CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

I left Naya in our bed, wrapped tightly in the sheets with her hair a golden cloud across my pillow and the light on behind her. I kissed her cheek before pulling on my clothes and leaving our bedroom.

It had been two weeks since Oliver. Two weeks since she went limp in my arms, and I nearly lost my mind. I might have sold my soul — if I had one — that night. I couldn't be sure. I only knew that I vowed to any otherworldly creature listening that it was theirs if they saved her.

But with things finally settling down and Naya up on her feet again, I was given the opportunity to finally address the final two issues left unresolved.

Oliver and Brixton.

I'd given them enough mercy already allowing them to continue living this long. To exist after what they'd done. But their grace period ended the moment I knew Naya wasn't going anywhere. When I stayed up every night to watch her breathe and made sure that didn't stop.

Now, with Cyrus a sentinel outside the door, I pulled on my coat and headed first in the direction of the office. I stopped before the collection of portraits, highlighting the morbid history of my family. I studied their faces, faces I knew better than my own and thought of what Naya had said about their deaths being tragic accidents.

Maybe.

I could see how she could think that. How it might seem possible that they had all been unfortunate and coincidental. But I had seen the shifting shadows. I had heard the whispers. I knew what evil lurked in that place.

But when I moved to stand before my parents, my mom with her soft, gray eyes and dark hair, I didn't know what to think. Naya kept telling me I wasn't cursed. The house wasn't cursed. But what if she was wrong?

"Thank you," I murmured quietly into the silence. "I know it was you that night. You helped me find her."

My mother's eyes watched me, unmoving, yet speaking volumes.

It had been her.

I would never tell anyone, but I had felt her in my panic. In that gripping moment of absolute terror as I searched for Naya and wondered if Brixton's ridiculous ambush really had been a trick to keep me distracted. I had been ready to go out, grab the fucker by the neck, and peel off patches of skin until he told me where she was, when I heard the squeak.

The distinct rub of someone's finger against glass.

The same sound Naya had made in the office weeks before.

I tore after it, ignoring Cyrus calling after me. I followed the row of windows leading to the conservatory, ears straining.

Far below in the murky pool of shadows, I heard it again.

Faint.

Unmistakable.

My boots had thundered down the marble steps. My head tried to justify why Naya would be there in so much darkness when she couldn't turn the lamp off at night. I could only think maybe she'd gotten scared and gone to hide in the greenhouse with the wasted remains of all the dead plants no one had checked on in years.

But a pale figure moved in the opposite direction. It flickered so quickly that even with the snap of my neck in the direction of the old storage area, it was already gone.

I hadn't paused to consider I was seeing things when I changed direction and scrambled towards the cramped, dark steps, even while my brain tried to justify the improbability of Naya ever making the trip down willingly.

Then I saw the slipper.

Naya's little flat lying discarded on the step.

That was all the evidence I needed to throw myself down the rest of the steps into the dank cellar no one had touched in years. I was only barely aware of Cyrus at my heels as we stood staring at the abandoned crates of overstock. We circled the mound, and I was beginning to think I missed something when I saw the other shoe tipped on its side in the dirt by a wall.

It had taken me and Cyrus a while to find the switch. To press the brick and send the wall rolling back on invisible tracks. My relief at seeing Naya right there, right in front of me, was short-lived by the tears ravaging her cheeks and the vomit soaked down her front. Oliver stood behind her and while that would have been a comfort—maybe they'd been hiding together, and the door closed and they couldn't escape but that too faded when she started towards me and he stopped her. When he put the needle against her neck and made her bleed.

I sighed and traced my mother's beautiful face again.

"You know what I have to do now. I can't let him live, Mom. I'm sorry. I hope you'll forgive me."

She didn't speak.

She never could again because Oliver had killed her because she'd found his twisted laboratory. He'd taken her from me. Her. Elena. Constance. Danika. Anne. Penelope. Almost Naya. He had systematically destroyed any happiness I could have had.

But he was still her brother. I know she had loved him, and he had killed her.

A gentle weight pressed into my shoulder, and I grimaced over getting caught.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart, I was just going for a walk to clear my head," I said, turning to face Naya.

The corridor sat empty, painted the soft blue of midnight and silent.

My chest tightened and something hot and barbed prickled my throat.

"Mom?"

More silence, but I felt her warmth and could almost sense the subtle hint of her perfume fading already.

I gritted my teeth against the ache, against the pulse of blood in my ears, and the tears in my eyes. I took a deep breath to remind myself I had a job.

"I love you," I whispered to the emptiness and waited.

Just a second.

Just in case.

When there were no more phantom hands or the lingering scent of jasmine, I swallowed and went to do what I'd left my wife's loving arms to do.

Oliver stood in the center of four heavily armed guards, his left arm cradled in a white sling that glowed too bright against his dark suit. No one was talking, but I knew many of them had known Oliver for years. He'd been cared for and respected. That only made his decision to do what he was doing all the more baffling.

"We're fine," I told them, and I could tell some of them were relieved not to have to witness what I needed to do.

"I am sorry, Thoran," Oliver said after several minutes of us walking silently along the lake's edge. "I never in a million years wanted to hurt you."

"Why did you do it?" I asked, watching the moon shimmer off the dark water.

"What?"

"All of it."

Oliver drew in a quiet breath of deliberation that sounded sad but accepting. "Would you believe I was trying to do the right thing?"

I considered it.

"No," I decided. "People doing the right thing don't hurt other people, especially people they care about."

"That is also correct," Oliver mused. "I suppose two things can be true. What I did to Abby will always be my failure, my shame and guilt. My sin. I would have given my life in her place if I could."

"And the others?"

Oliver exhaled heavily. "I never took any joy from hurting any of them. It was never a pleasure. I hated myself every time, but I love you, Thoran."

I steeled myself against the stab in my chest. "You wouldn't have spent the last nineteen years letting me think I was cursed if you did. I'm not sure you know what that word means, Uncle."

"It means I did my best to protect you. Unlike your father, I shielded you from the horrible things in the world."

"The horrible things you were doing?"

"To help people," Oliver stressed. "Only to help. That is all I have ever wanted. To save people."

"You tried to kill Naya. The woman I love more than my own next breath."

His silence was longer. It lasted a dozen steps before he broke it.

"I really like her. Right from the beginning, I thought Abby would have loved her, but it couldn't last. Every time I thought maybe this time I would be left in peace..." he shook his head. "My work was too important. You were too important. I asked you to let her go. I begged you—"

I stopped and faced him in the soft hum of night, willing my temper to remain at a simmer. "If I had lost the manor, what would you have done? I needed a wife. You saw how close I was to losing everything because of you. What would you have done if Ronin owned Lacroix House right now? He wouldn't have let you stay."

"You are right, of course," Oliver murmured. "My decisions in some cases were rash. I tried to reason and bargain. I gave them all a chance, I really did, Thoran. But they all disappointed."

There was no doubt in my mind that he was sick. I wondered for how long and how I never noticed. He spoke so rationally, like he believed everything he said, but he wasn't well. He couldn't be. Not with those things in the barrels that my men had to put out of their pain and dump in the swamps. No sane person did that.

"Could we visit Abby's roses? I haven't been in so long and I would like to see her."

I allowed his final request.

I took my uncle, the last family connecting me to my mom through the maze to where the silver roses gleamed under the moonlight. Oliver smiled as he stood over the small bush and peered down into their chrome petals.

"I remember the afternoon your mom planted these. She'd been so excited when they started blooming." Gingerly, the other man lowered himself down on one knee and reached under the bush to pluck out a weed. "She would be so proud of the man you've become, Thoran. Don't ever forget that."

I bit the inside of my cheek as my fingers curled around the handle of my gun.

I didn't hesitate or say a word when I pulled the trigger.

Naya was waiting for me at the top of the stairs when I returned. Wary. Hollowed out. Her blue eyes were wet. She wore one of my t-shirts. Her toes bare.

"Blue?"

She met me halfway up the steps. Her arms swung around my shoulders.

Over her shoulder, keeping a discreet distance, Cyrus met my gaze. His solemn expression mirrored the weighted one in my chest. He didn't say a word when moving silently past us and heading downstairs.

"You should be sleeping," I told her.

Her head tipped back. The light caught the tears dampening her cheeks.

"I saw you and Oliver by the lake." She touched my cheek gently. "I saw you go into the gardens and..." Her bottom lip quivered. "I am so sorry, Thoran."

I didn't want to talk about it.

I didn't want her to know about it.

She shouldn't have to live with that in her head.

I scooped her up into my arms and carried her back to our bed. I washed her feet and wiped her tears. I kissed her deeply as I liberated her of my shirt. Then I made us both forget everything, except the other.

It was days later before I could sneak away to visit Brixton in his newly built prison I created exclusively for him. It was a cage, a neat little box of pain and misery to make him remember a similar cage he'd put Naya in her entire life.

I watched him from the other side of the bars, contemplating the worth of his life. I could kill him. Maybe bury him alive in concrete. I could keep him alive until summer. Cover him in honey and nail him to the ground under the hot sun. The options were limitless.

"Why are you doing this?" he kept asking. "I have done nothing wrong. I paid for her. She rightfully belongs to me."

It was always the same thing.

"Did you touch her?" I asked, the question popping into my head unexpectedly.

I told myself I would make it simple. If he bought her and never touched her, I would make his death short and simple. But if he touched her. Hurt her...

The jerking freeze of his body.

The quick avoidance of his eyes.

He didn't say a word and yet it was spilling out of him.

"How old was she?" I pressed.

"Her parents said it was okay!" he exclaimed. "Her mother said I could. She said I should wait until the rest of the house was sleeping. She said it was fine."

That was different information.

I probably should have asked Malcolm before he left. I could have asked Naya, but I didn't want her thinking about those days if my suspicions were true. The only person I could ask was behind bars I erected. His answers weren't going to get him freed. The only thing with that power was a bullet and he wouldn't be seeing one of those for a long fucking time.

I pulled a chair over and sat. "Tell me about her parents."

I was too late finding Joseph Blackwell. His body was dragged from the river, beaten, bloody, and in mangled pieces. It was ruled an accident, but the people who knew, knew. The missing eyeball was Ripken's signature trophy. My old friend was always painfully predictable.

Christabel was another matter.

She was harder to find. She had learned about the hit on her husband and fled on the first bus out of town. It took me a week to track her down in a flop house, renting a corner room clustered with moldy furniture and rat droppings. I told Naya I had to check on something and would only be gone for a few hours.

She didn't ask any questions.

She didn't ask if I was going to hunt down her mother like a dog.

She didn't ask if I was going to kill the bitch who hurt her.

Used her.

Fucking sold her.

I would have lied.

I would have said no.

I would have kissed her cheek and walked out because the plane ride was only an hour each way. I would be back before dinner and her mother would be dead.

I beat my fist into the door. The wail of forgotten children and abandoned TVs stuck on the same station roared through the musty corridor. The stench of urine and burnt sugar clung in the air.

She opened the door as far as the chain would allow and poked one eyeball up at me.

Naya's blue eyes.

"What?" she hissed.

The chain may as well have been made of foil. It crumpled and snapped with just a heave of my body against the wood. Her scream was met with the barrel of my gun pointed straight between her wide eyes and my warning to shut her mouth.

I didn't hit women.

I never fucking hit women.

But this one ... we were going to have a long chat. Not long enough because I promised my wife I would be at the dinner table with her in five hours, but I had four hours and ten bullets, and twenty years she owed Naya.

Jeannette was last on my list.

I darkened her doorway while Naya was at her shop, distracted by the volumes she loved so much. Too preoccupied to take notice when I kissed the side of her head and told her I had business to oversee.

Not entirely a lie. Unlike Jarrett and her mother, I wasn't dealing with Jeannette my way. Handley was right about her being someone people would notice missing. They would ask questions. She had a family, and even pissed off with her, they would resist anything truly awful happening to her.

But beyond all that, why draw attention to myself when it was unnecessary? Jeannette was a special case and needed to be dealt with accordingly. Calmly and methodically.

There was also the fact that Dr. Roberts, his son, and grandson were all necessary members of the community. They were far more valuable to me than Jeannette.

In the end, Jeannette Roberts was dealt with in the only humane and discreet method I could think of. It was far more than she deserved, but the people she left behind would never miss her. They would never look for her. She had simply walked out of their lives on her own two feet and vanished into the vast world beyond the village gates.

I had no doubt her son may one day search for her. Perhaps her unborn grandchild, or not. Maybe they would simply let her go and be relieved by her absence. Whatever the case, she paid for betraying Naya. For trying to profit off Naya's pain. For trying to get Naya taken from me. It was unfortunate because if Jeannette Roberts had simply concealed her hatred, she would be alive and with her family.

But accidents happened.