Chapter 13
Aidan
Sitting next to Annabelle while she lets me feed her pasta, the urge to come clean is gnawing at me. It’s a visceral punch in the gut when she smiles.
“I have to leave you for a while, Tinks,” I say, suddenly. “I’ll make sure you’re safe in bed first.”
She frowns. “Why? Where are you going?”
“I need to go home and pack some things.”
“What for?”
“So I have things here.”
“Oh,” she says, lowering her eyes. “Okay.”
I grimace. There is no fight in her at all. She is just letting us take over, move into her life, into her home, and she actually seems to want it. “What are your thoughts on that?”
She blinks. “On what?”
“On me moving some of my things here.”
“I think I’d like it,” she whispers. Her gaze never meets mine.
The admission is a cut. She is so used to the silence that the idea of a stranger occupying her space doesn’t even register as a threat. It registers as a comfort. I set the fork down, the ceramic clink sounding like a gunshot in the quiet kitchen.
“You’re sure?” I press, leaning closer. I need to hear the conviction in her voice, even if it’s built on a foundation of sand.
“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she says, her voice gaining a fraction of strength. “Or any night. It’s too loud when it’s quiet. My mind wants me to do things I’m too scared to do. If you’re here, I won’t do them.”
“Things like what?”
She chews the inside of her lip. “End it all.”
A cold, sharp rage slices through my chest. I stare at her. The thought of her taking herself away from me makes my blood boil. I want to break the world for making her feel this hollow.
“You do not get to say that,” I state. My voice is hard. “You do not get to think it. You are mine now, Annabelle. Every breath you take belongs to me.”
She trembles. I reach out and haul her from the chair. I pull her into my lap. She is too thin. She feels fragile under my hands. I tighten my grip. I need her to breathe in time with me.
“I’m going to get some things. I will be back in an hour. You won’t be alone ever again. Do you hear me?”
She doesn’t protest. She just clings to my shirt. Her fingers bunch weakly in the fabric.
“I am not leaving you to the dark, Annabelle. I am the dark now.”
“Ethan,” she whimpers. “It’s too hard. Every day is too hard.”
I fist her hair tightly, wishing she would say my name. But this is why I have to go home. I have to talk to Ethan about this. “I know, my little bell. I know you feel that way now. Isn’t it better with me here, though? Don’t you feel like you can breathe, even if it’s just for a moment?”
“I do,” she whispers, her head dropping to my shoulder. “I feel like I don’t have to fight it when you’re here. Like I can just… stop.”
“Then stop,” I tell her. I stand up with her in my arms, the chair scraping harshly against the lino. I carry her through the house and up the stairs into the bedroom. I set her in the middle of the bed, pulling the duvet over her before she can even settle. “Wait for me. I won’t be long.”
“Please be quick, Ethan,” she says, her voice already fading as she sinks into the mattress.
“I will. Promise you will still be here when I get back.”
Her eyes shoot to mine, her gaze almost shocked. “I will be waiting for you.”
“Alive,” I press, second-guessing my decision to leave. But Ethan and I need to have a conversation.
She smiles weakly. “Alive. You have given me something to cling to.”
For the first time in my life, I feel like my soul has cracked open. I drop to my knees, pulling her closer. “Remember that, Annabelle. Remember that always.”
She nods, and I let her go. I move quickly, leaving the kitchen clean-up until I get back.
Gripping the Porsche keys, I leave her home, locking up behind me, and climb into Ethan’s car. Gunning the engine, I blast off from the kerb, not caring about her neighbours right now.
By the time I reach the city, my blood is hot, my temper is fraying, and it’s taking every ounce of self-control I have not to light a match and watch it all burn.
Pulling up next to my fucking Ferrari in the underground garage, I take the private lift up.
When the doors ding, the penthouse is empty.
Seemingly. The low thud of the bass is coming from down the hall from Callan’s room. Ethan is nowhere in sight.
But I know exactly where he will be.
Striding through the kitchen to the hallway at the back, where the laundry room, pantry and a spare room—that is supposedly there for a housekeeper or nanny—are situated. I shove the door to the spare room open and breathe.
Photos of Annabelle are everywhere. The walls, the tables, the windows. Her mother’s photo, along with Jack’s other victims are on the whiteboard, surrounding a photo of Jack, all smiles and charm. No one knows the monster underneath until it’s too late.
Ethan is bent over the table, hands on either side of a file as he pores over it.
“Found anything?” I ask, even though it’s pointless. Jack was and is meticulous.
“What do you think?” Ethan grits out. “There is nothing. Not a damn fucking thing linking him to Christa’s murder.”
“Have we got it wrong?”
The question is out there, and neither one of us can stop it.
“No,” he states. “No. We have not got it wrong, Aidan. Jack murdered Annabelle’s mum. We will find the link, find the proof and present it to the police so she can draw a line under this once and for all.”
“She will never draw a line under it, Eth. She is suicidal.”
He looks up and inhales deeply. “I know. Why aren’t you with her?”
“I want to tell her the truth.”
“Not yet.”
“Yes, yet,” I argue. “It’s all right for you. She calls you by your name. You were the first point of contact, and Cal and I are just body doubling.”
“That was the plan. She is skittish, scared, and the three of us would overwhelm her.”
“I know that, but she needs us, Ethan. All of us. Seeing her like I did tonight… this can’t go on for much longer.”
“Growing a conscience?”
“When it comes to her, yeah, maybe.”
“I get it,” he says. “I do. But if we lose her over this…”
“We won’t. She can’t function on her own now. In the space of a few short days, she depends on us.”
“That is exactly why we keep control of the pace,” Ethan says. “Dependence is not the same as trust.”
I laugh once, harsh as fuck. “You think she doesn’t trust us? She lets me undress her. She lets me feed her. She tells me she wants to die and then promises to stay alive because I ask her to. What the fuck do you call that?”
He says nothing. His eyes go back to the board. “Dangerous.”
“Everything about this is dangerous.”
“It has been dangerous since the day Jack picked Christa Harrison. We are just inside it now.”
My gaze follows his. Christa smiles out of the photograph, alive forever in glossy paper. Annabelle has the same eyes. The same mouth. Same softness that got cut into something brittle by grief. Fury tears through me all over again.
“She told me it’s too loud when she’s alone,” I say.
“That her mind wants her to end it. I asked her to wait for me. Eth, she looked at me like I was handing her life back one breath at a time. I told her I was bringing some of my things over, and she just accepted it. Like me moving in when I barely know her is normal.”
“Nothing about this is normal, Aidan,”
“No fucking shit. Can we at least try to create some normalcy for her?”
“How?”
I turn as Callan enters the room.
Ethan speaks before I can. “Aidan wants to come clean with her.”
“I’m serious,” I say. “This has gone beyond a test run.”
Ethan straightens slowly. “And I’m telling you it is too soon.”
“For who?” I snap. “For her? Or for you?”
Something shifts behind his eyes, and he goes very still. “Watch it.”
“Oh, I’m fucking watching,” I growl. “She is asking not to be left alone because she thinks she’ll kill herself if we do. She is not in a place to handle this dragging on while we play fucking body-swap.”
Callan shuts the door behind him and stays near it, keeping his distance from both of us. “Which part are you expressly wanting to tell her first?”
“The truth.”
“That is not an answer,” Ethan says.
I drag a hand through my hair. “I want to tell her that Ethan is not one man. That it is all three of us. That we know who her mother was. That we know our father killed her and we are trying our damndest to prove it because we latched onto her two years ago and haven’t been able to fucking let go of her crying at her mother’s grave because our dickhead dad can’t control his murderous urges! ”
Silence drops heavy into the room.
Callan is the first to move. He walks to the board and studies the photograph of Christa for a long second, then looks at me. “You want to unload all of that onto a woman who is barely holding on by her fingernails.”
“She deserves the truth.”
“She deserves stability first,” Ethan says.
I round on him. “Stability built on a lie.”
He looks at me for a long moment before he says, “A controlled lie.”
“She is not one of your business deals.”
“No. She is worse.”
That pulls me up short. Ethan keeps everything locked down unless it serves him. What’s on his face right now serves nothing.
He plants both hands on the table and lowers his head for a second before lifting it again.
“If we tell her now, while she is this fragile, one of two things happens. She bolts, and we have to drag her back into line while she is spiralling. Or she breaks completely because the only person she thinks is keeping her alive turns into three men and a serial killer’s sons in the same fucking conversation. ”
“She won’t bolt,” I say, though I can’t guarantee it.
“You don’t know that.”
“She asked me not to leave her.”
“You,” Ethan says sharply. “The version of me she thinks she knows.”
That one lands. I hate him for a long couple of seconds.
Callan turns from the board. “He’s right about that part.”
I hate that he says it before I can. I hate even more that some part of me knows it.
“She’s slipping,” I say, quieter now, because shouting doesn’t change the fucking facts. “I can feel it. When I left, it felt wrong.”
Something moves through Ethan’s face that he doesn’t quite manage to shut down in time. “Then go back.”
I stare at him. “That’s it?”
“What do you want from me?” he bites out. “Permission to blow this apart tonight?”
“I want a plan.”
“We already have one.”
“Our plan didn’t factor in the fucking guilt now, did it?”
That lands hard. Nobody argues because nobody can.
Callan drags a finger down the edge of one of the pinned photographs and then looks at me. “What exactly did she say that has brought this on?”
“Apart from calling me Ethan every five fucking minutes and thanking ‘Ethan’ for taking care of her, she said she doesn’t want to be alone because the quiet gets too loud. She said her mind wants her to end it.” I look between them. “I made her promise to stay alive until I got back.”
Callan’s face does not give much away, but his eyes sharpen. “Then you don’t stay here arguing with him.”
Ethan gives a single nod. “Agreed.”
I laugh bitterly. “Amazing. You two ganging up on me. What a turnout for the fucking books. Fuck you both. I’m going back there, in my fucking car, and I’m bringing her here where we can all be on suicide watch.”
“Don’t,” Ethan says. “Don’t do anything rash.
Lay some groundwork first if you have to.
Tell her you have brothers, whatever the hell you want to come up with.
Do not drop this bomb on her, and do not fucking bring her here.
Not yet. Do you want her to see all of this?
Do you want her to know we have been investigating her mother’s death, and we’ve come up empty of evidence to prove that Jack did it? ”
“Actually, yeah. I fucking do. Because it’s the goddamn truth.”
Callan’s stare cuts to Ethan. “And if the truth sends her over the edge tonight?”
“It won’t if you stop making this about your guilt and start making it about what keeps her breathing,” Ethan says.
My hand curls into a fist. “You don’t get to talk to me about guilt like you’re above it.”
“I’m not above it,” he says, voice low. “I’m controlling it.”
“That’s your answer to everything.”
“It works.”
I step closer to the table, fury pushing under my skin. “Not with her. She is not a file, and she is not one of your projects.”
“Don’t insult me by pretending I don’t know that.”
“Then act like it.”
He stares at me for a long second. “I am. That is why I’m not blowing her life apart tonight because you can’t stand hearing her say my name.”
That one hits. Hard. Because it is true, and I fucking hate that it is true.
Callan speaks before I can. “Both of you are wasting time.”
I drag in a breath and look at him.
He stays where he is, near the board, his hands shoved in his pockets. Detached on the surface. Not detached underneath. I know him too well for that. “If she is actively unsafe alone, the priority is not your hurt feelings or Ethan’s control issues. The priority is getting back to her.”
“I know that,” I snap.
“Then go or I will, and then both of your plans are shot to hell.”
“Fucker,” I snarl. He knows how to play us better than anyone.
Or maybe he has just handed me the grenade I need to blow Ethan’s iron will open enough for him to see that we need to tell Annabelle the truth.