Chapter Twenty-Two
AVA
S wapping some of my shifts with Cass meant I hadn’t seen Elijah Creed for a few days and with class today canceled, I’ve driven myself crazy thinking about him. Obsessing over who Elijah Creed was. It’s like he’s in my blood and I can’t escape him.
He claimed to have killed his father, but I can’t find anything that says he did. There’s no proof, not even a niggling suspicion from the authorities.
Augustine Creed went missing after a drunken fight with his wife when Eli was seventeen. Seventeen years old. There’s no way a teenager killed his father and then managed to successfully cover it up, is there? He was a teen, not some hardened criminal at that age. The more I read, the more I know in my heart that Creed did it.
Office Foxx had asked some friends down at the police department for some files, and now I wish I hadn’t mentioned it.
Hospital records from that night show his mother was admitted with a broken jaw, a fractured arm and the bottom of her feet had been cut with a razor blade. What kind of home life did Elijah have? His own nose was broken and the files show he had old and new scarring on his back, presumably from a belt and buckle.
He was beaten by his father regularly. His bones were broken and reset. No wonder Elijah became this big, bad, ruthless Left Hand. No one fucks with the Left Hand. Creed became a monster to protect himself and his mother from the monster who raised him. He did what he had to.
I can’t stop the tears that fall, dripping from my cheeks and splatting onto the papers in front of me. How could his father have treated him that way? How could his mother stay? Was this what being in The Family was?
My phone pings, and I glance down. There’s a text from my brother asking where I am. Why would Andrew text me? He hates me, blames me for whatever is happening in his life…I check again and notice the time. Fuck! I’m late for our weekly dinner.
Thirty minutes later, after potentially earning myself a speeding ticket, I’m sitting opposite my brother, with my father positioned at the head of the table like always. I’ve pushed down the emotions from earlier, leaving them in a box to unpack later, away from my father and his prying eyes.
“Late again, Ava,” my father chides with a disapproving glare.
“I apologize.” Bowing my head, I stare down at the food Elsie has brought out. My father and Andrew have huge bloody steaks on their plates with pasta and salad sides. I only have a bowl of pasta and some salad. This quiet anger fills me as they eat, missing my glass when they pour the wine.
My father clearly isn’t done with the topic as he tuts, his knife screeching against the bone china. “Chad will never marry you if you can’t fix those lazy habits of yours.”
I inhale slowly, before blurting out, “We broke up.”
“What?”
Andrew scoffs. He’s extra twitchy tonight, checking the windows, jumping at every little noise. Paranoia was clearly setting in, but there was nothing I could do when they both denied there was even a problem.
“It’s that stupid job of yours, isn’t it?” My father huffs, wiping at his mouth with his napkin. “You don’t need it. Just quit and get married.”
Resisting the urge to laugh, I take a sip of my water, ignoring the way Andrew’s glaring at me over the garlic bread and salad bowls between us. “I can’t just get married. Chad has vanished. Won’t take my calls. Moved out of his apartment. Gone.”
If I was expecting sympathy, I should have known better.
“What did you say?” Andrew barks, slamming his fork down on the table.
What the hell had he taken? He was so angry and volatile this evening. Why was he acting like Chad had broken up with him? I’m the one who’d been ghosted.
Ignoring my brother, leaving him to keep sweating out whatever was in his system, I twirl some of my pasta around my fork. “Anyway, I don’t want to quit. I’ve been making some genuine progress with my class. Elijah Creed joined the program and I have to say the man has real talent. I’ve never seen anyone paint quite like him. There’s so much depth, he has so much potential.”
I don’t need to look up to know that both Andrew and my father have frozen. The tension in the room rises, preparing to crest like a wave before crashing onto the shore.
In all honesty, I don’t know why I brought Eli into it. Perhaps it was because last time, I was told not to. My hidden rebellious nature clearly got the better of me and the words just slipped out as my anger had simmered away.
Why was everyone in this house allowed to be angry and aggressive apart from me? Why did I always have to bow my head, bite my tongue and bubble away like a pot left too long on the stove? I wanted to see their reactions. I wanted their fury.
“I have been more than patient with you Ava, even asking nicely. This is no longer a request,” my father growls, his eyes full of an odd mix of fear and fury. “You will quit.”
Wasn’t that interesting? What was he so afraid of?
“Has he said anything? Does he know anything?” my brother stammers, his face even paler than before. What had they done to be so afraid of Creed?
“Are you in trouble Andrew?” I ask softly.
My father stands, slamming his hands down on the table, roaring. “Tell her nothing!”
“He’s a monster. A fucking monster.” Andrew screams as he pushes to his feet. He throws the bottle of wine at the wall, before shoving dishes to the floor. “You ruin everything, Ava!”
“Me? What did I even do? What the hell is going on here?” I push my chair back and watch my father carefully. I mean, he looks like my father, but there’s this heavy air around him, this horrible feeling that I don’t recognize. Something is wrong in this house and as per usual, I’m the last to know.
“I think it’s time you left,” he grinds out as he tries to calm my brother, who’s punched a hole through one of my mother’s prints and into the wall.
“Or you could just tell me,” I counter. “I could help.”
“GET OUT!” He bellows, as my brother continues his tantrum. As I pass, my father grabs my arm. Leaning in, so that flecks of spittle hit my cheek, he hisses, “Quit the job. This is my last warning, girl.”
Climbing into my car, my hands tremble as I sit with my forehead resting on the steering wheel. Who the fuck were those men in there? What the hell was going on?
There’s one question that’s never made sense the entire time I’ve been poring over Elijah’s file. I’ve asked myself over and over again. How did Elijah Creed, a man capable of killing his own father and hiding the evidence, get caught? It was part of his literal job as a fixer and enforcer for the mafia to cover his tracks.
I think my father is involved, my brother too. I’m just not sure how.
“ G irl, where the fuck have you been hiding?” Orla laughs as she pulls me into a big hug.
Since I wasn’t working an early shift tomorrow and tonight’s dinner had been a shitshow, I’d text Tiff and Orla to see if they wanted to grab some drinks at a bar near my father's house. I needed to talk to someone, and I wasn’t ready to go home. Had my father lost the plot, or was I being sensitive—like he always claimed?
“Guilty conscious?” Tiff snaps before giving me a lukewarm, one-armed hug.
“What?” I blink as Orla hands me the cocktail menu. “Guilty over what?”
“Nothing.” Rolling her eyes, Tiff brushes her hands over her dresses, not meeting my gaze. Grumbling something about needing to powder her nose, she heads to the bathrooms.
Turning to Orla, I frown and wave to the space where Tiff was just standing. “What was that?”
“I think she might have had a few drinks before coming out,” Orla confides in me, but it still doesn’t sit right. Tiff had been treating me like garbage for a while, acting just like my father. Was I just surrounded by gaslighting narcissists? Surely not?
When she comes back, we order some drinks and when I’m three margaritas deep, I finally open up and tell them about Chad’s little vanishing act. Tiff sits, tapping away on her phone, only giving me half of her attention while Orla tries to comfort me by rubbing my back.
I don’t think I realized how angry and sad about the whole thing I was until I laid it in front of them like one big trauma buffet. It wasn’t the end of our relationship that hurt me, it was the way he cut me out without a word. I wanted to end what we had so that we both had closure, but Chad just disappeared like a thief in the night.
“So, he just vanished?” Orla scoffs as she orders us another round of drinks. “What a scumbag.”
“He wouldn’t do that.” Tiff shakes her head vehemently, sitting a little slanted in her seat as she clutches her phone like it’s about to save her life. She hiccups. “There’s got to be a reason he’s hiding and you don’t even care what it is.”
My mouth drops open. Didn’t she know me at all? “Of course I care! What am I supposed to do Tiff, when he won’t speak to me and he ghosted me! Four years, and he couldn’t give me four minutes to end it properly?”
“God, Ava. I can’t do this!” Slamming her hands on the table, she gets to her feet unsteadily and grabs her handbag. “I’ve booked a cab to take me home.”
Before we can stop her or try to talk her out of leaving angrily, she weaves her way around the other tables and through the front entrance as if her ass is on fire.
Burying my face in my hands, I let out a tipsy laugh. “What the fuck? Why is she acting more hurt by my breakup than I am?”
Orla sits back, chewing on her bottom lip. Her forehead is furrowed as she taps her nail against the base of her glass.
With a heavy sigh, she scrubs a hand over her face. “I tried to tell you. When we went for that run the other week, I tried. At The Blue Butterfly…”
Rubbing my temples, I ignore the way my head throbs. Tequila, in any capacity, is clearly not my friend. “Oh, I’m sorry I stormed off that night. Is that why she’s so angry with me? But that wasn’t anything Tiff?—”
“I think Chad went home with Tiff and Jeremy that night,” she blurts out on an exhale, like verbal diarrhea.
Silence.
I try to process while the world keeps spinning around me. The conversations from nearby tables fill in the quiet.
Orla tries to place her hand over mine, but I shrug her off. “What? What do you mean?”
“As in went home with them.” She winces. “I saw him getting into the cab with Tiff, they were all laughing and joking and handsy…”
Flexing my fingers, I try to count ten in my head. There’s a bitterness in my mouth that hasn’t come from the margarita as I ask, “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
“I wasn’t sure. And I thought you were happy with him. And it had been four years. It seemed like you were about to get engaged and I didn’t want to blow that up on a hunch, but now I'm wondering…If you ever wanted to marry Chad.”
The words keep tumbling from her lips, and I’m surprised she finds time to breathe during her miniature rant.
Did I ever want to marry him? I kept putting him off, saying we’d get engaged soon. Saying that I wasn’t ready. It had been a commitment I couldn’t make.
She rubs her nose as she sniffs like she might be on the verge of tears. “The last time I saw Chad at breakfast, he said you’ve been painting again.”
“I never stopped.” I tilt my head, confused by what she’s trying to get at. Painting was my love. I couldn’t live without art in my life.
“You did, Ava,” she insists, taking my hand again and this time I let her. “You painted for work, but you stopped creating after your mother died.”
Shaking my head, I scrunch up my nose. “That’s not true.”
Orla grabs my cheeks, making me stare into her gray eyes. “When was the last time you lost yourself on a canvas?”
Blinking, I try to remember. When was the last time I’d lost hours or days to the piece I was working on? When did I last have paint staining my skin and a house full of canvases.
Quietly, I whisper, “The series I did for a project about decaying plants.”
Nodding, she lets go of my face. “Which was almost five years ago. After your mom passed and right before you met Chad.”
Safe, dependable Chad.
He was my security blanket while I worked through my grief and dealt with my father. Chad was the person who helped me keep my head above water while I healed. I was never going to make him happy in the end because we always had a shelf life. He could never make me feel the way Eli does, because he wasn’t meant to be my forever.
With Elijah, I feel alive.
It isn’t enough just to paint; I want to use my fingers to push the pigment into the canvas, pliable, soft, wet, raw. I want to feel it dry on my skin, cracking and flaking as it scatters like confetti. Eli changes everything. He makes me taste the colors. Feel every fiber of the canvas.
“I’m so sorry I never saw it; I didn’t realize until it started unraveling. When I thought Chad was cheating on you, and he said you were painting again and Tiff was mad at you…being a jealous bitch. It clicked into place just how unhappy you were.” Orla’s sobs as she rocks next to me.
Her words had sobered me up, but clearly the same can’t be said for her as she cries. The guilt was clearly eating at her, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond.
Her voice cracks. “I’m sorry. I am so so sorry.”
“I need to go home. I need time to think.” Booking a taxi on my phone, I push to my feet. Coming here, I’d hope to be vindicated in my hurt. Supported. Instead, I was a little numb to it all. As I move away from the table, I pause. Something still didn’t add up. “If he’d cheated on me that night, why did he suddenly vanish now?”
Orla sniffs loudly, wiping at her mascara-stained cheeks. “Tiff seems to think someone made him.”
“Who would…oh.”
There was one man I knew who had the power to make someone vanish.