Chapter 20
Xavier
Cassidy was right. Mom hadn't revealed the truth easily. But she was just like Dominic. She’d claimed she’d wanted to escape from him and his controlling ways, yet that's exactly what she’d done to me—controlled me.
Her admission that I wasn't Dominic's son was the crack I’d needed to break free. Once Mom had realized she couldn't stop me from coming to Australia to get answers, she’d scrambled to make me understand why she’d done what she had.
"Mom didn't admit to stealing the money at first," I said. "She just fed me more lies."
"But she was okay telling you she slept with Frank." Cassidy's lips twisted with disgust.
"She said that part wasn't planned."
She let out a short laugh. "Trust me, Frank has a way of making people do things they'll spend the rest of their lives regretting."
"She said it was one night," I said. "A mistake." The word mistake had been fully fucking loaded. "I was the result of that one-night mistake."
Cassidy tilted her head, hitting me with that concerned expression again. "Maybe."
"Probably," I countered.
She held my gaze for a moment, then looked away. "Okay. So she steals the money. Then what?"
"When she kept bullshitting me, I used that photo of the suitcase you sent me and told her I'd get the answers out of Frank. That's when she finally blurted it all out."
Cassidy nodded. "I never understood why someone left that case behind."
"That was another mistake. It all started when Mom stole two hundred thousand dollars from Dominic's corporate holding account.”
“Two hundred K?” Cassidy whistled. “When you said she stole some money, I was thinking a grand, maybe two. But two hundred thousand? That’s huge. And what, she didn’t think Dominic would miss that much?”
I loved how Cassidy thought that was a lot of money. The last woman I’d dated had spent that much on a diamond-studded collar for her designer dog. That frivolous waste had started the argument that ended our six-month relationship. “That’s small change for Dominic now.”
“Whoa, so what? You’re rich?”
"Does it matter?" I met her gaze. "The way you're looking at me right now tells me you're deciding whether it should."
Cassidy's expression shifted, something flickering across her face.
"I'm not—" She stopped, then started again.
"It's just ... you show up here in your fancy clothes, talking about luxury apartments and corporate accounts like it's nothing, while I'm sitting here thinking about how we scrape by every season, hoping the cattle prices hold. "
"That's not who I am."
"Isn't it?" It didn’t seem like she was being cruel, just honest. "You might not want it to be, but you come from a different world, Xavier. One where two hundred grand is small change."
"A world I intend to leave behind." I leaned toward her. "I came here because I needed to know the truth. I'd rather be broke and know who I really am than spend another day living a lie."
She studied me for a long moment, her jaw working like she was chewing on something difficult. Pain flashed across her face, raw and unguarded, but just as quickly she locked it down again. "And what if the truth is worse than the lie?"
"Then I’ll face it head-on. I've spent my whole life being who my mother and Dominic wanted me to be. I'd rather walk away and start over than keep pretending."
Her expression shifted, and something raw and unguarded flashed in her eyes before she blinked it away.
Not pity—Cassidy didn't do pity. Recognition, or something else.
Resolve, maybe. Like my words had given her permission for something.
"I know what you mean," she said, then, after a beat, she added, “So, Dominic didn’t notice two hundred grand was missing from his bank account? "
“Oh, he did all right. What Mom didn't know was that the account she stole from was tied to the investment Hawthorne Global was making in Koolaroo." I cocked my head at Cassidy.
Her brows shot up. "Apparently …" She rolled her eyes.
"Absolutely," I added, and we shared a look that crossed a dozen boundaries, a few of which made my pulse beat faster.
"What did she need the money for anyway?"
"She planned to leave Dominic and escape to Europe—Spain, actually."
"Why Spain?" Cassidy asked.
"No idea. But when Mom traveled to Australia, she brought some gems and jewelry with her."
Cassidy sat forward, her lips parting like she wanted to say something.
When she didn't, I said, "The jewels were Dominic's family heirlooms. From his grandmother. They were priceless, according to Mom."
"But how did she think she'd get away with those thefts?"
"Mom had access to the jewelry because she managed their social calendar and wore some of them at gala balls and other stupid events.
She brought them with her to Australia and planned to blame airport security for their theft, when really, she intended to sell them and replace the stolen money before Dominic found out. "
"Wow, she's a piece of work."
"Yeah, and I'm only just getting started."
"Oh." Cassidy pushed forward to stand. "Shall I get more coffee?"
I caught her hand. "No. I need to say this."
She nodded and eased back. However, she let her hand stay in mine, and the genuine concern in her expression caught me off-guard. I'd spent my life surrounded by people who viewed empathy as weakness and emotion as ammunition. Cassidy was different. She actually cared.
I turned my gaze to the magpies still working the ground out past the burn line. That's what it had been like with Mom. Pecking and pecking until she’d given up the ugly truth. I'd seen her manipulative side my entire life, but what she'd finally revealed hadn’t just been manipulation.
It had been evil.
"When Dominic discovered that money was missing from the account, Mom panicked. She hired a charter plane to take her to Brisbane, where she planned to take an international flight out of the country and leave Dominic forever."
"A charter plane? That must be the plane wreck we told you about on Opal Ridge," Cassidy said, nodding like she was putting the pieces together.
"Yeah."
"So the skeleton we found." She paused. "Was he the pilot?"
"Had to be. Mom hired him privately. A cash job, with no paperwork or flight plan."
Cassidy shrugged and slipped her hand out from under mine. "That's not hard to arrange out here. Half the planes that fly over these Outback properties are flown by guys who'd rather not file documents."
"This one had more reason than most. He'd lost his license after failing a drug and alcohol test. He’d had gambling debts on top of that. He was exactly the kind of man who needed the cash and couldn't afford to ask questions."
"The lack of a flight path explains why nobody came here looking for him."
I glanced at her. "So you didn't get people asking questions about him or the plane?"
She scrunched her nose. "Actually, I have no idea. It happened before I was born. To be honest, we don't know anything about the pilot at all. We only found the body a few weeks ago." She hesitated. "He wasn't anywhere near the plane."
I frowned. "What do you mean he wasn't near the plane?"
"We found him in a cave. A few miles from the wreck site." She met my eyes. "We assumed he was the pilot from that wreck."
The wind shifted again, and a warm gust rolled across the verandah.
"What made you think that he was the pilot?"
"His watch. It was engraved on the back. Something about his first solo flight."
"Right. Mom told me the pilot survived the crash."
"Oh shit. So he's not the pilot? I wonder?—"
I reached for her, placing my hand over her wrist. I hated what I was about to tell her, but she needed the truth. "When the plane crashed, the pilot was badly injured, with a gash on his forehead."
A dozen emotions twisted across her face. "The skeleton had a fracture in his skull above the left eye." She touched her own forehead. "Right here."
"That must be him then." I pictured Mom describing the pilot. "When Mom told me about his injuries, she had no sympathy for him. She'd done absolutely nothing to help him. She was angrier that her getaway was ruined."
"Jesus. That's twisted."
"Yeah. And there’s more." A cold knot settled in my stomach. "Frank arrived not long after the plane crashed. Apparently, he'd been in the area checking fences and saw the plane go down."
"Did he help the pilot?" Her tone suggested she already knew the answer.
“No. Neither of them did. Mom mentioned the injured pilot had begged for help, said it was horrible to watch, like she was describing bad weather, not a man dying." My stomach twisted at how cruel that woman was.
“That’s cold.”
I nodded. “They both watched him die and did nothing.”
"Dad's such an asshole. He wouldn't get involved in anything that would alert the police." She shook her head, disgust written all over her face. "But to just stand there and watch someone die ..."
I closed my eyes briefly. Christ, I still hadn’t told her what else Frank had done.
"I can't believe your mom even told you about him dying, like it was nothing," she said.
"Not like nothing." My voice cracked. "She told me like she was the victim. She said the pilot was a bad man anyway. That's how she framed it. Like he'd somehow deserved it."
"Jeez. That’s messed up."
My chest tightened. "Yeah." I dragged my hands down my face. "Mom begged Frank to help her."
Cassidy's head tilted. "Help her how?"
"She asked him to take her back to the ranch and then get rid of the pilot. No, she didn't just ask him, she bribed him with those jewels she took from the safe."
"Ahhh, okay." Cassidy's fingers drummed on her jeans. "We found a pouch with gems and jewels with that skeleton in the cave. We couldn't figure out why they were there."
I straightened. "You mean Frank didn't take them?"
She shook her head. "Maybe he did. But for some reason, he left them with the pilot's body."
"Why would he do that?"