went and fucked some other?—”
“I didn’t fuck him,” she burst out, tears streaming from her eyes.
She’d stopped struggling and lay on the grass beneath him, like she’d finally, finally broken.
“I didn’t fuck him. I wanted to do it. To you.
You would have deserved it, but I… I couldn’t.
That’s what you’ve turned me into. I should hate you.
I always should have hated you, and yet you made me…
you made me love you anyway. How the hell do you think that makes me feel? ”
His heart exploded at her words, disintegrated completely, and this time it didn’t get put back together. “And why the fuck should I believe anything you tell me now, after all the lies you’ve told me?”
“You told me lies too. This last week, you knew. You knew . You knew who I was and didn’t let on.
You pretended…” As she spit the words out, she seemed to put the pieces together.
“The woods! You were trying to… You were torturing me on purpose!” She started to fight against him again, and this time he let her go.
She scrambled to her feet, almost strangling on her emotion. “You act like I’m the monster, but you did that horrible thing to me.”
“It’s no different from everything you ever did to me.
Getting me to open up. Getting me to fall for you.
When you knew all along you hated me and you were trying to prove my guilt.
You can act like an outraged virgin all you want, taken advantage of by a heartless man, but we both know who’s guiltier in this scenario.
I didn’t kill your father, but you treated me like I wasn’t even human. ”
He was revealing too much. Far too much. But he was too far gone to stop and too far gone to even care.
“Am I supposed to say I’m sorry?” She was wiping tears away as if she was angry with herself for crying them. “You can act the victim all you want, but you’re just as guilty as me.”
He remembered what she’d said the other day about feeling like she was living in a Shakespearean tragedy. It was exactly what this was. The script was laid out, the events set in motion, and no one could alter the outcome.
Whether he was Hamlet or Claudius didn’t really matter. Everyone was destroyed in the end.
Suddenly Caleb couldn’t take any more. Not without completely falling apart.
He knew what he had to do. What he always did to tighten his grip on the world.
He took a breath and pushed the tumult of feelings into a hard little ball in his chest.
“I don’t care what you do,” he said coldly after a moment, pleased when he almost sounded in control. “I’m done with this. I’m done with you . You have your answers, so do with them whatever you want. Get out of here. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
She stared at him almost blindly.
“Get out of here,” he said, his voice rougher because he was having trouble hardening himself enough, hanging on to his control.
She wiped away the last of her tears and turned away, looking back at him once over her shoulder. “I’m not the only guilty one here.”
He knew it, but it didn’t help. Nothing could rewrite this final act. From the beginning he should have seen the end.
No love. No reconciliation. No happy future. No return to order and justice.
Just an inevitable spiral into destruction.
Kelly walked away from him without another word. She walked across the lawn and around the house, the moonlight glowing on her hair, until she disappeared from his sight.
She was gone. It was over. The life he knew might already have died if she decided to go public with her evidence and testimony.
He should probably prepare, talk to lawyers, lay the groundwork, think of some kind of plan in case that happened.
She was so angry with him now that there was no reason she would hesitate to bring everything she knew out into the open.
Even without the proof of his recordings, she could do a lot of damage.
She was the daughter of the victim. She’d been only a child, kneeling next to her father, who’d bled his life away in the woods.
And Caleb had done nothing—had never done a single thing—to address that appalling injustice. He’d been rewarded with the life he now led.
He’d been young. He’d been threatened. He hadn’t seen any option that wouldn’t hurt more than it helped. He’d felt loyalty to his family, even a family willing to betray him. Maybe that was some sort of excuse.
But at the heart of it he knew he’d made the decision back then because he’d always be Caleb Marshall. Ambitious, cold, mostly heartless. All his softer, human impulses coiled in tight so no one could ever hurt him again.