Chaos

by Timberlyn Scott

Thanksgiving had gone by in a blur of events. Payton hadn’t mentioned it and neither had I. My father hadn’t done anything special for dinner that night, or if he had, they hadn’t invited me. From what I could tell, if I wasn’t spending Christmas with Payton, I’d probably be spending it at home alone. Possibly with Leif or Toby and their parents.

  “Wherever you are, I’ll be,” I reassured Payton, touching her knee beneath the table.

  “Y’all are sickeningly cute, you know that?” Chloe asked, grinning from ear to ear.

  “It’s no different than having to watch you make goo-goo eyes at Toby all the time,” Payton retorted.

  “I do not make goo-goo eyes at him,” Chloe said defensively, glancing over at Toby and, yes, making what Payton referred to as goo-goo eyes.

  After that comment, and Chloe’s ensuing embarrassment, the laughter died down somewhat, and we finished our meal. When Payton offered coffee, everyone’s attention turned to me. Why, I had no idea.

  “Is something wrong?” Chloe asked, watching Payton retreat to the kitchen while Aaron helped her carry the empty cartons and plates.

  “Depends on how you look at it,” I lied. Yes, there was something wrong. And it didn’t matter how the story was spun, it was still very, very wrong.

  But I needed to wait until Payton returned. She was like my backbone, my rock in all of this, and I couldn’t imagine sharing this news with anyone without her at my side.

  Unable to sit still with so many eyes on me, I pushed my chair back and grabbed the last of the food cartons and plates from the table. I found Payton in the kitchen, pulling coffee mugs out of the cabinet. She tossed me a small smile over her shoulder while Aaron took the cups she’d retrieved and carried them into the dining room.

  We waited, just the two of us alone, for the coffee to finish brewing while the others talked in hushed tones not far from where we stood.

  “Are you ready to do this?” Payton asked, putting her hand on my arm.

  “No,” I told her truthfully. “But I wasn’t ready to tell you when I did, either.”

  “They’re gonna have your back on this, Sebastian. Trust me.”

  I sure as hell hoped she was right. Because if not, I might just be looking at an extended vacation at the mental health facility.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Payton

  I hoped that no one could see how incredibly nervous I was. For the last hour, while we’d shared dinner with our friends, I had gone over the topic we’d be discussing more than once in my head. Hell, I’d gone over it more than ten times, and no matter how many times I laid it out in front of me, it still made me hesitant to tell anyone.

  Not because I didn’t think they’d believe Sebastian. If anything, I think Toby and Leif were going to have a couple of aha moments. After all, they’d been friends with Sebastian since he’d moved into Conrad Trovato’s world. They might not know every gory detail of his life, but I had a feeling they knew more than they ever let on.

  That didn’t mean I thought they’d ever suspect Conrad or Lauren of doing something so heinous. And again, these were still just suspicions, but I knew we had to get to the bottom of them. Quickly.

  Up to this point, neither Sebastian nor I had done anything with the information, and Lauren seemed to be escalating. Whatever she had against Sebastian, she was using this current situation to push him farther away.

  Sebastian retrieved the coffeepot when it finished brewing, carrying it into the dining room where the others were still sitting around the table. I took my seat, and he handed the coffeepot off to Chloe, who did the honors of pouring for those who wanted some.

  “Are you going to enlighten us, bro?” Leif asked, his gaze locked tightly with Sebastian’s as he spoke.

  I remembered the conversation regarding Aaliyah that he and I’d had the day he’d come home. I had mentioned that I didn’t think she had ever received my message for her to call me. At that time, I think Leif’s curiosity had been piqued. He seemed just as genuinely interested in what was going on now as he had been that day.

  “If I’m gonna do this, I need to start from the beginning,” Sebastian said, taking my hand and holding it between both of his on top of the table. I moved a little closer, making sure he knew I was there.

  “Sure thing,” Toby said, clearly realizing this was serious. His gaze darted back and forth across everyone at the table before landing on Sebastian.

  “Leif has known me since I was fourteen and moved in with Conrad. For the first fourteen years of my life, I didn’t know who my father was. My mother knew, but when I was born, after he’d tried to convince her to have an abortion early on, he told her that he didn’t want to have anything to do with me or her. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that my mother was seventeen when she got pregnant with me and Conrad was twenty-six and married. Trovato, Inc. hadn’t gotten too far off the ground at the time, but he was working on it. I doubt that spreading the word of him having an illegitimate kid with an underage girl would’ve been good for business, so he tried to pay my mother off.

  “Her emotions got the best of her, and she refused him, insisting that she go it alone, which she did until the day she died. We didn’t have any other family besides my mother’s sister, who didn’t visit often, but she did make an attempt to keep in touch. She had her own issues, and after I went to live with Conrad, I never heard from her again. My grandparents didn’t want to have anything to do with my mother from the moment she told them she was pregnant, claiming she was an embarrassment. Even with the odds stacked against us, my mother and I managed somehow.

  “It wasn’t until a short time before my mother died that I realized how bad things had gotten. We were about to be evicted from our apartment. My mother hadn’t paid rent in months, and the landlord was tired of giving her chances. She told me she was thinking about contacting Conrad about child support.”

  A collective gasp sounded at the table, and I knew that Chloe, Toby, and Leif had put two and two together the same way I had.

  “Did she ask him for money?” Chloe asked, moving closer to Toby while she watched Sebastian intently.

  “I had pestered her about it for days, but she never confirmed whether she did or not, but I think she did.”

  “Why do you think that?” Leif asked, his tone sympathetic and not at all combative.

  “My mother was very proud. She worked two jobs just to take care of me. She didn’t want anything for herself, never splurged. The only thing she worried about was having a roof over our heads and food on the table. For the most part, we had both, but things were getting harder for her. I knew that the last thing she wanted to do was to contact Conrad. And if she had thought there was any other way, she wouldn’t have.

  “But I don’t know if that ever happened. She died before I ever found out.”

  “How did she die?” Aaron asked, resting his forearms on the table and staring at Sebastian.

  “She was killed in a hit-and-run accident. The other driver was never located.”

  I noticed that Toby and Leif traded glances, but neither of them said anything.

  Squeezing Sebastian’s hand gently, I encouraged him to continue.

  “Maybe it’s because I need closure, I don’t know, but something has always nagged at me regarding her death. I’ve been suspicious since the day the cops showed up at our apartment to tell me she was dead. Even more so when Conrad swooped in and took me in. From day one, we’ve had a volatile relationship. I was broken when he found me, and he never tried to put me back together,” Sebastian said, glancing down at the table.

  My heart broke for him again. I was pretty sure I’d never get comfortable with this story.

  Sebastian took a deep breath and then continued. “Conrad married his first wife when he was twenty-three. They divorced when he was twenty-seven. I suspect it was because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Then he married his second wife when he was twenty-eight, less than eight months after his divorce was final. T
hey divorced when Conrad was thirty. I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling it had a lot to do with Lauren.”

  “Aaliyah’s mother,” Leif said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah. Lauren has worked for Conrad since the very beginning. She started out as his assistant, and she’s been in his life through every marriage and every divorce. When I first moved in with them, I was curious, so I looked it up. Conrad married Lauren when she was four months pregnant with Aaliyah. It’s safe to say that Lauren and I have never gotten along.

  “When I first moved in with them, she looked past me whenever I came into a room. I think she despised the fact that I’d come into their lives. No more than I despised her for being there, I assure you. It wasn’t long before I knew the ins and outs of my father’s business. I learned early on, and Toby and Leif can vouch for me, that I was good with cars. My father realized it, too.

  “But I was so pissed, so fucking angry.” Sebastian’s voice rose an octave. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Then one day after I’d been sent home for fighting, I heard the two of them talking. Lauren didn’t want me there. She tried to convince Conrad that I was a bad influence on Aaliyah, which, now that I think about it, I probably was.”

  Sebastian’s smile was sad. Again, I squeezed his hand.

  “Surprisingly, he didn’t have a talk with me like I thought he would. In fact, almost a year and a half went by before he made any effort to talk to me more than at the dinner table. By then, my anger and rage had been simmering for so long I didn’t know how to function without them. So when he decided to do me a favor and offer me a job, I decided to do him one better.”

  All eyes were on Sebastian, including mine.

  “I blackmailed my father.”

  I gasped. Sebastian had failed to mention that part to me.

  “I extorted money from him and a piece of Trovato, Inc. In return, I would keep his secret. I had a DNA test that proved he was my father, and I told him the press would have a field day if they found out. After all, I was about to be sixteen, and he’d kept me a secret all those years.”

  “No one knew he had a son?” Aaron asked incredulously.

  Toby was the one to chime in. “They all kept it under wraps. Including Sebastian.”

  “Seriously?” Chloe questioned.

  “Sebastian was one of those guys who didn’t let anyone get close,” Leif explained. “If it hadn’t been for the fact I wasn’t gonna spend my days worrying if he was going to go off on me, I wouldn’t be here today. The first time he tried to fight me, I put him in his place. He could’ve easily kicked my ass, I knew that much. But I didn’t give him a chance.”

  Sebastian smiled at Leif. “I still remember it. He probably saved me from myself.”

  “Did either of you have interaction with Lauren or Conrad?” I asked Toby and Leif directly.

  “Very little,” Leif admitted. “Let’s just put it this way … she’s never been the friendly type.”

  “Did you spend much time at Sebastian’s?” I asked them.

  “Probably more time than he spent at either of our houses. Although Lauren and Conrad were usually home, the place was big enough that we never had to see them.”

  “So you blackmailed him for money,” Chloe stated, steering the conversation back to the original topic.

  “A lot of money,” Sebastian admitted, motioning his hand around the room as though referencing the house. “If I never wanted to work again, I wouldn’t be hurting.”

  “In return, you told him you’d keep his secret? I find it hard to believe it was that big of a deal for him.” Chloe glanced over at me briefly before turning her attention back to Sebastian.

  “I don’t think he really gave a shit,” Sebastian said. “But Lauren didn’t want the secret to get out. She was finally Mrs. Conrad Trovato after all those years of sticking by his side waiting for him to come around. They had Aaliyah, and Lauren was all about the attention. For herself. I think she was the one to convince him to give in to my demands.”

  “A fifteen-year-old kid blackmailed Conrad Trovato,” Garrett muttered, the first thing he’d said since Sebastian had started talking. “Now I’ve seen it all.”

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Sebastian said, his tone turning dark.

  “What does that mean?” Chloe asked, her eyebrows raised in question.

  I turned my head to look at Sebastian, knowing that he wasn’t having an easy time explaining all of this.

  “I’ve spent the last eleven years living under Conrad’s thumb. Although I got what I wanted out of the deal, he still held the reins. We’ve fought every day for years, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. My relationship with Lauren is nonexistent mainly because we despise one another. The only person I could consider family, aside from Toby and Leif, is Aaliyah. We don’t have the best relationship, but that’s because of the fighting. She tries to steer clear of it, and I can’t necessarily blame her. But throughout all of this, I’ve also lived with something else. A suspicion that I can’t seem to shake.”

  “About your father?” Chloe questioned, leaning closer to Toby.

  I think she knew something big was coming. Based on the way Leif’s eyes had widened, I think he had already figured it out. I was surprised he hadn’t spoken up, but maybe he was like I had been, waiting for Sebastian to reveal it.

  “Yeah,” Sebastian said, nodding as he looked directly at Chloe, then his gaze drifted to Leif and lastly to Toby. “I’ve spent more than a decade wondering just why my mother died that night. The more I think about it, the more coincidental it seems. I truly believe she had reached out to Conrad for money. But he never had to pay up or worry about his secret getting out because she died. In a hit-and-run car accident with no witnesses.”

  “Oh, my God,” Chloe said, her voice small. “You think…?”

  “That my father killed my mother. Yeah. That’s exactly what I think.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sebastian

  The silence that followed my final statement made my stomach churn. I kept my eyes on Toby and Leif, flipping from one to the other, waiting for someone to say something.

  “Do you think that maybe it wasn’t Conrad?” Chloe asked.

  I was surprised by how engaged she’d been through the entire conversation. She was the only one who seemed to be peppering me with questions.

  “Do you think it might’ve been Lauren?” Toby asked before I could answer Chloe.

  I met Toby’s dark, stormy gaze. He was dead serious. And in that moment, I couldn’t have loved him more. He had always been like a brother to me, and the relief of knowing he wasn’t questioning my sanity was almost too much to bear.

  “I’m with Toby,” Leif added. “As much as I dislike your ol’ man, I’m leaning toward thinking Lauren had something to do with it.”

  “Seriously,” Toby added. “What would Conrad have to gain by offing her? But Lauren…”

  “Exactly,” Chloe added. “Lauren had everything to gain. If your mother did ask Conrad for money, then Lauren probably knew about it. If Lauren thought your mother was desperate enough to go public, then Lauren would have to endure that black cloud over her perfect life.”

  “I’m not sure that’s enough of a motive to kill someone,” Aaron stated. “Not that I don’t see where everyone’s coming from, but what if she’d gotten caught? Then it would’ve all come crashing down around her anyway.”

  “But no one was caught,” Leif tacked on.

  “That’s why we’re here,” Payton spoke up. “Obviously Sebastian needs closure, and we’re his family,” she said, speaking to everyone at the table. “But he’s not just bringing this up now to stir up shit.”

  I thought she was incredibly cute when she cursed; I had no idea why. I smiled, grasping her hand between both of mine, where I’d had it for the last half hour.

  “Did something happen?” Toby asked.

  “When we were in Vegas,” Payton began, “Conrad i
nsisted that I meet him and Lauren for breakfast. Without Sebastian. Lauren’s nephew, Trevor, was there. I only recently learned that Conrad was hiring him. It looks like he’s being put in Sebastian’s place.”

  “What does that mean? Like replacing you? Conrad’s gonna fire you?” Toby asked me directly.

  I glanced around at the others, realizing I hadn’t yet told them that I’d quit. “He can’t fire me,” I replied, “I already quit.”

  The table was silent for a moment, everyone looking at me as though I might have more to say. I didn’t. That was the gist of it. I quit. End of story.

  “What do we know about this guy?” Leif asked, breaking the silence, his face stern.

  “We know that he’s been brought up on charges of aggravated sexual assault,” I announced.

  Payton’s head turned toward me so fast I was surprised her neck didn’t hurt.

  “Are you serious?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I wonder if that was what Lauren was referring to when she said he’d been in some trouble but they’d gotten that taken care of.”

  “Money does buy a lot,” Chloe offered.

  “Anyway,” Payton continued, turning her attention back to the others. “Monday morning, when I was at work, Conrad confronted me about Sebastian moving out and quitting his job. He tried, for the second time, mind you, to convince me that Sebastian was unstable.”

  “Right,” Toby snorted. “Sebastian’s the unstable one.”

  “I told him I was uncomfortable with the conversation and eventually walked out on him. But Lauren called and…” Payton’s sentence trailed off as she looked down at the table. “Lauren threatened me. Told me that if I wanted to keep my job, I needed to tell Sebastian that he wasn’t welcome back in her family now that he had officially severed ties.”

  “What a bitch!” Chloe exclaimed, causing Aaron and Garrett to laugh.

  “You could say that. She called me again today. Told me that I didn’t need to bother coming to work tomorrow if I didn’t tell him.”