Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
FORD
Edgar glowered at us all but didn’t move to leave. Harvey crossed his arms over his chest as if hugging himself and shook his head in a slow, sad swing.
“I didn’t know,” he began. “You have to understand—I didn’t know. Not until Prentice— I’m so sorry, boys. Paige.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, his eyes locked on the concrete at the bottom of the hole. “It’s Sarah buried down there. Sarah and Paul Williams.”
A whimper came from Paige’s throat. She covered her mouth with her hand to stop the pained sound.
I slid an arm around her, holding her close—not sure if I was supporting her or using her to hold myself up as my knees turned to water.
My eyes dropped to the misshapen lumps of concrete.
They looked like bodies, sure, but there were no features, no distinct limbs visible.
They could have been tree branches, or a weird arrangement of trash with concrete dumped on top.
But Harvey said no. That was my mother under there. Paige’s father.
“How? How could— I don’t—” I couldn’t get the words out.
“Harvey,” Griffen growled, his voice rough and abrupt, “you’d better keep talking.”
“I went to Prentice,” Harvey said, his eyes closed as if shutting out the present so he could see the past. “The day he died. There was a trust Sarah left you boys. They’d put it together when Ford was born.
It was long past the time it should have been released to you, but we needed Sarah’s signature.
I’d always thought Prentice knew where she’d gone, but he laughed and said he’d forgotten about it.
He’d have her declared dead—then we wouldn’t need her to sign. ”
Harvey let his eyes open, his gaze lost and pained.
“I couldn’t understand the laugh, his ease with the idea of Sarah being dead.
For so many years after she left, he wouldn’t let anyone speak her name, and now he was laughing?
I reminded him I couldn’t have her declared dead when she was out there somewhere.
Prentice said, ‘She isn’t anywhere. She’s been gone a long time.
’ I didn’t—” Harvey shook his head, his eyes fixed on the bodies under the concrete.
“I didn’t understand. I should have. I should have known.
This was Prentice, after all. But beyond everything else, he was my friend.
And I didn’t want to think he could have done—” Harvey shook his head again.
He drew in a long breath that hitched as he exhaled.
“What did you think he did?” Hope prompted, looking to her uncle to see if Edgar was surprised by any of these revelations. He was clearly annoyed. Nervous, maybe, but not surprised.
I found I wasn’t surprised either. Edgar had always kept Prentice’s secrets.
“I asked what he was talking about,” Harvey went on.
“And he told me. Said so much time had gone by that it hardly mattered. That he’d caught them—Sarah and Paul—that he’d known she was up to something with someone, and finally he caught them.
And then he smiled at me. He said no one betrayed him.
Not a business partner. Not a friend. Sure, as fucking hell, not a wife.
She thought she could have an affair and send her lover away, and come back to his bed like nothing had happened.
But Prentice wouldn’t bear the insult. He shot them.
One bullet each, he said. They didn’t deserve more.
And then he dumped them in the hole in the garage floor like they were trash. ” Harvey’s voice caught.
“He killed both of them?” Paige asked, breathless. “He shot them?”
Harvey nodded. “They weren’t leaving you,” he said, sounding desperate for us to understand.
“Prentice overheard everything the day he caught them. They’d decided they couldn’t be together.
They couldn’t leave their children. They’d agreed they loved each other, but they’d realized they were spinning a fairy tale of running off together.
So, they met that one last time to say goodbye. And their luck ran out.”
“Why did he kill them?” Paige asked, tears spilling down her cheeks. “It was over. What was the point?”
I tightened my arm around her, my own vision blurring as the pointlessness of it struck me.
I’d lived my entire life without the mother who’d loved me because fucking Prentice couldn’t accept the ding to his ego.
“She’d betrayed him,” I answered. I hadn’t known my mother beyond those two short years, but I sure as hell had known my father.
“Like he told Harvey, he didn’t tolerate betrayal. ”
“Yes,” Harvey agreed. “It didn’t matter to him that they were calling it off, that they’d never see each other again. She betrayed him, and they both had to pay.”
Paige stiffened, her eyes narrowing on Harvey. “Did you know they were having an affair? Did she confide in you?”
“No, I—” Harvey’s eyes skipped around the room, bouncing off Edgar, off Griffen, skittering around Hawk, until they landed on me.
And I saw. I knew.
“You,” I said. “You killed him, that day, after he confessed.”
Harvey’s breath caught in a sob. “I loved her,” he said. “Sarah. God, I loved her so much. She never knew, but I loved her.”
I tore my eyes from Harvey to glance at Edgar, who had a hand to his face, shaking his head. Edgar fucking knew everything. If he wasn’t such a goddamn vault with the secrets, we might have known all of it so much earlier.
“And you let me go to prison for a year?” I demanded.
“I’m sorry, Ford,” Harvey said. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t mean to kill your father.”
“It seems like you did,” Griffen said, “because—I’m trying to picture this—you’re in his office, he confesses he murdered our mother and Paige’s father, and you, what? You were packing a weapon for a simple business meeting with an old friend?”
Harvey shook his head, swinging it from side to side like a bobblehead.
“I…I broke. I walked out of his office, went to my car, got my handgun from my glove compartment, and went back in. He looked up at me and said, ‘You’re still here?’ and I shot him.
I must have dropped the gun since Haywood had it later.
I only remember that I walked out and drove away.
No one was around—no staff in the Manor, no security, no sign I was ever there—and I went home. ”
Harvey’s knees gave out in a slow slide that brought him to kneel at the side of my mother’s grave.
“I couldn’t make sense of it all,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “You don’t understand. I loved Sarah so much. She was so perfect, so beautiful and kind. She deserved so much better than your father.”
“And you two never—” Hope asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No!” Harvey said in a shout. “Never. I never thought she would have, until—” He looked to Paige.
“Until your father. And then—God, a part of me hated her when I suspected she’d found someone else.
But I knew it could never be me. I just wanted her to be happy.
All these years, thinking she’d run off with him, that the woman I loved had abandoned her sons, that she wasn’t the person I thought she was.
He tarnished my memory of her when it was all I had.
And then to learn that she never left you,” he said, his eyes on Griffen and then me, his voice breaking.
“She didn’t leave. He took her. He took her from us.
Didn’t even give her a proper burial. All these years she’s been here, and he laughed, he fucking laughed.
And I killed him for it.” His eyes locked on mine. “I’m sorry, Ford. I’m so sorry.”
I nodded, not sure I knew what to feel. I had my answers.
It should have been satisfying to know that Harvey was the one who’d shot Prentice, but the why of it rocked my reality.
He’d avenged my mother out of love, but then had let me hang for it.
Was I angry, given how much I’d realized about atoning for my other sins?
I wasn’t sure I was. I might be weirdly grateful to Harvey for what he’d done.
“You should have kept your mouth shut, Harvey,” Edgar growled. “We got this one out of prison,” he said, tilting his head in my direction. “Everything was fine.”
“Cole Haywood got me out of prison,” I reminded him. “Not you. And he only did it so he’d have an easier shot at killing me.”
Edgar ignored me, focused on Harvey. “Now they’re going to call West, and you’ll go to jail. For what? It’s not going to bring Prentice back. It can’t do anything for Sarah or Paul.”
Harvey just shook his head, his eyes glued on the hole in the garage floor, weeping silently.
I should have been filled with rage. This man had killed my father and, with his silence, had sent me to prison. And yet, watching his grief, feeling my own at the sight of the bodies beneath the concrete, vengeance on Harvey was the last thing on my mind.
I wrapped my arms around Paige, rocking her.
“They weren’t going to leave us,” she said into my shirt.
I tightened my arms, my throat thick with tears I couldn’t shed. My mother hadn’t left us. There’d been no abandonment. She hadn’t run off to Belize with her lover. She’d been murdered by my father.
My eyes lifted to Harvey again, his grief etched into his face, and I understood.
Not the part about letting me rot in prison, but shooting Prentice?
Yeah, I got that. I could picture it in my head: Prentice’s callous laughter as Harvey’s heart shattered.
He’d spent decades following my father’s orders, even when it pinched his conscience, only to find out the woman he’d loved, the woman he’d spent years disappointed in, had her life stolen.
I understood.
“We need to call West,” Griffen said, his eyes locked on Edgar.
“No,” Edgar said. “You’ll destroy your father’s legacy and make a spectacle of your family. You could bring down Sawyer Enterprises.”
“Does it always come down to business, Uncle Edgar?” Hope asked quietly.
Edgar leveled his gaze on Hope, his eyes going soft. “Not always. You know that.”
“Is this what you had on Prentice? Is this how you got him to change his will?” Hope asked quietly.
I wasn’t sure I understood the question, but I saw that Edgar and Griffen did.
“Using the secret brought some good in the world, Hope,” Edgar answered, and Hope nodded, closing her eyes for a long moment as Griffen pulled her close, murmuring something in her ear.
They’d gotten married the day Prentice’s will was read. I knew Griffen had come to town planning to turn right around and leave. Instead, he’d married Hope. Because of something in the will? Something Edgar had strong-armed Prentice into adding?
“That doesn’t make it right, and you know it,” Hope chastised.
“No more cover-ups,” I said, the words rough as I forced them through my tight throat. I cleared it and said it again. “We’re done with that. They deserve a proper burial.”
As I said the words, Paige jerked in my arms, a sob tearing through her. I held her closer, rocking her from side to side.
“We’ll take care of it,” I whispered to her. “We’ll put them together, somewhere we can see them.”
She nodded against my chest. “They didn’t leave us. I’ve been so angry, but they weren’t going to leave. They gave up what they wanted most.” Another sob wrenched her. “And he killed them anyway,” she choked out. “He deserved what Harvey did.”
I agreed. Even if the aftermath meant I spent a year in prison, everyone thinking I was a murderer. In the end, Prentice had gotten what he deserved.
Hawk and Eli straightened at the same second, both of them looking at their phones.
“Incoming,” Eli said, his gaze sweeping the garage. “Fuck. We have too many civilians. We’ve got to get them secured.”
“No time,” Hawk said. “Fuck.” His gaze flicked to the hole in the concrete and to the door of the garage. “Haywood’s on his way. Ford, you’re up.”
Hawk turned and shared a glance with Griffen, who scooped Hope up, tossed her over his shoulder, and strode for the door into the Manor, Edgar tight on their heels.
Hawk’s gaze slid to Paige, who looked up at me, her eyes shining with determination. “I’m not going anywhere.”