Chapter 2
Leo
We rendezvous back at the family home. It’s a big standalone old house in the historic part of the city where only people with trust funds and illicit sources of income can afford to live.
The house was built in the Gilded Age, as Mark Twain put it, and is a big, hefty Romanesque Revival piece of architecture with enough space for a very large family to live.
My brothers and I have always swum in the place.
There will be even more room for activities now.
Teddy used to enjoy the spacious gardens, manicured to within an inch of their lives, with clever planting creating all manner of nooks and crannies to hide in. I always liked the walls. They are high and pointed and intruders have a devil of a time attempting to get over them.
Aiden and Luke are in the lounge, drinking. I join them, though I abstain from the whiskey because I suspect being clearheaded will be an advantage in times to come.
“The girl at the cemetery is called Ella Chick,” I tell my brothers. “She’s got a picture on her social media of her and Teddy together, going out somewhere. I believe they were dating.”
“A girlfriend?” Aiden says.
“He never mentioned her,” I say. “But yes.”
Luke swallows what remains in his glass angrily and stares out the window. I wonder if he knows something he is not saying. He and Teddy, being the youngest two and relatively close in age, were co-conspirators in many things that Aiden and I would not have approved of.
“Do you know something, Luke?”
Luke shoots an irritated glance at me. “The contents of my mind are my own,” he says. “If I knew anything that had anything to do with Teddy being fucking murdered, I would tell you.”
Aiden makes a calming motion at me with his hand. We don’t want Luke getting belligerent. He can be a monster when he is triggered, and this has the capacity to be one of his worst days.
“Fine,” I say. “If you do happen to remember anything, please do let us know at your earliest convenience.”
“He kept trying to get away from all this shit. We should have let him go,” Luke says.
“There’s no way out of this, and you know it,” Aiden replies calmly.
Luke gives him an annoyed, angry stare. The pecking order is not broken, but it is being challenged by my younger brother.
Luke has found himself back in a position he hasn’t had since he was very young, that of the youngest brother, and Aiden is being more controlling than ever because of our having lost Teddy.
Luke is rebelling against the closest thing we have to an ultimate authority, which is hilarious because Luke is 6′3 and an MMA fighter. Aiden is dangerous too, but in a different way. Less obviously physically intimidating, but smarter, and far more twisted.
I am immune to this dynamic to a certain extent because I have always been different. Colder, some say. More analytical. Less emotional. The typical sibling power plays never interested me.
“What if I want out of this?” Luke says. “Because I don’t want to follow him into the ground. We don’t know who the fuck did this. We have absolutely fucking nothing. And now people know that we can be hurt, they’ll be coming for all of us.”
“They always knew that we could be hurt. We’re human,” Aiden says.
“They wouldn’t have fucking dared touch us before now, and you know it.
Our family has been fucking untouchable for generations.
The last time someone was assassinated was in our great-great-great-grandfather’s day, and that was a fucking cousin!
” Luke exclaims. “Teddy was our brother. And they shot him like he was a fucking stray dog.”
We’re all processing this in our own way. Luke is raging. At least that makes sense. He should be angry. We all should be.
The man truly worrying me is actually Aiden. He has retreated into a sense of complete control, and that concerns me because he already had a lot of control. I can’t imagine what will satisfy him now. If he intends to become tyrannical, that could have unpleasant consequences for us all.
“Ella,” I say, repeating her name and returning it to the conversation to distract my brothers from their burgeoning fight.
“She knew Teddy, and somehow she managed to find where his funeral was, and show up to it. But I don’t see any other connections that are obvious.
She’s not related to anyone we know as far as I can tell. ”
“What does she do for work?”
“She’s a customer service agent for a company that sells insurance,” I say.
Luke makes a face.
“Teddy was dating a customer service agent?”
“I doubt he cared what she did for a job. She’s pretty, and she seems sweet,” I say. “Her social media is mostly about ducks.”
“Ducks,” Aiden repeats dourly.
“She likes ducks,” I say.
“Real ducks? Or like, pictures of ducks and shit that she has up in her house or whatever?”
“Both, it would seem,” I reply.
A peal of unhinged laughter breaks over the room, the cackle of a madman.
Luke stares at Aiden and me. “We got Teddy’s funeral crashed by a duck chick? And her name is Chick? But she likes ducks?”
“A study in contradictions, apparently,” I say. The minutiae of a person’s idiosyncrasies would usually not be of interest to us, but we are grieving and our minds are looking for anything to settle on.
“She does not sound like someone who would be a threat of any kind, except for the fact she found the funeral. It was entirely private. I wonder how she did it. We need to find that out,” Aiden says. “We need to…”
“We need to take this girl and interrogate her,” Luke snaps. “Who gives a fuck what Teddy would have wanted. Who cares if maybe he loved her and he just wants her to be safe and not involved in any of this shit.”
Luke is very bad at being subtle, and at keeping secrets.
“Someone killed Teddy,” Aiden reminds him. “She might know who. She might even have seen it happen.”
Teddy’s body was found in an alley in the middle of town.
He had been shot. That’s as much as anybody knows.
For all the cameras and satellites and everything else, there are still blind spots.
The autopsy and investigation suggest he was shot elsewhere and his body was dumped in a low-income, semi-industrial area. There’s not enough to go on.
“I think we need to make contact with her in some form. If she belonged to Teddy, she belongs to us now too. Simple as that. He may wish for her to be looked after,” I say.
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Aiden frowns. “But you’re right.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Luke says. “Teddy had a lot of girls he went out with. Women loved him. But girls don’t shoot guys in the face and dump them in a shitty part of town. Gangsters do. I’m not wasting a second on this girl just because she crashed the funeral. Waste of fucking time.”
He storms out, slamming the door behind him.
“He’s high,” I mention to Aiden.
“Yes,” Aiden says. “He is.”
“Are we going to do something about that? I don’t want to lose another brother.”
“I’ve got Henri watching him,” Aiden says. “Luke does better when he gets to act out. Trying to contain him has always backfired.”
Aiden runs his family like our businesses, with a kind of empathetic manipulation that is incredibly effective, as well as frighteningly powerful at times. From time to time, I can feel his strings on me.
Luke, on the other hand, needs ropes, maybe chains. And even then, containing him is a full-time fucking job.
“Keep an eye on her,” Aiden says. “We can follow other avenues as well.”
I nod.
Sounds like a perfect way to pass the time.
While Aiden follows up with police and manages the investigation on his level, and Luke goes off on a bender of one kind or another, I watch Ella.
I already know where Ella lives. I already know her favorite animal. And now, as I watch her, I discover how she deals with grief.
She dyes her hair.
The first time we saw her, she had a blonde bob.
The next time I make contact with her, she’s dyed that same hair gothic black.
It suits her. She has a cute face. I can see why Teddy liked her, if he did, in fact, like her.
She has one little streak picked out near the front that is colored purple.
She manages to find a gothic duck charm for her handbag, too.
I’ve never seen someone accessorize grief quite as fiercely as she seems to.
The classic attire she was wearing on the day of the funeral is retired.
Now she prefers black. Black leather boots and skirts.
Black lace tops and frills. Black nail polish.
Skull and web motifs when there is an opportunity to indulge them.
A lot of people would conclude that she is being performative, but if she is, it is for an audience of one.
I watch her shop away much of her sadness. Though work demands she look traditionally professional, when she is off work, she wears clothing more appropriate for a young lady in her early twenties. Short skirts, stockings, and tights. Little tank tops under heavy coats.
If I’d first seen her looking this way, I’d have thought she was a completely different person. There’s something almost chameleon-like about her, but I don’t think it is intentional on her part. I think this is how she is trying to handle a pain that is too big to stay in her body.
Even when she has to pretend to be a normal workaday woman, she paints a cat’s eye on with eyeliner.
But she still maintains a professional appearance through the magic of skirts and blazers during workdays.
She has a cute black handbag sewed in a web pattern.
A little yellow duck charm hangs from the zipper.
I wonder if she knows just how distinctive she makes herself with these specific touches.