Chapter 17
Ethan
Annabelle is out cold on the bed in the guest room. Her room. It’s always been her room, but we never dared to call it that. Until now.
I stand over her, watching her chest rise and fall as she breathes, ready for when she comes to.
Callan stands by the window at the end, hands in his pockets, his face carved from ice.
“You really fucked this up, you know that?” I say quietly.
“No,” he says just quietly. “We fucked this up. She knew. She knew, and she demanded answers. I wasn’t going to keep lying to her.”
Aidan gives a low, humourless laugh from the doorway. “You’re both doing that thing where you argue over who lit the match while the house burns down.”
I turn to him. “You told her about our mother.”
“She asked who,” he bites out. “What was I meant to do, Eth? Keep stacking lies on top of lies until she choked on them?”
“You were meant to keep your mouth shut for five fucking seconds.”
“And you were meant to not drop the investigation on her like that.”
Callan looks over from the window. “Shut it. We all played a part in where she is right now.”
His tone is flat, but it cuts through the room. I drag a hand over my face and glance back at the bed. Annabelle’s blonde hair fans over the pillow. Her skin is too pale. She looks small in our space, swallowed by a room we built around a fantasy and then forced into reality.
“She’ll wake confused,” I say. “Probably frightened. Possibly violent.”
Aidan comes closer, slow this time, as if he knows one wrong move will have me putting him through a wall. “Then we keep it simple.”
“We?” I ask coldly.
His eyes flash. “I’m not leaving.”
Callan sighs, carrying the weight of this. “You can both stop acting like you can put this back in its box.”
“No,” I say. “We can’t. We deal with what’s in front of us.”
I move to the side of the bed and sit on the edge of the mattress. Annabelle doesn’t stir. She dropped hard when Aidan spoke. One second, she was staring at us like she wanted to tear us apart with her bare hands. The next, she was sagging in my arms.
I have replayed it every second since.
Too much. Too fast. Exactly what I said.
“You’re making that face again,” Aidan mutters.
I look over my shoulder. “What face?”
“The one where you look like murder would calm you down.”
Callan moves closer. “If he kills either of us, he still has to explain why there are only two identical men left.”
“Funny,” I say flatly.
It is not funny. None of this is.
Annabelle shifts. Every muscle in my body goes tight. Her lashes flutter. Her brow furrows. But her eyes stay closed. Her brain has completely shut out the world, and she is out.
“Right,” I say, standing up and making a decision.
“This is how we play this. When she wakes up, we have food, we have books, we have her clothes, her home comforts. Her toiletries and those vitamins she is taking instead of her antidepressants. Everything. She wakes up as if she lives here. We don’t give her a choice.
Nothing changes. We do everything for her, but from here, with all of us, out in the open. ”
“You are fucked in the head,” Callan mutters.
“Maybe, but tell me this is a bad plan.”
“It’s not the best plan. That would be taking her back to her home.”
“No.” My word is final. “You go back to her house and get all her things. Aidan, start cooking.”
Aidan does not move. “You’re giving orders like she hasn’t just passed out because of us.”
“Because standing here arguing is doing fuck all,” I say. “Move.”
For a second, I think he is going to push. Then something shifts behind his eyes, and he goes.
Callan stays where he is.
I look at him. “Did you not hear me?”
“I heard you.” His eyes go to Annabelle. “I’m deciding whether dragging her life in here like she belongs to us already is the final nail in the coffin.”
“She already belongs to us.”
“That is not the same thing as her agreeing to it.”
My temper jumps. “Get in the lift, Callan.”
He studies me for a long beat. “You are one wrong sentence away from making this worse.”
“I’m aware.”
He gives me a look that could strip paint, but he goes, leaving just me and her in the room.
I look at Annabelle again. My jaw locks. She trusted me. Us. Trusted the face, the hands, the voice. I used every bit of that trust to get her where I wanted her, and now she is unconscious in a bed that was prepared for her before she ever knew we existed.
That part doesn’t shame me.
The part that twists is that I pushed too hard and watched her break.
I sit back down and brush the hair away from her face. “Wake up for me, Tinks.”
Nothing.
Her skin is cool under my fingers. She dropped under the pressure. Her lashes rest against her cheeks, and there is something truly beautiful about how peaceful she looks after the chaos.
I hear Aidan in the kitchen a minute later. Cupboards opening. Pans set down. He is getting to work like he was told.
I sit back, staring at her. The one lie still hanging in the air is one that we can’t admit to. Not just yet. She will bolt for sure. She cannot know that the man who murdered her mother is our dad. I don’t think I can handle the look that will pass over her face.
But none of this matters until we can prove it. Hands down, one hundred per cent.
Getting up, I close the door quietly, going down the hall to the living room and picking up the folder I was reading when Callan arrived with her in tow, like it was a great idea. I open the folder and force myself to focus on the paper instead of the bedroom down the hall.
Maeve Deveaux. Crime scene photographs. Statements. Timeline. No arrest.
My pulse stays slow because I make it stay slow. If I let myself feel any of this properly, I will tear the penthouse apart with my bare hands. Jack’s face stares back at me from one clipped printout. Charming. Clean. Untouchable. The same face people trusted right up until they stopped breathing.
Aidan comes into the living room with a tea towel over his shoulder. “I’m making pasta. It’s easy on the stomach.”
I don’t look up. “Fine.”
“You are going to drive yourself mad with that file.”
“Like I haven’t already? Do you think Christa and Jack were having an affair?”
I look up as he narrows his eyes. “We’ve been over this. There is nothing to suggest that.”
“Nothing in the files. What if Annabelle knows something, someone?”
“You looked in her journal. So did I. There was no mention of a boyfriend or fuckbuddy.”
“That she knew of, but maybe if we draw her attention to it…”
“You want to pick over her mother’s last weeks and days to see if it fits your narrative?”
“It’s not as cold as that, for fuck’s sake,” I say. “She was his last victim.”
“That we know of. Who knows how many women he’s killed on his island retreat?”
“It’s a bit small for a serial killer to run rampant,” I growl. “I think Jack and Christa were personally involved. I’ve thought it for years. Now I want something to tie them together.”
Aidan stares at me for a second, then drags a hand over his mouth. “Or maybe you want that because if Christa chose him, then this was all personal. Easier to understand.”
“Nothing about him is easy to understand.”
“No,” he says. “But you like patterns. You like a neat line from motive to outcome.”
I shut the folder and stand. “I like proof.”
He watches me, expression dark. “And if the proof is sitting in her head, somewhere she doesn’t even know matters?”
“Then we get it out carefully.”
Aidan gives a short laugh. “Carefully. That’s rich. You can’t be careful if it bites you on the arse.”
“Go cook something,” I mutter and sit down again, picking up the file. Fuck him. I know this is a connection. He wasn’t connected to the others like this. Except for Mum. His first. Christa was his last. How does this not make sense to anyone but me?
I glance at the clock. Barely any time has passed. Callan has probably only just got to her cottage. He needs to hurry. I want her things here when she wakes up, so she knows this is home, and she isn’t going anywhere.
Snapping the folder shut again, I throw it on the coffee table and rest my foot on it as I lean back, staring into space. The scents of Aidan’s cooking fill the penthouse, and I get up to cross over to the drinks cabinet.
I pour whisky and leave it untouched on the cut glass shelf for a second, watching the amber catch the low light.
My hand aches where I split the knuckles yesterday.
A stupid detail to focus on, but pain is cleaner than this.
Picking up the glass, I knock back the whisky and replace the glass.
Moving back towards the hallway, I push open Annabelle’s door and see her curled up.
She has gone from passed out to asleep in a seamless transition that tells me everything I need to know.