by Lexi Blake
“You’ve been with them a long time.”
“Yeah, I like this kind of legal work. I like helping clients build businesses and lives and families. I make sure they’re safe.” She stopped at the top of the staircase. “Not that I did a good job this time.”
Margarita stepped in front of her, the phone down now. “You are not responsible for this.”
“Aren’t I?” She hated to say it, but she had to. They’d found nothing. Why would Kristoff Paloma murder Portia if she was the target of his latest con? He would want her alive so he could potentially blackmail her. “If Trey killed Portia, I am absolutely responsible. I helped make the decision to keep him out of an institution. I sided with Portia when Oscar and Cressida wanted to put him in a hospital. I think if I’d argued with her, Portia might have been persuaded. She wouldn’t have wanted to, but I could have swayed her that it was best for her family. If I’d done that, would she be alive today?”
Margarita shook her head. “You can’t ask yourself those questions. Look, I’ve been an attorney for a long time. Well, it feels that way at least. I worked in corporate for years. I helped Drew Lawless build his business, but I wanted something more. When the chance came to move over into criminal law, I took it. And it is fascinating and invigorating, and I’ve never felt as low as I have when I fail. It’s inevitable because sometimes we’re representing criminals. But they’re human, too. One of my first cases was a woman with two kids. She’d been brutalized by her husband, but she didn’t make a move on him until he slapped their son one night. She waited until he fell asleep and she shot him.”
Isla could guess the rest of the story. “She was convicted because he was helpless when she attacked.”
“Oh, yes. I brought in everyone I could. I threw every expert I could find at that jury. The sad thing is, if he’d been awake he likely would have fought, and he had a hundred and fifty pounds on her. If she’d run with the kids, he could have taken her to court to get them back. She had no money, no resources, and only one way in her mind to protect her children. And all my schooling, all my passion and expertise, couldn’t keep her out of jail. I couldn’t keep her children from being raised by her in-laws, who produced an abusive son of a bitch in the first place. I always wonder if I screwed up during jury selection or if I should have pressed her harder to take a plea. I tried, but she couldn’t stand the idea of being away from her kids.”
“It sounds like you did everything you could.”
“And you did, too,” Margarita insisted. “We make decisions at the time that later seem wrong, but you can’t know what would have happened. If you do your job with all good intent, with all your heart and soul, you have to be at peace with the results of your work. Maybe not happy or content, but at peace. A smart man taught me that.”
Isla could guess. “David.”
“Yeah, he was like me. He had one career and decided he needed something that fed his soul more. The trouble is when you put your soul out there, you get hurt as much as you get fed, but it’s worth it because at least you know you’re doing something important.”
She nodded. At the time her instincts had told her Trey was harmless to anyone but himself. It was the heavy weight of others’ suspicions that pressed on her. She was being forced to think like David would be and coming up with nothing that would sway a jury.
“Okay, let’s keep going.” Margarita brought the phone up again.
Isla started walking. “By the time I checked Trey’s room and came back out, I knew the sounds had to be coming from Portia’s room. I ran down the hallway. Again, I wasn’t thinking about anything but getting to whoever was screaming. I had to hope it was a cry for help. Oh, I knew deep down it was grief, anger, pain. But I pushed through. I guess I thought knowing was better than not knowing.”
Margarita nodded encouragingly. “And all of this happened in a couple of minutes?”
“Yes. I would say it was no more than a moment or two between me entering the penthouse and getting to Portia’s bedroom door. I did stop there.”
“Was it open?”
She nodded and stared at that door ahead of her. “It was about halfway open. I did pause because the sound was so much closer. I think this was the first time I was really scared.”
“But you went in.”
She pushed the door open and though the place had been picked up, the carpet pulled out, and the marble cleaned, she could still see the blood everywhere. “Someone had trashed the place. It was like a bull in a china shop. They removed drawers from her dresser and desk. There were papers everywhere and clothes all over the place. I kept moving because the moans were coming from the bathroom. That’s where I saw him. And her. He was holding her and there’s no question in my mind that she was dead. No one could lose that much blood. It was savage.”
“Did you say anything to him?” Margarita kept the phone steady.
“No. He didn’t look up. He was holding her close. I don’t think he knew I was there. I kind of lost it and I ran.” She turned and started to back out. “I meant to go and call the police. It’s weird but I didn’t think about my cell. It was in my pocket, but what I was going for was the landline in the kitchen. I don’t know why. It was first thing I thought of. I hate that I panicked.”
“But you didn’t make it to the kitchen.”
She stepped back out and suddenly remembered what she hadn’t before. The light. That light had been coming from the wrong place. The hair on her arms stood up as she remembered why she’d retreated. “I threw up in the potted plant and then I saw that light. God, why didn’t I remember it? I can’t remember if it was on when I came in, but it was definitely on when I ran out of Portia’s room. There was a light on in the kitchen. The overhead in the kitchen is very bright. The living room is all lamps. You can’t see the actual kitchen from here. It’s under the stairs. But there was a light down below and I remember that it suddenly went off and I went still. God, Margarita, I think the killer was still here.”
“And if the killer was in the kitchen, he couldn’t be Trey.”
“He couldn’t have done it.” Guilt swamped her. “God, why didn’t I remember that until now? No one is going to believe me. They’ll think I’m covering for him. How could I have forgotten?”
“Because you experienced a traumatic event. We can get the best psychiatrists in the country to testify about lost time. Your brain shut down in the face of pure fear. It’s how you could have been frozen but not remembered the time passing. This is something we could work with. Can we go down to the kitchen? I want to see where the killer could have gotten out. Is there any way you caught a glimpse of him?”
The terror of the moment hit her. “Not that I remember. Now that I’m here, I recall trying to make myself very small. I shrank back against the wall like I could hide. I could smell my own sick because I was trying to put that plant between me and him. I thought he would come back up the stairs and take me like he’d taken Portia.”
What she didn’t say, couldn’t say, was that she’d known no one would cry for her. No one would wail the way Trey had wailed. No one would miss her like they’d lost a piece of their soul, and that meant she hadn’t truly lived. She’d stayed there because she was afraid. So afraid that she’d missed something and couldn’t leave this life without it.
Now she knew what she’d missed. She’d cared about Austin, loved him in a girl’s way, but what she felt for David went beyond. Beyond youth. Beyond crush. Beyond yearning. There was a connection that came from a mature soul, that came from knowing this was the part of her that was missing and now made whole.
Margarita was right there with her, a hand on hers, letting her know she wasn’t alone. “It’s okay. You’re all right. And, Isla, you’ve given us a lot. I’m going to call Erin. You’ve given us a time. We can request the CCTV footage around the same time and see what we come up with.”
Isla moved down the stairs. It wasn’t at all what she’d done that night. No, that night she’d cowered, but now she was moving. Now she wasn’t afraid, though she felt a deep guilt in her gut that she’d hesitated that night.
Margarita followed her. “Did you call the cops on your cell phone?”
“I did. It took me a while, but I called them. Miranda messaged me. That’s what brought me out of my stupor. I have the most ridiculous text message sound and it brought me out of it. Then I got up and called the cops. I couldn’t leave Miranda down there waiting.”
She needed to stand in the kitchen and know the killer had been there, too.
She got to the ground floor and stopped because she heard someone at the front door. It came open and Oscar walked through.
“I should have known you would be here.” Oscar came in all swagger, but he stopped and looked around, momentarily silent.
Miranda was behind him. She stopped, too, glancing up at the stairs as though she could see her mother’s bedroom. She shook it off quickly, plastering a smile on her face that didn’t reach her eyes. “Isla, I’m glad you’re here. Are you okay? I can’t believe how the press is fucking you over. Are you seeing that hot lawyer guy?”
“She is,” Margarita said with a smile.
“I am.” She felt the need to speak for herself. Somehow David was hers. She’d spent years and years on the outside and David was something different. David was more. It was insane how possessive she felt about him, how much she believed he belonged to her.
“Awesome, Isla’s got a boyfriend. That’s not what we’re here about. We came to grab a few things and one of those things is Mom’s copy of the will. It should be in the safe. I’m going to prove you manipulated Mom into writing that will so you could steal our inheritance.” Oscar was still an asshole.
Isla didn’t engage the crazy. It was her new mantra. She turned and walked down the long hall that led to the kitchen. Margarita followed her.
It didn’t matter what Oscar did. She needed to follow this through.
“What are you doing here?” Oscar wasn’t letting up.
“I’m going back over that night.” It was good Miranda was here. “Miranda, did you get worried when I didn’t come back?”
“I panicked when you didn’t come back,” she admitted. “But I waited. I thought you were talking to them, dealing with something crazy my dad had done. I broke down when you called and told me the cops were coming.”
“And what did you think then?” Oscar asked. “What did you think had happened?”
Miranda shook her head as she looked at her brother. “I thought something terrible had gone wrong and there had been an accident.”
“Bullshit,” he shot back, getting into his sister’s space. “Tell me the truth, damn it. Stop lying to yourself.”
Miranda held her ground. “Fuck you, Oscar.”
“Tell the truth,” he insisted. “What did you think? In the moment that Isla told you Mom was dead, what was the first thought that went through your head? Don’t fucking lie.”
“I thought he’d killed her. Is that what you want to hear? Yes. Yes, I did. I thought he’d finally gone insane and killed her,” Miranda shouted.
Isla started to move toward Miranda, but she held a hand out, stopping her.
Oscar pointed his sister’s way. “I knew it. I knew all that shit about how much you love Dad is nothing but a front so Mom didn’t get upset with you. I knew you did it to make me look bad.”
“I said it because I love my father,” she shot back. “I said it because I didn’t abandon him the minute he became human. I have no idea what’s wrong with you. He says one thing in all the years of loving you, of taking care of you in a way very few people on this earth get taken care of, and yet it wasn’t enough. No one could ever love you enough. You needed . . . god, I don’t know. Drama. Strife. Well, guess what. If you feed off negativity, I’ll give you some. I hate you, Oscar. I’m going back to my dorm. You can stay at Cressy’s or whatever. I don’t care.”
Oscar stopped, the arrogant look fleeing his face. “I’m not trying to piss you off. I just think you should face the truth.”
Miranda turned and kept walking. She never once looked back.
Oscar turned on Isla. “You had to be here, didn’t you?”
Isla was done with Oscar. “Don’t you pin this on me. You know, I’ve watched you since you were a teenager. You’ve never once taken responsibility for anything that goes wrong with your life. When you wrapped your brand-new car around a tree, it was the deer’s fault. When you got caught smoking pot, it was your friend’s fault. Anyone but you. The time is coming that you’ll do something or say something that you can’t take back, that nothing will fix, and you won’t have anyone to blame but yourself.”
“I’m sure you would love that,” he replied.
Anger thrummed inside her. At one point, she’d looked at Oscar like a little brother. Now she just wanted to punch him. “I wouldn’t. That’s the crazy part. I don’t hate you. I simply no longer care. And you need to think seriously about fighting me on the will. It’s ironclad. Your mother made sure of it. If you decide to fight me, everything freezes. That allowance you get, frozen. The apartment that’s paid for out of your parents’ account, frozen. I suggest you get on board with the plan and be a good boy and when you’re thirty, I’ll happily hand over your trust fund and you can blow through it in a year or two, and when you come back to me for more, I’ll send you on your way with nothing. You see, what you forget, but that your mother remembered, was how important it is to make something of yourself. That trust is all you get.”
“But there are millions extra. And the companies . . . they’re worth a ton,” Oscar said.
“And your sister will inherit them because she’ll run them, and not into the ground,” Isla replied. “You won’t see a dime of that money because you’ve never once worked for it. Miranda helped your parents set up most of those companies. She’ll be in charge of all of this someday and you pissed her off. That day I talked about might be here sooner than anyone could have imagined.”
There was a chime of the private phone that connected the penthouse to the doorman. Margarita stepped away to pick up the call.
Oscar squared off with Isla. “My aunt’s lawyer will have this fixed in no time.”
She had him in checkmate. Portia had loved her kids, but she’d known their flaws as well. “And if I told you your mother put a clause in the will that states plainly that if you challenge the will, you get nothing, will you still roll those dice? Because it’s there. Like I said, she knew you. She loved you, but she knew she had to protect you from yourself.”
His face had gone red. “She wouldn’t have done that. You did it.”
He had no idea how these things worked. “I didn’t write the will, Oscar. I can’t be the executor of the will and write it, too. That would be a conflict of interest. You think you’re suing me, but what you’re doing is suing your own estate. And I hope Cressida has the money for a lawyer because I won’t allow the estate to pay to sue itself. Good luck with that.”
His lip curled up and his hand flashed out in a hard arc. Pain shocked through her system as he slapped her. She gasped, her hand going up to cradle the left side of her face. She looked up at him. “Back off. You back off right now and I might—and I mean might—not call the cops and charge you with assault. I understand that you’re under a lot of stress, but if you even move my way again, I won’t be responsible for what happens. I won’t slap you, Oscar. I’ll break a couple of bones and then we’ll see how you feel about hitting women.”
Oscar’s eyes widened and he took a step back. “Isla, I’m so sorry. Oh my god. I didn’t mean to do that. I’ve never hit anyone before.” His hands were shaking. “Ice. I think I should get you some ice.”
“Maybe you should leave before I lose my tempe
r.” She was holding on by a thin thread. The need to strike back was right there, but it wouldn’t solve anything.
Oscar turned, his eyes wide. “I’m hurting everyone. Ever since Dad got sick, I can’t stop lashing out. I don’t know how to handle it. And my mom . . .”
“Would be ashamed of you right now.”
He nodded. “She would be ashamed of me for a lot of things.”
Margarita walked back in, her eyes going from Isla to Oscar as if trying to figure out where the tension was coming from. “The police are on their way up.”
Oscar went white. “How did they know?”
Isla rolled her eyes. He could be overly dramatic, but at least he’d backed down. He looked like the kid he was now, scared and unsure of what happened next. Like the Oscar she knew when he was a kid. He hadn’t always been this way. Once they’d been friends. Once they’d felt like siblings. “They’re not here because you hit me.”
“He hit you?” Margarita asked, looking from one to the other. She stepped in when she saw Isla’s cheek. “He hit you. Do you have any idea what David’s going to do when he sees this? He’s going to lose his shit.”
“I did it. I hit her. It’s my fault. All my fault.” Oscar pulled the cold pack out of the freezer. He wrapped a kitchen towel around it. “I’m sorry. I’m . . . I’ve lost my damn mind the last few weeks. I’m so sorry, Isla. Like I said, I’ve never hit anyone in my life. I can’t believe I did that. Here. Mom kept them around for Dad when his elbow flared up.”
She put it to her face, glaring his way. “You better be happy the cops are on their way up and I’m a good attorney. We can’t let them see how divided we are, but don’t think for a second that we’re done talking about this. When they leave, I’m going to explain how this will go from now on.”