by Becca Steele
Iced coffee. Strong. Suddenly, I was really thirsty. “Thanks.”
She gave me a brief smile, then disappeared.
The coffee worked its magic. Half an hour later, I was definitely still drunk, but I wasn’t seeing double. I guessed I’d been out of it for longer than I thought, because the house was noticeably emptier than it had been, and the music was playing at a volume that meant I didn’t have to shout to be heard. Making my way into the kitchen, I poured myself a pint of water, then knocked it back, noticing Cassius heading towards me, for once without a girl all over him.
“Lost your touch, Cass? Not getting any tonight?”
He raised a brow at me. “I could say the same about you.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, well.” My voice turned serious without me meaning it to. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
He gave me that same look of concern he’d given me at the beginning of the night, so I added, “Fuck it. Let’s find…Laura, was it? And her friend?”
“Yeah.” A grin spread across his face, and he tapped his bottle against my empty pint glass. “Last I saw, they were outside.”
A flash of pink hair appeared in my peripheral vision, and I paused. “You go on out. I just wanna check something.”
“Alright.” He sauntered out of the sliding doors onto the deck, and I heard his “Hi, ladies” and a high-pitched squeal. I doubted he’d even notice if I was there or not.
Instead of following him out, I trailed behind the girl with the pink hair like the stalker that I was, all the way through the house and out of the front door.
What the fuck I was doing, I didn’t know.
Call it temporary insanity. Something was pulling me towards her, and I didn’t know why. All I knew was, I needed to be near her.
She paused next to the driver’s-side door of her car, turning around to face me. Her expression was impossible to read. “You can stop following me now.”
“Where are you going, Lena?” I came to a stop right in front of her, our bodies almost touching.
“H-home.” Her voice came out all breathy.
“Why?” I planted one hand against the door of her car, next to her shoulder, and the other…fuck, I guess I was still drunk because it had a mind of its own, trailing up her arm. “Why?” I asked again, lowering my voice and dipping my head to run my nose down her cheek.
Her breath hitched, and her lips parted. “You’re drunk,” she managed.
“Not that drunk.”
“Drunk enough.” With a sudden surge of energy, she straightened up, giving me a shove backwards. I stumbled on the gravel, caught off guard. Before I could recover, she slipped inside her car, locking the doors.
She sped away without a backwards look, and I went back inside, suddenly feeling way too sober and no longer in the mood to party.
Instead, I went to bed. Alone.
EIGHT
My fingers moved swiftly across the keys, navigating to the dark web chat room. After traversing the outer levels of security, I input the final password, and I was in.
I bypassed Xenon’s blinking message alert; he could wait. Instead, I clicked on Nitro’s name to open a new chat. I hesitated for a moment. Was I doing the right thing?
No. He had the right to know. As soon as I’d hacked into the footage from Alstone Docks and processed the video until the audio was clear, I knew I couldn’t sit on this.
There was the small chance that he might work out who I was, but I’d been careful to cover my tracks. Here in the hidden depths of the dark web, we remained completely anonymous, communicating on a regular basis but never revealing anything that could identify us in the outside world.
Not that Weston Cavendish would suspect who I was.
No one would.
I typed out a message, short and to the point.
Mercury: Thought you deserved to see this.
I attached the file, then hit Send and sat back.
Waiting for the fallout.
NINE
After a night of very little sleep, I stumbled downstairs, my eyes gritty and my stomach churning. After making a coffee, I made my way to the computer room to see if Xenon’s program had come up with anything useful. Nothing new, but there was a message waiting for me.
Mercury: Thought you deserved to see this.
There was a video file attached, and I clicked to open it.
And my whole world came crashing down.
I replayed the video, over and over again, attempting to make sense of it all. Footage from the docks where my brother had been shot by our crazy as fuck stepmother, Christine, earlier in the year. He’d survived, but she hadn’t, and that was the only good thing to come out of that fucking nightmare.
Despite the image being grainy and fuzzy, thanks to the darkness and the stormy conditions, the audio was clear. Christine’s voice played on repeat in my head, over and over again.
“One Cavendish down, three to go. I was originally going to let the boys live, but after tonight…no. I’m afraid I can’t risk keeping them alive.”
“One Cavendish down?” Winter had replied, her voice full of horror.
“Arlo’s wife was easy. The right words whispered in her ear, the open bottle of pills…I barely had to do anything.”
I’d always been told that my mum had died from a brain haemorrhage, but Christine’s words seemed to imply that something else had happened. Why hadn’t Winter or Caiden mentioned this to me? Both of them had clearly heard. It wasn’t like they hadn’t had time to bring it up, either. Months had passed since that whole thing went down.
I made another coffee on autopilot, glad that no one else was around yet. What was I supposed to say? Just come out and ask my brother if he’d been lying to me all this time? Or was it Christine’s sick way of trying to cause yet more rifts between us?
First up, I needed to do some digging. Get into the death records and find out just what the fuck was going on. The other thought running through my mind was the mystery of Mercury’s identity. He’d never given any indication that he knew me, but his actions were completely out of character. For him to send me that particular bit of footage had to mean that he knew me personally.
That meant he had an advantage over me. And until I found out who he was, I couldn’t trust him.
I sent him a message, which I doubted he’d reply to, but I had to try.
Me: Who are you?
Surprisingly, he actually responded. To say I was shocked was a fucking understatement. Until I read his reply, which told me nothing.
Mercury: Someone who thinks you deserve the truth
Me: Do I know you?
He went offline then and didn’t reappear again.
Leaving Mercury to one side, because I had enough shit to deal with as it was, I turned my attention to the more important issue of hacking into the records. Two hours later, and I had my answer. The coroner’s report had been sealed, and my mum’s official death record simply stated the cause of death as a brain haemorrhage caused by an accidental overdose.
Three words flashed up from the coroner’s report, burning into my brain. Breathing deeply through the nausea until I was more or less sure I wasn’t about to lose the contents of my stomach, I stared at the screen, willing it to change.
Suicide. Opiate overdose.
Had my dad known? He must have. I needed to speak to him, the sooner the better.
The day I’d found out about my mum rose in my mind, and I leaned back in my chair, lost in the memory.
“Weston?” My dad’s terse voice sounded through my phone. “Be ready to leave in five minutes. I’m on my way.”
The call abruptly cut off, and I stared down at my now-blank screen. “Sorry, mate.” I turned to my friend Rumi. “My dad’s coming to pick me up.”
“What? We haven’t even played my new computer game yet.”
“I know. Sorry.” I shrugged, annoyance filling me. “I don’t know why, but you know what my dad’s like. No point arguing with h
im.”
Rumi’s mouth twisted. “Yeah. See you at school on Monday, I guess.” He kicked at the grass dejectedly for a minute before his face brightened. “Quick one-on-one while we’re waiting for your dad?”
I hopped off the wall I’d been sitting on and ran to the football lying on the grass before Rumi could get to it. He laughed, racing after me, and I lost myself in our competitive game.
For four minutes, everything was fine. Normal.
Then my dad showed up, and everything changed.
I buried my head in my hands, trying to think about anything except that day.
I couldn’t stop the memories from assaulting me.
The gates to our house were wide open, flashing lights from police cars and an ambulance lighting up the growing darkness, illuminating the stone walls of the house and turning them blue.
“D-dad? What’s going on?” My voice shook. He didn’t answer me, instead climbing out of the car and heading towards one of the police officers standing outside.
My eyes darted to the open front door of the house, and I noticed a figure on the steps.
My brother, Caiden.
Sitting with his knees pulled up, his head was buried in his arms. A blanket had been draped over his shoulders, but I could see that he was shivering as I neared him.
“Cade?”
He raised his head, and I sucked in a breath. His face was drained of colour, his eyes red-rimmed and devastated. “M-mum’s…” was all he managed to scrape out, before his eyes filled with tears and he dropped his head in his arms again, his shoulders shaking.
I sank down onto the steps next to him and slipped my arm around his shoulder, trying to comfort my big brother as he fell apart.
The next week passed in a blur. My dad’s words kept echoing over and over in my head. “Your mother has passed away.” He was withdrawn, blank, shutting himself in his office for hours. Caiden was the same, hiding away in his room. I wandered the silent house, hurting and alone, constantly replaying the last time I’d seen my mum on the morning of her death. She’d been withdrawn, sad, for a long time now, but that morning, she seemed lighter than she’d been in so long. She’d made me toast, singing along with the radio and chatting to me about my schoolwork. When I left for school, she’d wrapped me in her arms and kissed my cheek. “I love you, Weston. Never forget that.”
That was the last time I saw her alive.
I’d give anything for just one more moment with her.
When the post-mortem results came, my dad sat me down, exchanging a long, loaded look with my brother.
“Your mother’s death was an accident. A brain haemorrhage. Could have happened to anyone, at any time. There was nothing any of us could have done.”
Our family was fractured beyond repair. And when my dad moved Christine Clifford into our home, the cracks became a chasm too wide to bridge.
Fuck. I took a deep breath. Losing my mum had been the worst experience of my life, but to now find out that her death hadn’t been an accident? That she’d been driven to suicide? And my dad’s deceased ex-wife, Christine, had played a part in it?
Why had they lied to me?
The day dragged on while I waited for everyone to return home. Caiden had taken Winter out for the day, Cassius had gone out early to pick up Lena for some family thing, and fuck knew where Zayde was.
The need to confront my brother was so strong, yet I tamped it down. I could understand him wanting to put the whole situation behind him, since he was shot and all that shit, but there was no reason why he should have kept Christine’s revelation from me. I knew I needed to give him a chance to explain, though, so I had to be patient. Until then…
I poured myself a drink.
And another.
And another.
Until the memories were softened and blurred, dulled by the alcohol.
In the kitchen, I’d just finished up my fifth—or was it sixth?—drink, when I heard the sound of voices. Cassius appeared in the doorway and took one look at me, then came racing over. “What’s wrong? Anything I can do? Want me to beat the shit out of someone? Or set Z on them?”
Despite myself, I laughed. “Nah, but thanks for the offer. I need…I need to speak to Cade and Winter.” My eyes fell closed as I leaned against the kitchen island, folding my arms across the cool surface and burying my head in my hands.
The sound of footsteps grew more distant, then closer again. There was a low murmur of voices.
“West?” A hand gently rested on my back, and I raised myself, turning to face Winter as she studied me, worry written all over her face. Caiden came up to stand next to her, slipping his hand around her waist, and she leaned into him.
“Why didn’t either of you tell me that Christine had driven my mum to suicide?” The words were out before I could even think about them.
Caiden blanched, jumping back as if he’d been electrocuted. I would’ve almost found it funny, if I hadn’t been watching the sheer panic appear in his eyes. My confident older brother was suddenly lost for words.
“Can you explain what you mean by that?” Winter spoke carefully, and I nodded, trying to push away the hurt for a minute so I could concentrate on what I was saying.
“I’ve seen footage from the docks. I heard Christine say to you both that—that.” My voice cracked, and I took a deep breath. Fuck. I couldn’t lose it now. “I heard her say that she encouraged Mum to commit suicide.”
My brother’s wide, panicked gaze swung to Winter’s, and a dawning realisation gripped me. His usual mask was gone, and I could read him perfectly.
“You knew already, didn’t you?” My low whisper somehow seemed louder than a shout.
He swallowed hard, still looking at Winter, and she squeezed his side and nodded once. His eyes met mine then, and I was shocked to see that they looked glassy.
Then he spoke one word, so soft that I could barely hear him.
“Yes.”
Unable to hold my gaze, he hung his head. “We didn’t know about Christine’s involvement.”
Anger flared, hot and sudden. I rarely lost my temper, but now, I was seeing red. I turned to Winter, clenching my jaw so hard that my teeth ached. “You knew? You knew as well? And no one fucking thought to tell me?” My voice rose as I focused on Caiden again, not caring about his stricken gaze. I needed answers, and I was going to get them. Right. Fucking. Now. “You and Dad told me she’d died of a brain haemorrhage!”
“We were going to tell you. I’d already spoken to Dad about it, and we’d agreed to speak to you.”
I wasn’t interested in Caiden’s excuses. “When? When? You’ve had fucking months, years to tell me, and you just let me think that her death had been an accident!”
He gaped at me, seemingly lost for words.
My eyes filled with hot, bitter tears, and I blinked hard, refusing to let them fall. “Why? I had every fucking right to know!”
“We—” Caiden swallowed hard. “We were trying to protect you.”
“Protect me? By lying? I’m not some fragile fucking child,” I roared. “You don’t get to make those decisions. She was my mum, too! Don’t you think I had the right to know the truth?”
I took in the anguish on my brother’s face through a haze of anger. My voice dropped to a raw whisper. “I can’t even fucking look at you right now.”
Cassius stepped closer, placing his hand on my arm. As I took in the guilt written all over his face, my stomach flipped. “You knew, too?”
He nodded, biting his lip.
“Who else?” My shout seemed to echo through the silent kitchen. “Who fucking else?”
“Zayde,” Caiden whispered.
“So everyone…” This time, I didn’t even bother to disguise the raw pain in my voice. “So everyone closest to me, everyone that I thought I could trust, has been keeping secrets and lying to me.” Pushing away from the counter, I stumbled towards the door. “I need to get out of here.”
“You’ve been drinki
ng.” Lena suddenly appeared in the doorway. “You can’t go anywhere.”
“Did you know?” I almost didn’t want to ask the question. Breathing hard through the stinging waves of betrayal that were assaulting me, I stared into her blue eyes, trying to decipher her unreadable gaze. Her eyes flicked from mine to the kitchen, then back again.
“I didn’t know until…” She waved a hand towards my former friends, who remained silent behind me.
I released a heavy breath. “Have you been drinking?”
“No.”
“Can you get us out of here?”
She bit her lip, glancing to the others again, before she met my gaze. “I’ll have to drive your car.”
“I don’t care.” The fucking tears were pricking at my eyes again. “I just need to get out of here. Please.”
“Okay.”
TEN
Gripping the steering wheel tightly, I navigated towards my house, unsure where else to go. This was a shitshow. Last night, I’d run away because he was drunk, and honestly, I’d been scared. Scared of my reaction to Weston. Scared of what might happen. Now, though, he was here next to me; he’d been drinking again, and I couldn’t run this time.
His silent presence was almost overwhelming. I’d made a huge mistake, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to forgive me when I told him the truth. I couldn’t tell him now, though—not while he was so worked up.
He needed someone in his corner, and that person was going to be me.
After carefully parking his car in the garage, I got out and headed around to Weston’s side. He remained slumped in his seat, eyes closed.
I sighed and tapped on the window. His eyes flew open, and a smile curved over his lips. Ignoring the butterflies, which I was a master at, I opened his door. The smile fell from his face, replaced by sadness and pain as he remembered what had happened.