30. A Dead Man Speaks #2
When I think back on this moment, I’ll commend myself for the fact that my brain doesn’t even register the bomb of information he drops. None of the shock hits me, and all previous anger that contaminated my every thought just evaporates into complete and utter apathy.
At least, in regard to anything to do with me.
Francesca, on the other hand, becomes a focal point for everything. I watch her panicked inhalations and how she tugs at the belt as though the robe is made of the scratchiest wool and shrugs it off.
I lower my voice. “When was the handoff?”
“Five days ago.”
Francesca nearly falls to her face in her haste to stand up.
Her shorts are all wrinkled, and she’s aggressively rubbing at them, shaking her head and trembling with every step towards the window.
She just stands there, unable to look at me or the phone.
Hands lift to the V of her camisole, pressing on the left side as if she’s trying to keep her heart from jumping out of her chest.
“Alright, get me everything you can about Fairbanks’ death, statements made by his family, and, if possible, a police report. I’ll talk to you later.”
Henrik hums in acceptance, and the line clicks off with nothing more than a beep . Francesca doesn’t turn at the sound, nor does she spare me a glance, even though I know she can feel me trying to catch her eye.
I soften my tone, unsure whether what I’m about to say next is going to calm her or freak her the fuck out. “Francesca, they never found a body, remember?” Her jaw locks, and she shakes her head. “He just… disappeared.”
Baked Bean’s thread unfolds behind shut eyelids as I pinch the bridge of my nose, willing the pulsing in my temples to calm down for just one bloody second.
Watch the cousin was the anonymous speculation, and now I’m pondering upon whether it meant something entirely different.
If both Kai and I misunderstood the warning.
Maybe Gabriel ran because somebody didn’t want him marrying Francesca. Maybe Edmund threatened him to leave. Loyal Edmund, obsessive Edmund, who wants nothing more than to keep his cousin forever. Now Gabriel’s pissed, and Godwyn chooses the one with the fuse burning beneath their skin, doesn’t he?
Francesca looks ready to bolt, so I take another step, hesitant. “I need you here right now, baby. If Gabriel’s out there—pissed enough to do this—he’s a threat, one we need to locate. You know him, so I need you thinking, alright?” She shakes her head again. “Francesca?—”
“He’s dead.”
I step forward again, so close yet so far. “We have to consider the evidence.”
She flinches at evidence as though the word might attack her. “He’s dead , Eric.”
Logic wars with the instinct to reach out and touch her, but the equation can’t end—won’t end. No corpse for a funeral, fuckall closure for family, friends and one grieving fiancée, and a four-month gap between supposed death and signature.
I stifle the question I have no right to be asking: did you love him so fiercely that the only mercy offered for a broken heart is the permanency of his absence? The pulse of resentment that follows this thought takes me by surprise, and I feel monstrous for wanting an explanation.
“Look, if this is too much right now, it can wait.” I’m just a foot away from her now, fingers curling against the act of reaching forward. “But if you have any information on where he could be, it can help us. Significantly . You asked for my help, didn’t you?”
Still nothing.
I exhale tiredly and try for levity. “I know we had that running joke that you killed him and you’d lob it back at me, but that was all just dark humour. If?—”
“Please, don’t,” she whispers, spine stiffening. That’s what does her in. The joke . Lakewater green, fractured by an aching grief, lands on me with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer. Tears flash in the light of the ancient wall sconce, and my chest clamps. “Don’t make me revisit that night.”
I’m there in an instant, palms framing the sides of her face, tilting until that pretty gaze has nowhere to go but me.
“Let’s do patterns, yeah?” I murmur, lowering my head until our foreheads almost touch.
“This particular one leads to two logical possibilities. One, he’s not really dead but did a vanishing act on everyone that cared about him.
Two, somebody forged his signature, and if that’s the case, we’ll find out who. ”
“Three,” she says, voice almost inaudible. “Whoever did this is taunting me, because they know. They know what I did to Gabriel.”
Implication lights the fuse, and her next confession detonates.
“I killed him.” My fingertips lose sensation, hands falling to her shoulders. “ I killed him ,” she repeats, nearly gagging on the words. “He was drunk and he tried to—tried to—he tried to?—”
I don’t give the word a chance to be born.
Fuck, I can’t bear it. The moment I see her lips frame it, tongue lifting to the back of her teeth, I drag her forward, probably harder than I should in this state.
One arm twines around her back, the other drifting to her skull, where my fingers carefully navigate the slightly swollen lump beneath her hair.
It’s small but feels ginormous in my palm, proof that the attack happened.
Everything I thought I understood about her spins on the axis of this haunted little land. The world tilts sideways; gravity reverses and all of my theories evaporate.
My brain races to chase down timelines, and I question uselessly against her hair, “Cousin Edmund?”
She’s trembling, or maybe that’s me. Her voice breaks against my sternum, “Can’t be him. It can’t . He helped bury the body.”
So as much to lose as she does , is what I’m hearing , which completely removes him from the board.
For this move, at least. That means there’s someone else here who knows her pressure points: the song on the boat, the now weaponised candles that Lydia always brings, and the resurrection of Gabriel’s name.
Whoever Godwyn’s traitor is, they aren’t just betraying the heir.
They’re fucking enjoying it.
Sardonic delight as modus operandi.
I keep my arms around her because every other option circles the drain. It’s all I can offer. Some sort of makeshift buffer between her and the person poisoning her memories.
For now, that’ll have to be enough.
M urder has rented a room in the back of my mind for as long as I can recall.
It packed its bags and settled in the first time I looked at my father and realised what a monstrous man he was.
We’ve lived together without incident, so long as the door stayed shut.
It never shouted, never raged against my complacency or desecrated the home I provided it with.
Rather, it paid its rent in taciturnity and listened as the landlord paced outside—the faceless man with a badge pinned to his lapel that read Morality, Property Owner .
Not the morality of Heaven as my brothers believe it, but the pages written by society; that fear of consequence, of being ousted once your hands are stained.
That morality stopped me from stealing the key and slipping it into the lock, from becoming the sort of creature my father is.
Murder stays well-fed by my hatred but caged.
I think of it now, in that square space with nothing but a chair and a window through which to observe all other desires at play.
I let it breathe but never gave it freedom.
But now that window has a new view, and murder sets its sights on Francesca, greeting her with a smile as if she were an old friend.
It spent so long whispering through me, yet she allowed for it to scream.
Now it remembers her. Respects her, as I do.
She’s folded on my bed, cross-legged in the midst of papery chaos, poring over duchy history, her throat scarred by what she’s endured—her mind already set on what needs to be done next.
Her hair falls damply around her shoulders, staining some of the pages, but she hardly notices, muttering to herself in frantic whispers despite the evident hoarseness to her voice.
“Over here we have Aunt Winifred. She’s Gran’s second cousin through their great-grandmother— Duchess Idris —a ruler famously known for her schemes to resurrect slavery.
Which makes me a walking insult to anyone who agreed with Idris, transforming Winifred from an unpleasant relative to a potential traitor. ”
She pulls a stack of papers from a flowery binder and sets it aside before adding, “The Rosenthals are insanely wealthy considering their orchards have become Sheffolk’s altar.
They host the Red Reaping, which the public believes is all song and fruit, but you now know better.
Gran adores them and views them as loyal, so for the time being, I do too.
Then the de Lauriers. Maurice owns Laurier Privé and has half the duchy passing through his hotels in one way or another.
His wife, Daphne, is Sheffolk-born, and owns the fashion magazine Odette, which is read by every woman with money and influence as well as every woman who wants those things.
Their daughter, Mathilde, is very sweet, but I need to be sensible.
I’d be stupid not to consider a family of such influence. ”
Her damn eyes are still red from crying because only minutes ago she was in my arms, shaking as Gabriel’s name was torn open like a wound. It’s bleeding still, yet she won’t rest, force-feeding me information my father has already given me.