Chapter 13
Kayden
Sapphire pulled another note from the box and after she read the top of the note she looked at me.
“What?” I asked.
“We were right. Frank is dying.”
“What? He’s sick?”
“According to this.” She passed me the page.
“What’s it say?” Declan asked.
I read the heading aloud. “Title: A ton of money and it ain’t worth shit. Date: Couple weeks ago. Maybe more. Hard to tell when you’re dyin.”
“Keep reading,” Sapphire said as she pulled another note from the box. “We need to get through all of these. Everyone, take one and call out anything important, especially anything that might help us find Frank or Bob.” She passed the folded notes around the table and grabbed one herself.
As I read about Frank stacking Bob’s laundered cash on his brother’s table and claiming he had no idea what to do with it, I wanted to put my fist through the wall. Frank had lectured us about honest work our whole lives. Every single day. It had all been bullshit.
I’d spent thirty-two years thinking I knew Frank Branson—the man who’d raised me, beat me, called me useless, and never once told me he was proud of me. Turned out, I hadn’t known him at all. None of us had. Somehow, that was worse than anything else I’d learned today.
“Listen to this,” I said, and read out loud: “When I googled my symptoms and figured out what I got, I reckoned I had six months to live. By the time I got my shit together and made a plan to vanish, five months had gone. I’d stocked this place with a month’s worth of food.
I’m fucked if I run out, ‘cause I can’t go outside.
Last thing I need is to run into one of Bob’s men. ”
“So, he’d been planning this for months,” Sapphire said, frowning at her own page.
“Maybe he did leave the house at some point,” Xavier said. “Didn’t Lyle say Bob sent the Henderson brothers to William’s house? That could be how Bob found out where he was hiding.”
Sapphire nodded and jotted something down in her notepad.
“But why didn’t Bob go himself?” Charlie asked.
“Because Bob doesn’t do his own dirty work,” I said. “Keep reading.”
“Does anyone remember Ingrid?” Cassidy said, not looking up from her page.
I frowned. “Frank’s girlfriend after Mom left?”
“Yeah. Listen to this.” Cassidy kept reading in silence for a moment.
“Frank goes on about Ingrid doing the books and then—this is genuinely gross—how they were having an affair while he was still with Mom.” She shook her head.
“There’s stuff about you in here, too, Dec.
I’ll pass it to you in a sec. But listen to this. ” She lifted the page.
“She told me once she hadn’t meant for it to get serious.
Said she’d only ever planned on doin my books, not doin me.
” Cassidy stuck out her tongue and shuddered.
“I told her plans are for people who don’t know what they want.
Then all that bullshit happened with Edith.
When I found her with that bastard in my shed—read my other note if you’ve forgotten—I did what needed to be done.
Nobody screws my wife and lives to talk about it. ”
“Jesus, did Frank just admit to murder?” Charlie said.
“Maybe,” Cassidy said, “‘cause listen. After I handled that prick, I needed Ingrid’s help to clean up the mess. She didn’t scream.
Didn’t faint. Didn’t run to the police. She went pale as milk and threw up twice, but she stayed.
She understood the need for secrets. After all, we’d been living one for months.
After Edith vanished, Ingrid moved into my bed proper.
Not because I dragged her there. Because that’s where she’d been headed all along. ”
Cassidy put the page down. “Fucking creep.”
“Mom had an affair?” I said.
“Christ. Can this get any worse?” Declan’s voice was flat and tight.
I banged my fist on the table once. “What the hell went on in this place?”
“Let’s find that other note he’s referring to,” Mitch said. “Maybe we can finally find out what actually happened to Mom.”
“Nothing on this one,” Bella said, folding the note up. “Can I swap?”
Sapphire pulled another note from the box, unfolded it, read the heading, and her expression shifted in a way that made my neck hair stand on end. “What?” I asked.
She handed it to me. “This one’s about you.”
The title stopped me cold.
Kayden was always a ratbag.
“Great start,” I muttered, and kept reading.
The first section was Frank doing what Frank had always done, listing my failures like he was rattling off a supply list. Troublemaker. Bullshitter. Went off the rails after Mom left. Had to whip his ass more times than I can count.
I’d heard all of it before. To my face.
I read faster.
Frank wrote about my plan to join the army. About sitting at the dinner table and announcing it. About the look in my eye.
This was a boy plannin his escape. No way was that happenin.
I sat up. Kept reading.
So I sorted it. I called Bob.
The room noise faded out. Cassidy read something about Frank lighting a bushfire. Declan was doing something that had Bella asking him if he was okay. I felt Sapphire’s gaze on me, but I couldn’t look up.
All it took was two small reports being slipped into the right system.
My hands had started shaking somewhere in the last paragraph, and I couldn’t make them stop.
Kayden’s application was rejected before he even made it to the medical.
For fifteen years, I’d kept that fucking rejection letter. It was hard proof of everything Frank had always said about me. That I wasn’t built for anything beyond this land. That when it counted, I didn’t measure up.
And all this time I’d believed I was useless.
But it wasn’t me. Frank had called Bob, and Bob had put two fake reports into the system. Assault charge. Stolen firearms. Clean enough to disappear. Dirty enough to close the door to the only career I’d ever wanted.
Frank had looked me in the eye every day for fifteen years and let me believe I’d failed.
“Kayden,” Sapphire whispered.
Rage hit me like one of Frank’s gut punches.
“Hey.” Sapphire’s hand covered my wrist.
“What the fuck!” I slammed my fist on the table. Plates jumped. Everyone looked up.
“What?” multiple voices asked at once.
“Frank sabotaged my army application.” I stood so fast the chair slammed over, hitting the floor like a thunderclap. “Him and Bob. They put fake crime reports into the system. Assault charge. Stolen firearms. They fucking made shit up.” I grabbed the note and read the last lines aloud.
“You boys might read this and think what I did was cruel. Maybe it was. But a man’s job is protectin what belongs to him, and Kayden Branson belongs on this land whether he likes it or not.”
I slammed the note face down on the table and stormed out of the room.
“Kayden,” Cassidy pleaded.
“Hey, buddy, come on,” Declan said.
The night air hit me like a wall. Cool and quiet after the suffocating heat in that dining room. I walked to the far end of the verandah, gripped the railing with both hands, and yelled into the darkness. “Farkkk!”
I’d wasted fifteen years believing I wasn’t good enough, believing the army had taken one look at my application and decided I wasn’t worth the trouble. I’d built my whole life around that. Stayed on Koolaroo. Worked the land. Told myself it was where I belonged.
The screen door opened behind me.
Moments later, Sapphire stood beside me at the railing, close enough that I felt her warmth as she looked out at the dark paddocks the same way I was.
We stood like that for a while.
“This proves you’re not a failure,” she said in a breathless whisper.
“Well, I’ll never know, will I?” I growled out. “He made sure of that.”
She inched closer, nudging her shoulder against mine. “But you know now that it wasn’t you. You’re a good man, Kayden.”
“You don’t know me, Sapphire.”
“I do, Kayden. I’m probably the only person who knows the real Kayden.”
I looked at her sideways. Her gaze was on the paddock ahead. Her jaw was set, hair loose around her face in the night breeze. The same face I’d been trying to forget for ten years.
But standing next to me now, it was like no time had passed.
“We were young back then, Fire. A lot of bullshit has happened since then.”
“Yes, and you’re only just learning that some of it was not your fault.”
She turned to look at me and held my gaze for a long moment.
“Mitch said he couldn’t guarantee what he’d do if we found Frank,” I said. “He’s right. I can’t either.”
“I know,” she said.
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course, it does.” She scooped her hair behind her ear, revealing a small diamond stud in her earlobe. “But I understand.” She straightened away from the railing. “Come back inside. We still have a lot of notes to get through.”
“Great. What other bullshit are we going to find?”
“Hopefully, details of where those two bastards are hiding.”
I pushed off the railing. “After you.”
As we headed back inside, I looked at the dark country beyond the homestead fence. Frank was out there somewhere. When I got my hands on him, he was going to wish those Henderson brothers had finished the job first.