“No!” I raised my voice—the same tone I’d admonished my kids with when they were younger. “That is the truth. I put their addresses in there because I needed to remember them. That’s all.”
“Were you meeting them to plan the murder of my father?”
“I told you, I didn’t do it,” I said in a ferocious whisper. Facts were facts. I needed him to remember what was true. “I told you I didn’t kill him. Are you ever going to believe me?”
He scrubbed a hand over his chin. “I know you didn’t pull the trigger, Mom. Everyone knows that. But you’ve told me other things that have turned out not to be true. So I want to know this—were TJ and Kenny Nelson working with Stefano? Were they his accomplices?”
Don’t say a word.
“Were you? Were you working with these men?”
Keep it inside.
I gripped the edge of the table, pleading. “I didn’t do it. I told you I didn’t do it.”
“Were you involved?” he continued, a dog with a bone, unwilling to relent, unable to let go. “Like the cops say you were. Like the state of Nevada says you were.”
In his eyes I saw his desperation. I sensed it. And I felt it in my heart. Everything I’d done, I’d done for my children. And I wondered if this, this I could do for him.
As dangerous as it was, as risky as it was, perhaps I had to give this to my son.
Perhaps I could save him from his own wild torture.
“I didn’t do it,” I said. But that wasn’t entirely true.
65
Ryan
Wear her down. Just fucking wear her down. “Did you hire Jerry Stefano to kill my father? Did you? Did you hire him and plan it with those three guys? Did you go to their houses and plan the crime down to every last detail with the broker and the shooter and the goddamn getaway driver? Did you kill him for his life insurance money, like they put you in Stella McLaren for?” I asked, my voice rising with each question.
I ran my hands through my hair, tugging hard on it because I was at the end of my rope, but I couldn’t let go. “Don’t you understand what this has done to me? I don’t trust people. I don’t believe people. I don’t get close to people. Because of this. Because of what happened,” I said, trying a new approach. Go for the heart. Try to pierce that damn organ in her, or whatever’s left of it. “But, Mom, I finally met someone. Okay? I finally met a woman and, my God, I am in love with her, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” I softened momentarily as I thought of my sweet, sexy Sophie. I’d come so far with her, she’d shown me so much, and she’d opened up so many possibilities in my life and helped me feel wonderful, amazing, incredible things. I hated the prospect of slingshotting back to who I was before—closed off, shut down, and obsessed.
“I need some clarity for once. I need it so I can have a normal life with the woman I love. Don’t you want that for me? Don’t you want me to be happy? Because I do, Mom. I want it so damn badly that I’m here, asking you to just tell me the truth.”
I waited. Seconds passed, spooling into minutes as my mother sat like a statue. Finally, she broke her frozen stance, uncrossing her arms and jerking her head away.
I threw up my hands. This was a lost cause. I was getting nowhere. Sophie was right. I’d have to find the answers myself, because I wasn’t getting them from my mother. I pushed back my chair and stood up to leave. I bent my head to my mom and kissed her forehead. “I love you, Mom, but I need to go,” I whispered.
She grabbed my wrists, her bony fingers circling them. Her hands were papery and rough. “Do you love her?” she asked.
“Yes. So much.”
She exhaled. Deeply. It sounded like relief. “I’m happy for you, baby.”
“Me too.”
“All I want is for you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” She gripped my hands tighter. “They told me they’d hurt you all.” Her voice was just a thread. “They told me they’d come after my babies if I said a word.”
I blinked. Holy shit. She was talking. I leaned closer, resting my chin on her head. “Said a word about what, Mom?” I asked, anticipation weaving a dangerous path through my blood.
“I tried to stop it.”
“Did you start it?”
A nod. I felt the barest hint of a nod of her head against mine. Holy shit. “I’m telling you this now because I love you. Because you said you need this to be happy. And all I’ve ever wanted is for my babies to be happy. But they made me go through with it, Ry. And that’s why I did it. I did it for all of you,” she said, and then the words rained down. “Please don’t stop seeing me; please don’t stop coming. I went through with it because I had no choice. They told me they’d hurt you if I didn’t go through with it.”
Like a wrecking ball to my gut, her admission walloped me. I stumbled and gripped the wall behind me. My head was swimming. It was a roiling sea. Eighteen fucking years were compressed into this moment. Her words echoed across the vast cavern of time, clanging through the days, the months, and the pages on the calendar, stabbing me with a million cuts. My own omissions. My own secrets. Most of all, my foolish hope that my mother wasn’t a murderer.
“You had him murdered?” The question tasted like dirt.
“I had to keep you safe.”
“Why did he have to die to keep us safe? He didn’t have to die.” But even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew there was no point to them. The decision had been made eighteen years ago—whether for drugs, for money, for her lover, or from fear. I might not ever know why she did it. All I knew for sure was that she did.
“I love you and your sister and your brothers so much, and I do, I still do. I swear, I love you so much. I love you, baby. I love you, Ryan.” She began weeping, a deep, dark keening sound like a bruised, battered thing heaving itself onto the shore, defeated.
Like me.
I’d traveled here hoping for an answer, but never expecting to get one.
Instead, I’d received her confession.
66
Ryan
My legs were lead. My head was concrete. My heart had mutinied. It was somewhere lost in time.
I made a beeline for the exit, pushing past Clara and the other correctional officers, putting blinders on to avoid the rest of the visiting families. The second I left the facility, the door falling shut behind me, I crumpled on the hot stone steps. I didn’t care one lick that you could fry an egg on them.
Let me burn. Let me feel. Let the pain erase the foolishness, the shame, the utter shock.
I dropped my forehead into my hands, replaying my mother’s last words. Wishing I could go back and redo them, erase them, rewrite them.
Make them make sense.
Not that this—my life visiting a women’s correctional center each month—would ever make much sense. I shut my eyes, but all I saw was the blood in the driveway. All I heard were the screams when she found the body.
Were those fake too? Had she practiced them? Did she go to some abandoned house somewhere to rehearse her reaction to finding her husband shot dead?
My stomach seized, and I coughed—a dry, hacking bark.
Then, I flinched.
A hand was on my back, rubbing the space between my shoulder blades. I lifted my head to see Clara. “Rough visit?” she asked gently, kneeling next to me.
“Yeah,” I muttered.
She nodded sagely. As if she’d seen it all. “That happens sometimes. Can I get you a Coke from the vending machine? Or a Diet Coke?”
I shook my head, then realized my throat was parched. “Coke would actually be great.”
Two minutes later, she returned with two cold sodas. With a weary sigh, she settled in next to me on the steps, handed me a can, and cracked open hers, taking a hearty gulp. I did the same, narrowing my focus to the coldness of the beverage and the bubbles in the drink. “She did it,” I said heavily as I turned the can around in my hand.
Clara patted my knee. “They all did it, Ryan. That’s why
they’re here.”
“Fuck,” I muttered. “I really thought . . .”
“Of course you did. You love her. She’s your mother. If you listen to the ladies in there,” she said, pointing her thumb at the concrete building, “there’s not a guilty one among ’em.” Clara shook her head in amusement, her curly brown hair bouncing with her. “Amazing, isn’t it? A whole facility full of the innocent? Judge made a mistake. Someone else did it. Framed, I was framed,” she said, rattling off the stories the inmates no doubt told.
The last one seared into me like a cattle brand.
“That one. That was hers,” I said. Framed.
Sure, there were details I didn’t know, like twisty rat tails coiled together, which would likely take years to unravel. I didn’t know why those men made her go through with the murder, or what their motivation was. I didn’t know precisely who played what role. I didn’t know how far back in time the planning went, or where the other two men were.
But I knew this much—my mother was involved in my father’s murder.
My eighteen-year obsession had an answer.
“You’ll still come see her, right?” Clara asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, what’s the point?”
Clara answered in a plain, simple voice. “That’s what we do for family.”
“But she did it,” I pointed out. The specifics didn’t need to be outlined. The who, what, when, where, and why could be sorted out by others.
“Right,” she said slowly. “But that’s not why you come see her. You don’t come see her because she’s innocent of a crime. You come because you’re a good man. Because you have compassion. Because even the criminals of this world need someone who cares about them. Maybe she’s in for life and she’ll never have a chance to be redeemed on the outside. But maybe the fact that you come here helps her to be a better person in this place. Maybe she finds her redemption behind bars, because of you.”
“Do they? Find redemption?”
Clara shrugged. “Some do. Some don’t. You still gotta come to work every day, right?” she said, then drained more of her soda.
I did the same, then rose. “Better hit the road.”
She nodded. “I’ll be looking for you around these parts.”
I managed a half-hearted smile of acknowledgment. I didn’t know if I’d ever be in these parts again. I didn’t know where the ground was, where the sky ended, or how to find my way back home after hearing her confession.
The only thing I knew for sure was how to avoid the speed traps, so I turned on an app to do just that when I got in my truck.
A little more than four hours later, I’d dodged a speeding ticket, but hadn’t been able to stop playing the cruel song on repeat in my head—they made me do it, they made me do it, they made me do it.
Did she set the wheels in motion, then try to cancel? But they forced her? How would that even work?
Gripping the wheel tighter, I cursed up a storm. I’d been such a fool. For so damn long, I’d clung to a big what-if. That possibility had tied me up, tethered me, and obsessed me.
Today, I was cut loose. Left adrift and unmoored.
Glancing at the green sign on the highway, I registered that I was five miles from my house. I wanted to see my dog, but I also didn’t want to be alone. The closer the truck wheels came to the exit, the less I wanted to be by myself.
I needed company. I needed someone.
Though I desperately wanted to see Sophie, I didn’t want to see her like this. Not when my head was messier than it had ever been, and not when my heart was twisted into tattered strands.
The time I’d spent with Sophie over the last few weeks was like shedding a skin, molting my old self, leaving it behind.
But now?
Hell, I didn’t know if I was coming or going. If I was the guy I’d been before or the man I’d become with Sophie.
Limbo. This was the utter hell of limbo. I was stuck in it like quicksand, and I didn’t want to drag her down with me.
I needed the three people in my life who’d known me before, during, and after.
As I turned on my blinker to exit the highway, I called Shannon and gave her the rundown, and she told me she’d gather the crew.
Then my phone rang, and it was Sophie.
67
Sophie
Passport? Check.
Luggage packed? Done.
Flight checked into? Good to go.
After zipping my suitcase, I left a small toiletry kit on top of it, which I would tuck inside tomorrow morning. Then I called the car service that would take me to the airport at the crack of dawn, to confirm that everything was set for my pickup.
When I hung up, I scrolled across my home screen in case it revealed a missed call from Ryan. It had been ten hours since he’d left, and I was eager to know how his day had gone. The more time passed, the more nervous I became about what had happened in Hawthorne. But I wasn’t a teenager debating whether to call a boy I liked. I was a grown woman dating a man, so I dialed his number as I walked into my kitchen to grab a glass of water.
“Hey,” he said, his voice hollow.
I had never heard him sound so dead. “Hey to you. So how did it go?”
He sighed heavily. “Let me pull over.”
The sound of the car engine stopping greeted my ears as I turned on the tap. Then he told me his mother had confessed. I gripped the counter and set down the water glass. Words sputtered out. “Oh my God, Ryan. I can’t believe she told you that. How? Why? How are you doing?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know how I’m doing. It’s like my world is upside down. Because I believed in the possibility of her maybe being innocent for the longest time, and now it’s been twisted and turned inside out. I don’t know what to do now, or what to think about anything,” he said in that same monotone.
My heart ached for him, and I wanted to comfort him and hold him close. I wanted to be the one he leaned on. “Do you want me to delay my trip so that we can spend time together? So I can be there with you as you deal with this? I can easily push my flight back a few days if you need me.”
If you need me.
Oh God, I desperately wanted him to need me. My pulse raced with longing for his yes.
“No,” he said quickly. “I can’t let you do that.”
“I don’t mind. I want to be here for you,” I said, trying to comfort him.
“It’s okay. I need to go see my sister and brothers now anyway.”
“Of course,” I said, and I understood logically why he’d want to go see them. I just wished my stupid heart didn’t hurt the tiniest bit that he hadn’t needed me. “Go. See them,” I said in my cheeriest voice. He didn’t need to detect my worry right now. He had enough on his plate.
“I should probably call your brother too. I guess I’ll see you . . .” he said, but his voice trailed off.
I picked up the thread, crossing my fingers. “Do you still want to come by later? Or do you want me to come over?” I asked, ready to kick myself for sounding like a lovesick teenager.
“Soph,” he said, his voice heavy. “I’m not in a good place right now. I think I just need to give John the news, then be with Shan, Michael, and Colin. Everything—the visit, the pattern, the stuff she said—it’s hitting me hard and fucking with my head again. Let me deal with this, and then I’ll see you.”
I gulped. “Of course, of course. This is a huge thing, and you need to talk to them.”
“When do you get back from your trip?”
“End of next week.”
“I’ll see you then. We’ll do something special. Finally ride the roller-coaster at New York–New York together. Okay?” But he didn’t sound as if he was looking forward to our reunion. He sounded as if he didn’t care.
“Sure,” I said, nodding several times, trying to convince myself that he still cared.
“Yeah. I just . . . right now . . .”
“You need to take a ste
p back,” I said, filling in the gap.
“Not from you. Just from . . .”
“Feeling so much?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I just need to see them right now.”
“You go. Drive safely. I love you.”
“I love you,” he said, but he didn’t sound as if he believed it, and the deadness in his tone made me want to cry.
When he hung up, I let the tears fall, even though they felt selfish, even though they felt like weakness. The tears fell for myself, and for him too. For all he was dealing with. For this new bombshell dropped in his lap. His family couldn’t catch a damn break, and I hated that the tragedy in his past was tearing new fissures in his present.
A little later, after I’d dabbed my cheeks and dried my eyes, I let the reel of the last few weeks play, trying to understand the man. He’d been private and circumspect at first. When pushed, he’d become more open and vulnerable. But what if the talking was more the exception than the norm?
Had he returned to the man he was before?
Three dates and out. Over and done. Protect your heart. Don’t get close to anybody but your family.
Even then, family could stab you in the back. He’d learned the hard way.
Call me overdramatic. Call me a conclusion-leaper. Or call me a cool analyst of the situation.
That very morning, Ryan had left me a note saying he would come see me tonight. Because I can’t stay away from you, Sophie. I swear, I can’t.
I could live without seeing him tonight. I wasn’t seventeen. But what worried me was the complete 180-degree shift he’d made in ten hours. He’d left his house determined to find his way back to me that night, no matter what. But when everything changed, so did his desire for me. His family story had prevented him from getting close to me in the first place. His family background wasn’t going away. It was only becoming more complicated, with more players, more names, and more threads.
My Sinful Desire (Sinful Men Book 2) Page 25