Chapter Twenty-Two

Death Be on Your Tongue

Insects swarm a lamppost in the parking lot. It casts down a harsh beam on Davis's tow truck. I lightly smile at one of the nurses who's on her way inside. From the seat next to me, I slide the little red suitcase into my lap.

My thumbs poise over the metal clasps. The latches spring open with a bounced thung.

I don't know what I was hoping for, really. A treasure trove of something; not sure of what, though.

There's only one item inside.

A single manila envelope with an official law office logo printed in the return-address portion. My mother's name typed in the center with our home address. I tilt the postage stamp in the dim light. The postmark is dated two weeks after my birth.

Inside, legal documents my mother signed, promising to keep my father's identity a secret in exchange for a huge chunk of money.

"Holy shit." I sit back against the truck seat and give my mind a second to digest the number. "What in the world would I do with a million dollars?" I huff a laugh. I continue reading the paperwork.

The money is supposed to sit in a trust fund, earning interest, until I turn twenty-five—just one year away. Every year thereafter, an additional fifty-thousand dollar bonus to stay quiet.

"Wow."

There, at the bottom of the page, two signatures.

Darbee May Wilder.

Stone Ellison Rutledge.

I don't know what hits me harder—that both my parents gave me up as easily as trash or learning for certain who my father is and knowing he's dead.

I tell myself I don't give a damn. Two people who loved each other enough to make a child but didn't leave enough behind when the child came.

But then maybe I'm looking at this wrong.

If this was about money for my mother, why set up a trust fund solely for me? Why not get a chunk for herself, too? My mom doesn't have two nickels to rub together. This couldn't have been about money for her. My father signed this document because he chose money and the power of his family's status over her.

Over us.

She had some wild oats to sow—heartache will do that to you. That's what Aunt Violet told me when I asked about my father.

So it was too painful for her to stay. I can't imagine how I would feel, looking at my baby every day and being reminded of the love I could never have. Somehow, this sliver of a thought cracks the surface of this grudge I've been holding on to ever since she left, and I can almost understand it.

But Stone—even if he loved my mama once, he chose money. I want to hate him, I do. He cared about me enough to set up this trust fund, just not enough to be my father. My heart just can't square how I should feel.

But that family, especially how they've behaved these last few months, leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I wonder if Rebecca forced my father to have nothing to do with me. She forced her own sister to abort those babies, why not make Stone disown me? Hell, I bet she knows exactly what Lorelei did and doesn't even give a shit. It's impossible to believe I share the same blood as these monsters. They snatched Adaire from me. For what? Money? Money that was coming my way, anyway?

These people.

My sister.

She killed my cousin. Murdered my best friend.

The more I churn this over, the angrier I get. It lights a fire in me. A white-hot heat that eats up every last ounce of my humanity. I want to make Lorelei Rutledge pay.

The engine revs.

Gear thrown into Drive.

I peel out of the parking lot.

There's no staff in the kitchen when I slip in the mansion's back door, but I hear two murmuring voices as they close down the house for the evening. The only cars out front are Stone's red Corvette and a beat-up sedan that's probably one of the staff's. It's awfully late for Mrs. Rutledge to not be home, but I bet she's dealing with Gabby, now that she's been taken away to a mental hospital. Which means there's only one Rutledge upstairs.

I dip into the shadows of the hall and wait for the last of the staff to lock up the house and leave for the night. Once they're gone, I sneak up the private stairs, taking them two at a time, to the third floor. My blood rising with each step.

Lorelei took my cousin.

She took a brother I never knew I had.

She's the reason my father killed himself.

The house key Becky gave me still works, and I let myself in. Moonlight barely sweeps across the receiving room. Opposite of Gabby's tearoom, a thin light bleeds from underneath a door down the hallway.

"Hello, Lorelei," I say as I open the door.

She flinches in her father's desk chair. She eyes me up and down, assessing. Then she relaxes once she decides I'm probably not a threat. "Victoria," she casually calls out as if I'm some nuisance she needs the staff to remove.

I smirk. "Oh, honey, they're gone. It's just you and me now."

Panic flits her eyes back to the door.

"You're not going anywhere." I step into the room and close the door behind me.

She lunges for the telephone on the desk. I yank the cord from the wall before she can reach it. I toss the cord to the floor, and she leans back into her seat.

It feels strange being in Stone's office. I've never physically been here, only seen the room during that Sin Eater Oil haze. How incredibly accurate it was.

Oak paneling stretches along the walls all the way to the ceiling. Those monstrous law books and shelves still lord over the room. Even the maroon leather chair is a beast to contend with. Right there between Lorelei and me, the very desk where Stone Rutledge signed away his parental rights. It confirms all the sins the dead showed me were true.

Lorelei glares, jaw clenched tight, scathing. "What do you want?"

"The truth." I plop down in the receiving chair in front of the desk and kick my feet on top of it. "So," I start, never feeling more alive than right now. "Tell me exactly why you ran my cousin over?"

"I didn't. My father—"

"Liar!" I jam my foot against the desk so hard the green Tiffany lamp wobbles, threatening to topple over.

"Let's try this again. Why did you run my cousin over?"

Lorelei watches me a long calculated minute, contemplating exactly how she's going to respond. There's only two years between her and I, but somehow I feel so much older. Maybe that's the difference between hard living and being pampered all your life.

She slinks back into that desk chair; her glare dripping with hate. "What is it you think you know?"

I lean on the edge of the desk and square her with a look. "I know Stone lied to the police and covered up your little hit-and-run. I know Gabby was with you when you did it." From my pocket, I pull out the slinky gold chain and lazily coil it onto the desk. "I know you killed your brother."

That bob in her throat is my sweet reward.

I let her sit on that egg a bit, but it doesn't take long before she's grinding her teeth.

"Ellis was weak. Second from the womb always are. He was too soft to live up to the Rutledge name. He didn't have the stomach to do what it takes to protect this family."

It's shocking to hear how callous she is. She doesn't even deny killing him. "The hardest part," I say, "is for the life of me I could not figure out where you got that poison to pour down your father's throat to make me look guilty. But wait a minute." I pause, mocking contemplation. "What I should have been asking myself is how would you even know that poison existed, much less know that it could be tied to me?"

The worried look in her eyes says I'm on the right track.

"Rebecca." I drop her mother's name like the final ace of spades to win the poker game. "Those black veins of poison still sprawl across Gabby's belly like a spiderweb. Curious kids ask questions. Questions I'm sure your mother answered. Who would have guessed she had some of that poison left over after all these years.

"Asking you why you killed my cousin is more of a rhetorical question. Because we both already know the answer. But there's a little something you didn't know." I pull the folded papers out of my back pocket. "What sucks for you, little sister, is our father already made sure I get a piece of the pie." I drop the legal documents on the desk in front of her. It doesn't take her eyes more than a few seconds to gobble up the shocking truth she had no idea about.

I'm about half a second away from doing a victory lap when Lorelei smirks.

Somehow, this sets me at unease. Like maybe all my assumptions and conclusions from everything I uncovered are somehow wrong.

"Go ahead." She calmly slides the papers back to me. "By all means, take these documents and go running to the police. Tell them I killed your cousin to keep the fortune. That I poured your poison down my father's throat to set you up for murder. You have my blessing. Please, tell the sheriff everything." Lorelei fans her hands open wide.

I'm a bit stunned, not sure why she's making such a show or what she's trying to get at. Of course, I'm going to tell the sheriff everything I know.

"Are you sure you want to do that, though? Because it looks to me like you didn't read the fine print. If you or anyone in your family reveal who your father is, then you don't inherit a dime." She punctuates the last word as if that little fact matters to me.

I don't give a fuck about the money. I'm about to open my mouth to say just that, and she keeps going.

"Look, here's the thing," Lorelei continues. "Stone was a bastard of a man who couldn't give two shits about Ellis or me, and apparently not about you, either." She says this rather nonchalantly. "Sure, he did his fatherly duty and covered up my little...blunder." A wry smile slips onto that smug-ass face of hers. "Then he found out my blunder was just a little bit on purpose and he freaked out. Couldn't believe I would do such a thing, and over something as trivial as money. But you try going without once you've had a taste, seen what life can be. I wasn't about to let any more than necessary slip away, not if we didn't have to. You know how fast money can go? When your brother, the artist, is setting himself up to be nothing more than a drain on family resources, your aunt needs special round-the-clock care, and the tours of the mansion barely bring in enough to cover the electric bill. I was doing him a favor. Did you a favor, too!" She throws her hands up as if she's given me a gift. "Both of us would be out a lot more money. This way you get a little, and I get a little more, it's a win-win." She leans forward. "So you're not going to tell a damn soul what I did," she says through gritted teeth.

My nails bite into palms as I stew in a pit of my own anger. She sits back, confident she's bought my silence.

"So why not buy Adaire off? Why not throw her a little bit, too, keep her quiet. You didn't have to kill her."

"I didn't plan to, but she came in here one day with proof. That letter that spoke to how much they loved each other, how she was carrying his child, how she planned to keep you. Adaire knew too much, enough to tell the whole town who you really were. Father tried to reason with her, told her she'd be hurting you and your future. But she wouldn't hear it, left here in a rush and was on her way to tell you everything. And I couldn't have that, couldn't have her ruining our name and reputation.

"Father would have never won a reelection once everyone found out. My mother would have divorced him and we wouldn't survive a disgraced mayor and a nasty divorce. We already have a crazy lady in the family. Who's going to pay money to tour the once-esteemed Sugar Hill? Plantations are already falling out of favor with folks. If the tour buses stop coming, and more and more of our money is being leeched out to dirty little beggars like you, where would that leave me? You've no idea what it takes to keep this family together, what it takes to keep our heads above water. Father just smiled through it all, through the bills that piled up and the debts, through my mother's drinking binges when she'd disappear for weeks, locked away in her room—imagine that, yet they called her sister crazy, said she was the one with a problem. I did what I had to do for my family, what do you know about that?"

I fall back in my chair in disbelief. "So it really was just about the money—that was enough of a reason to kill my cousin? Your own brother."

"That was an accident. He wouldn't listen to me, just like Adaire. He planned to tell the cops everything. He'd have given all our money to you if it were up to him, he didn't care a lick for it. Imagine that—Ellis, the weak link from day one, thinking he knows how to take care of our family better than me! He couldn't see the bigger picture the way I could. And Adaire as good as sealed her own fate, running off like she did. I only wanted to talk. Barely nudged her tire to get her attention, but we were going too fast—"

My blood begins to boil, I know what's coming next.

Lorelei huffs a laugh. "You should have seen the way the bike twisted around her broken legs."

Anger jolts through my body.

"It was wrong to let her suffer like that. So I put her out of her misery and ran over her properly the second time—"

I don't even understand how it happens.

One minute, I'm on this side of the desk. The next my hand is gripped around Lorelei's throat.

"Shut your fucking mouth." My words spit in her face. She scrabbles at my hand, trying to loosen my grip.

The murderous death stain of Adaire seeps from Lorelei's pores. It grows deep inside her like a black fern, uncoiling itself.

I taste it now, the sweet lick of anger. Like a blue flame, I feed on it. Except it isn't anger that burns inside me. Or rage.

It's death.

Death that has rotted away in my bones from years of death-talking.

It lives there in the marrow and blood. Patiently waiting. I draw upon it, the power of my death-talking, and let it find the evil that resides in Lorelei Rutledge. I never considered that if I could talk the death out of someone, maybe I could talk the death into them.

So I listen.

I listen for that exact sound I heard when her twin brother Ellis died. That sweet violin of sadness from his soul-song. Except Lorelei's violin is sharp and shrill. The winding grind of the Devil's fiddle, playing a tune for the demons that live inside her. I know the second I find it because the glass in the chandelier begins to rattle. The objects around the room vibrate as I tune into her soul-song.

I glare at Lorelei under hooded eyes. She gasps as I hook my deathly finger into her black soul. Open and vulnerable, ready for me to fill it with death.

Then something soft touches my shoulder. Don't.

A gentle, ghostly hand that draws out all the anger from me. It tells me everything is going to be okay. That I can let it go now. Nothing more needs to be done. No one else needs to be hurt. It's finished.

I release Lorelei from my grasp.

She coughs and sputters, trying to catch her breath. I leave her there on the floor. I need to get away from her, this house, and anything to do with these vile people. It doesn't matter what those papers say; these people aren't my family. Never were. Never will be. I'm down the stairs and making my way through the kitchen when I hear Lorelei raging behind me. Something about how lawyers and judges won't believe trash like me.

A hard whack clips the back of my head, and I stumble forward. A blue floral vase crashes against the floor.

What the hell?

I look back just long enough to see her lunge for the butcher knife. I bolt out the back door and crash into Davis.

"You're here? But how?"

Blue lights from Oscar's Bronco flicker, as he steps out of the driver's side.

"Please tell me you didn't murder her," Davis mumbles to me.

Lorelei rushes out the door behind me, knife gripped tight, screaming profanities, then she stops cold when she sees Oscar.

"Arrest her!" Lorelei points to me. "She assaulted me and broke the restraining order."

Both her claims are true. I press a hand to the knot rising on the back of my head, grateful it's not bleeding at least.

Oscar walks over. I sigh, holding out my hands for him to take me in because I'm done with all this. Ready for it be over.

Then Lorelei is shoved up against the wall, her face pushed into the brick building as her hands are yanked painfully behind her.

"You won't get a dime!" she screams as Oscar locks the cuffs on her.

"Lorelei Rutledge," Oscar boastfully calls out. "You have the right to remain silent..." He slips me a smug grin.