33. Thirty-Three #4
His body shook as he said, “Jack said we were being audited, HA, audited. After everything that happened on Parent’s Day, I knew it was bullshit. I just knew. So, when he asked me to dig, I fucking dug. I thought for sure I’d find something on that fucking Daniel guy.”
I lurched. The whole room spun. Like a robot I asked, “What Daniel guy?’
“On Parent’s Day. Jack. Cole and I caught him on a satellite phone talking to some guy he kept calling Daniel. He said, ‘they couldn’t afford another Holly.’”
My feet felt like they sank through the floor. Flashes of blonde pigtails behind a corner, screams of terror, my mother repeating my father’s name in lovesick tones over the dinner table, all of it flashed through my memory.
“But there’s no record of a Daniel. No accounts in his name.” Brennon explained to Toni.
“No. There wouldn’t be.” I finally dug the answer from the pit of my stomach, “Because Daniel Rothberg,” I stressed my father’s name, “Is far too clever for that.”
For a second, around us, there was silence, our heartbeats, and not much more. All three of us searching internally for some kind of understanding. Grasping at every straw, every other possible alternative that our childish psyches had built for why or how we’d all ended up here at Agonde.
It was Toni who finally whispered, “Holy shit.”
And that broke the silence. I grabbed the files from the floor and flipped them to Brennon, “Are there any records from the summer we turned ten?!”
He dropped his mouse, “I mean, yes, of course, but they aren’t digital. They’re probably in there somewhere,” he pointed back to the loose paperwork that was now even more spread out than it had been before we all got distracted.
I dove in, and so did they, searching through every loose sheet of paper or old receipt until my fingers traced down one from Rachel’s file.
A transaction record. One that was dated five days after Rachel had vanished.
A sum of $40,000 Canadian dollars. Deposited by BHW international with an addendum typed at the bottom of the transfer, “Evgeny accepts.”
To Toni, to Brennon, to anyone else, that name would have meant nothing.
I might not know the ins and outs of my father’s business; I’d purposely kept myself ignorant.
I was the fucking ostrich shoving his head in the sand all this goddamn time.
But I did know the name Evgeny Sidorov. It had been angrily repeated over the dinner table, screamed down the end of a phone, or muttered before a crystal whisky glass was shattered over our fireplace too many times for me to ever forget.
I screamed, “FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKK!”
Halfway through my heart tearing in two, Cole burst through the office door.
“What the fuck?”
“Cole?!” Toni and Brennon screeched one after the other.
“I- I- I heard screaming.” Both Brennon and Toni looked to me. I had now slumped back against the wall behind me.
“I came to help,” Cole tried again to justify his presence.
“You came to help? Who? Yourself?” Toni bit out at him. A small flicker of pride flamed to life inside me. My wild girl, I missed her snark. I’d been fighting to help her get it back. Cole, it seemed, brought it out naturally.
He also had the decency to look ashamed of himself.
“Please,” he said in a smaller voice than I’d ever heard from Cole Michaels, “I want to help.”
“You want to help? With Mitchell?” Brennon asked, the note of hope in his voice stabbed at me, because unlike Toni and I, I knew, he still saw a chance for Cole to be part of this. Part of us.
From the door frame, Cole nodded furiously. I sucked in my breath and bit back a snarl. Although it would have been satisfying to unleash my rage at Cole. We needed his help. And really, it was my father who deserved to bear the brunt of my venom.
After a nod of encouragement from Bren, I rounded on him with a sharp “Fine. Then here’s the plan…”
After outlining exactly how tomorrow needed to go, checking and cross-checking that we all understood, I walked Cole to the office door, and shoved him out on to the deck, closing Nettie and Brennon in the office behind me.
“Just so we understand each other, Michaels, I don’t forgive you. Not for Toni or any of it.”
“I know that,” He breathed, looking at me, his chocolate eyes melting under the heat of my heavy stare.
“Good. Now get out of here.”
I pointed him towards the darkness. I didn’t want to look at him anymore. His guilt, his sadness, was the last fucking thing I needed to carry.
“Tomorrow, then,” he said as he took his first step.
I wrenched his cotton t-shirt in my fist, stopping him from going further.
“Tomorrow. And Cole, I swear, if you fuck us over… I’ll kill you.” I ground out in a low hiss. He didn’t shrug me off, he just took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a beat.
“I know, Xavier. And I won’t stop you. If we can’t save those kids, I might even do it myself.”
Never, not in five years, since that morning he ripped my goddamn heart out, had I seen Cole look so grim. I would never forgive him for what he did. But for the first time, I realized as I watched him walk away, his whole body sagging under the weight of it, he didn’t forgive himself either.