Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
SCARLETT
Present Day
My eyes are closed as I stand on the balcony, my hands gripping the railing. The ocean is hissing below us.
How could he do it? How could a father sacrifice his child like that and live with himself for six months afterwards?
My eyes snap open and I spin around to glare at him. My stomach is churning with so much anger.
I watch as he drinks from his tumbler, for real this time, and picks up the bottle of whiskey from underneath my chair, pouring himself another drink.
How dare he think he can just sit there and drown the truth about what he did in alcohol?
Out of nowhere, something inside me snaps. This is not the man I trusted with my heart, albeit briefly. He’s not the man I betrayed my best friend for. I want to hurt him as much as the truth is hurting me right now.
“How could you leave Sadie there for six whole months, Gabriel?” My eyes heat up with tears that immediately flow over to drench my cheeks. “How could you do this to us all? Tell me. I just, I don’t get it.”
He slurs something I don’t understand, then looks at me with unfocused eyes.
“I didn’t… I tried everything. After that night, I went back to the camp many times.
They wouldn’t let me in. They told me she wasn’t there anymore, and they’d hired more guards.
And that night… I had no choice.” He releases a loud breath and stares into his drink.
When he raises the glass to his lips to take another sip, I’m unable to stop myself and the next thing I know, my hand is slamming toward his, knocking the glass from his loose grip. Alcohol shoots through the air and the glass shatters on the stone tiles.
“Of course you had a choice. Everyone always has a choice. That was a ridiculous deal you agreed to. You failed your daughter. You did have a choice and you chose yourself. You are responsible for this, for everything.” I rake a hand through my hair and look up in an attempt to stop the flow of tears.
“How could you let Judy go through all that, thinking that her daughter is dead?”
He cups his head with both hands like he wants to detach it from his body. “I’m sorry, I wish I could go back and do things differently.”
I close my eyes and go back to that night, thinking of the police swarming the beach, searching for someone who was never lost, the stories we had been told about her drowning.
“And then you forced me to lie to the police, even though you knew that Sadie had not disappeared. All the while you knew the truth.”
Gabriel nods and slumps back, looking small and weak. The strong, powerful lawyer is nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly I’m hit with a wave of revulsion.
Not just at what he did to Sadie, to Judy, and to me, but I’m disgusted with myself.
For having been so wrong about him. For letting myself believe he was a man worth breaking my own morals for.
And these conflicts war inside me. They mingle with the anger that swirls in the pit of my stomach like hot acid.
“You have no idea what I went through, Scarlett. Knowing, hoping, that my daughter was still in that camp… it ate me alive. For the past six months, I tried to find anything I could use against Megan Hale and the camp. I believed it was the only way to get Sadie out and make sure that woman faced consequences for taking my daughter. When Judy started looking into things, I panicked. I was afraid she would find out and put Sadie in danger. Megan had made it clear she would be.”
Megan Hale. I remember her. She welcomed us to the camp. How could I have known she would kidnap Sadie?
“How do you even know she was telling the truth, that she had proof of what you did when you were a teenager? She probably just read what was in the papers, available to everyone, and she—”
“No,” Gabriel says, defeated. “I don’t know how, but she tracked down the witness my family paid off.”
He doesn’t need to say more. The truth is written all over his face.
Gabriel is a murderer. He killed someone. But I can’t process that right now, not when we need to focus on Sadie and Judy. I need to find them. Even if it kills me.
Unlike Gabriel, I would sacrifice everything for the people I love.
“You’ve made a mistake in the past and now it’s time for you to correct that mistake. We need to get Sadie and Judy out of there.”
“You don’t understand, Scarlett. That woman is dangerous.” His head slumps on his chest and he closes his eyes.
I sit down and face him, placing a hand under his chin to force him to look at me. “I don’t care how dangerous she or the camp is. Your wife and child are in there and you are going to help me get them out.” I walk away from him. “I need to call Alice.”