Chapter 20

The world closed in on Aiden, suffocating him. How did Darren know about the beam? Had he been observing without Aiden realizing it? Watching Aiden rather than just ogling him?

Darren Howe was a smart man, but Aiden had been extremely careful setting up tonight, so it was disconcerting that his intentions lay in the open like this, even if, ultimately, it was of no consequence.

And more importantly, if Aiden hadn't noticed this, then what else had he missed?

Finding it pointless to lie about the way tonight was going to end, he said, "Accidents happen all the time, Howe. And some are just more unfortunate than others." Some just end in the deaths of murderers who should've already been dead.

Darren chuckled, his laugh a little wrong and unhinged. To Aiden's surprise, it sounded only half-forced. Half-fake, where the other half was genuine, as if Darren Howe had lost his mind and really found Aiden's words funny.

"So, Aiden, what do you want to know before you off me?" he prompted, his indigo eyes boring into Aiden with that bone-shaking intensity which always made it a little harder to breathe.

A surge of desire that had no place here shot through Aiden. Darren saying his name—his first name that he only let Rick call him now that Claudia was dead—in that strained and somehow sexy voice… It stirred all kinds of wrong signals within him, made him swallow hard and feel so exposed he had to tear his gaze away from the man in order to retain some dignity. He crossed his legs and hid his growing erection as best as he could, but he was overcome by liquid hot need regardless.

He hated it, hated himself for it, for craving the touch of the man who'd taken everything from him. His body was out of sync with his mind, a victim to whatever trick Darren Howe was using. Aiden knew that much. And yet, he couldn't do anything about it, no matter how hard he tried. He was stuck in this state whenever Darren was near him.

Why? What was it that attracted him so much to the one person in the whole world he couldn't be attracted to?

Guilt slithered inside Aiden like a snake, venomous and hard to stop once it had hold of him. Today he was putting an end to this, to everything. He was avenging Claudia and getting the answers he was owed. Those were the only things he needed to focus on.

With effort, Aiden collected himself, though his breathing remained elevated and his skin tingled from goosebumps. Grounding himself to the hate and the guilt, he isolated his other emotions as best as he could and donned the comfortable mask of indifference he was used to so he could get through this next part.

"The investigation brought to the surface your ties with the Huangsin Conglomerate, and specifically, its head—Liu Zhihao. Evidence in his personal correspondence, including messages to a burner phone, was discovered during a later raid of one of your hideouts. He's the man who originally sent you after Claudia DuLaurent, but later, he canceled the hit on her."

"I believe that's what the investigation reported, yes," Darren agreed, his expression shifting to something closed off. Detached.

"Before Liu Zhihao could be questioned about his motives for both ordering and canceling the assassination, he was found dead in his mansion on Earth," Aiden carried on, his own words not exactly registering in his brain. It was like he was reading off a script that didn't really mean anything to him. Maybe in a way that was true—his mind had erected a mental defense so that he could see his mission through. "The police uncovered a partial phone call recording from February 6th between Liu and you in which he calls off the kill. It was found on the computer of one of Liu's mistresses, giving the authorities your name. Once they had an ID, they involved the secret services. Your arrest came about two weeks later, and you confessed to both murders. Then a private trial and… fifty years prison time," Aiden gritted out, each sound that came out of his mouth flaring that rage he'd been living with for so long.

Darren let out a disturbed chuckle. "I agree. Fifty years is laughable considering what I sup—"

Aiden shot up from his chair and slapped Darren. The crackle as his hand made contact with Darren's face was deafeningly loud in the vast space around them, echoing off walls and glass while the force of the impact made his entire arm throb.

"Why did you do it? Why go after her if the client canceled the hit? She was no one to you."

Darren licked the blood dripping from his cracked lip. "Because I'm a psychopath, didn't you read the report?"

Aiden hit Darren again, wincing at the sting across his palm. "That report is bullshit! You are a monster, Darren Howe, but you aren't a psychopath. I want to know the real reason and why the police is lying!"

Darren groaned as he straightened up and tried to blow the locks of hair that stuck to his face. He failed, but it didn't seem to bother him. "I see. It all makes sense now," he said but didn't elaborate and just stared out the thick glass at the stars in the distance. His shoulders tensed like they had earlier, then sagged. His face betrayed a hint of fleeting fear as he seemed to debate something on the inside. "Fine."

When he didn't say anything else, Aiden yanked him by the collar of his jumpsuit and forced him to shift his attention away from the glass. "Fine what?"

Darren tried to slip out of Aiden's hold, but with his arms tied to the immovable chair, he didn't get far. "This phone call recording, the one between me and Liu. I believe his supposed mistress, Miss Velmornt, supplied it to the police. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't she the type to sit in the company of many important people, including, say, Marcus and Laura DuLaurent?"

Sure, the Miss was friends with Marcus, but what did that have to do with anything? Many influential people liked to book the highly sought-after hostess for events and pay her lofty fees for the chance to flaunt around their fortunes and status. Aiden had only met her once, at a charity Gala Claudia's parents had held.

Before he could question the reason for bringing up the Miss, Darren said, "So between that and the weeks it took for the phone call to surface, would it be too far-fetched to consider the possibility that the recording didn't exist before then?"

Aiden folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. What was Darren suggesting? That someone had forged it? He opened his mouth to argue the nonsensicality of it out of habit, but then stopped himself because, as much as he didn't want to acknowledge it, a forgery was possible.

He already knew there was something not right about Claudia's autopsy. Cleveland lying aside, if PI Deverson came back with proof that the body had been taken to another morgue altogether, that spoke of something a lot bigger than messy paperwork. And if that was the case, then a phone call that had never been made public was a child's play to fake.

Darren gave Aiden a strange look. He ignored it. That same phone call was the biggest piece of evidence against Darren since there had been no DNA at Claudia's murder scene… Shit. This was such a mess. Aiden didn't know what to make of it anymore. His head was killing him, and he was really starting to feel the lack of sleep, his mind already struggling to keep up.

"Still not clicking?" Darren asked, sounding both unsure and exasperated. "Claudia DuLaurent went on a week-long business trip to Mars. She arrived on February 4th and was due to leave for Earth on February 11th. Her body was discovered on the eighth and an autopsy confirmed the time of death to be in the early morning. But what if I told you…" He paused, letting out a shaky breath and breaking eye-contact for a few moments. "The officer who found her body and supposedly dropped it off at the Lecart Morgue was on leave that day."

Aiden's heart jumped, crashing into his ribcage. He squeezed his elbow and focused on slowing down his quickened pulse. How did Darren know about Cleveland? And if he did, did he also know what the fuck was with his visit to the DuLaurent's HQ before there was even a body?

"Ah, you already figured that part out, didn't you?" Darren said with a small but genuine smile, his gaze back on Aiden. It had a spark to it that hadn't been there, a flicker of something Aiden didn't allow himself to examine too deeply because it threatened to throw him into that torturous abyss of want he seemed to flirt with every time he was in Darren's presence. "Then I'll cut to the chase. I didn't kill Claudia on February 8th, Kesley. I killed her on February 4th. And Liu had nothing to do with any of it. The phone call recording was faked so that his murder could be pinned on me."

Anger rose in Aiden, needles prickling his spine and the tips of his fingers at the conviction in Darren's confession. His hands turned clammy, then partly numb. Darren had killed Claudia cold-heartedly. Intentionally. Knowingly. Aiden knew all of that already, but hearing it from the mouth of the murderer himself broke something in him yet again.

It took him a while to rein in the violent urges, to calm them down so he wouldn't kill Darren before he got the whole truth. But as he contemplated what to say next, more confusion spread through him, because things still made no sense. The autopsy, the police reports, the news, all of it stated February 8th as the time of Claudia's death. The one discrepancy was that Cleveland hadn't been the one to hand her body off to the morgue and that he'd visited the DuLaurent HQ—

Aiden froze. February 4th. Cleveland had visited the DuLaurent's Headquarters for no apparent reason on February 4th. The same day Claudia had died if he were to believe Darren's confession.

No, no, the date had to be a coincidence.A mind game Darren was playing. An attempt to derail Aiden further. To confuse him and make him question the true manner of Claudia's death even more. As for Liu Zhihao—whether he had nothing to do with the murder or whether he'd ordered it and then canceled it, Darren's motivations remained murky.

Frantic, Aiden pulled up his phone and opened the locked folder containing all the information he and PI Deverson had accumulated in the past month. He skimmed through the highlights until he got to the one he'd been looking for, which confirmed that Cleveland had indeed gone to Marcus on the fourth.

He didn't want to believe this, his stomach squeezing at the thought of taking a murderer's word. But it was too late to stop his mind as it entertained that scenario anyway, because once he considered the possibility of Claudia dying on February 4th, everything started to fall into place. Cleveland going to the DuLaurent HQ, his fake signature when the body had been delivered on February 8th, the discrepancy between the video and the Lecart morgue. And if all of this aligned so easily, then didn't it mean that Marcus must've known the truth and kept it from Aiden? But why? Why go to such lengths to withhold the real time of Claudia's death?

"No. This can't be right. The autopsy…" Aiden croaked, navigating through the menus on his phone to Claudia's report.

After external and internal examination, it is thus concluded that the time of death of Claudia Benoa DuLaurent occurred between 03:45 and 04:55 on Thursday, February 8th, 2103.

Date: 08/02/2103 Nicolas Smith, M.D.

If Darren was telling the truth, then the autopsy had to have been completely forged. And that meant the doctor had to have been in on it, too, just like Cleveland. Was that why the officer had retired? Or… Aiden frowned at the report. Had Cleveland been made to retire? Paid off by… The police? Marcus? Or some other party Aiden wasn't aware of? Even if that was the case though, the question still remained. Why?

"The pathologist, Nicolas Smith. My guess is that he was bribed, like the cop," Darren said when the silence stretched.

Just like everything else Darren had claimed so far, this too was believable, fitting right into the picture he was painting.

Aiden pinned his eyes on Darren's face, studying his expression. It was unnervingly calm, a contrast to the storm of confusion reigning in Aiden's mind. He didn't know what to think anymore, his thoughts all jumbled. All he'd wanted was the simple truth, the answer to the one question that had haunted him since the day Claudia had left his world. What he'd gotten instead was this mess. It would've somewhat made sense if Darren Howe was at least a scapegoat, an innocent man thrown into prison for someone else's crimes. But he wasn't, his confession from earlier too earnest to be faked.

"Why? Why go through all this trouble to… make it look like she died on February 8th?" Aiden whispered, wondering out loud.

"I think you know the answer to that already."

Aiden rubbed his eyes with both palms, then massaged his temples, trying to chase off the throbbing tension. It didn't help. "So what are you saying, Howe? That this whole thing was a setup just to make you out into some deranged psychopath?"

Darren smiled then as he held Aiden's gaze. It was a sad smile rather than a mocking one and it touched something in Aiden's chest. It distorted his breathing and pulled on his heartstrings, making him squeeze the edge of the table so he could keep standing. "No. I'm saying that it was a way to cover up your fiancée's failed attempt at kidnapping me."