Chaos (11 page)

Sebastian

When Payton ran from the room, I got to my feet, ready to go after her, but Leif stopped me, holding up his hand. “Give her a minute.”

Derrick’s attention was flipping back and forth between me and the hallway where Payton had fled. “What’s going on?”

I glanced down the hallway, refusing to sit until I knew that Payton was okay. But I could at least answer Derrick’s question. “Fowler Body and Frame… That’s her father’s body shop.”

“Holy shit,” Leif muttered, watching me.

“I’ll be right back.”

When I reached the bathroom door, I tapped on it with the tips of my fingers. Payton didn’t answer, so I tried the knob. My heart wrenched when I saw her sitting on the floor, her knees pulled into her chest. She had a washcloth in her hands, and her face was streaked from the tears streaming down her face.

“Angel,” I whispered, lowering myself to the floor beside her.

“Oh, my God, Sebastian. I’m so, so sorry.”

I gripped her chin and forced her to look at me. I knew my confusion was etched across my forehead. “What are you talking about?”

“My father’s shop. They probably fixed the car that was used to kill your mother.”

“Payton,” I said firmly when more tears escaped her eyes. “Stop it.”

Her eyes opened wide and a sob wracked her body.

“This isn’t your fault, if that’s what you’re thinking. Or your father’s.”

“But—”

I cupped the back of her head and pulled her face against my chest, holding her as she tried to collect herself. I could understand her shock. It seemed surreal the coincidence, but aside from Lauren using her credit card at Payton’s father’s body shop, there was nothing else that tied the two together. We still didn’t know what Lauren had fixed at the time. I could admit that I was reaching, desperate for answers, but I had to remind myself that this could all very well be a dead end.

“Do you think Derrick talked to my father?” Payton asked, her voice raspy from her tears.

“No,” I assured her. “I think your father would’ve called you if someone came in there mentioning my name.” As a matter of fact, I would bet money on that. Hal would’ve called Payton instantly if he thought for a second that there might be something awry, and having a detective show up asking questions about something that had happened more than ten years ago would’ve been a red flag.

I ran my hand down her hair, waiting until she calmed down.

“Feeling better?” I asked when her body stopped trembling.

Payton nodded against my chest.

“Ready to go back out there?”

Another nod. I got to my feet and helped her to stand.

“Can you give me a minute?” she asked when she was on her feet.

“Yeah. I’ll be out there if you need me.”

“Okay.”

I left Payton in the bathroom and returned to find Derrick and Leif talking quietly.

“She okay?” Leif and Derrick asked at the exact same time.

“She’s fine. She’ll be back in a minute.” I lowered myself to the couch once again and focused on Derrick. “I take it you haven’t contacted the body shop. Considering Hal would recognize my name, he would’ve called Payton. This was obviously the first she’d heard of it.”

“That was my next step. It’s a long shot that they might have records from that far back, but the good thing is that most of it would’ve been paper records rather than electronic. If we’re lucky, they stored that paperwork somewhere and forget about it.”

I nodded, hoping he was right. Before I could say anything, Payton returned to the room. She took a seat at my side once again, but she didn’t meet my gaze.

“Do you think it would be better for me to go to my father?” she asked Derrick directly, her voice much stronger than it had been a few minutes ago.

“Do you think it’s a possibility that he’ll have the records from that long ago?” Derrick questioned.

“More than likely,” she told him. “My father doesn’t throw anything out. Ever.”

I knew my relief could be heard in the breath I took, but again, Payton didn’t look at me.

“If you think you can look through the records, that’ll help me. I can go talk to him, but he could very easily tell me that he doesn’t want anyone rummaging through his old files.”

“If he has it, I can get it,” Payton assured Derrick.

My phone beeped, signaling a text. I grabbed it from the arm of the couch and looked at the message. Glancing over at Leif, I gave him a subtle nod. Aaliyah was on her way.

“All right,” Derrick said, getting to his feet. “I’m gonna get out of your hair for now.” He looked at Payton as we all stood. “If you find out anything, please let me know. And if you can get your hands on the files, I need everything you can find. Pictures, estimates, credit card receipts.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Leif told Derrick.

I watched as the two men headed toward the front door and then outside. When Payton and I were alone, I pulled her against me, pressing my lips to her forehead. “I love you, Angel.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered.

I tipped her chin up so our eyes met. “Despite what you think, this is actually good news. Lauren could’ve used any body shop in town to have a car worked on. The fact that it happens to be your father’s shop is nothing short of a miracle. If he does have the paperwork, then we’re that much closer to figuring this out.”

Payton swallowed. “You’re right. I know you are. It just feels so… I don’t know. It just doesn’t sit well with me to know that my father could’ve very well repaired the car that was used to kill your mother.”

“We don’t know that he did, Payton. We have no idea what Lauren took to him. But hopefully, we’ll find out soon enough.”

Payton’s arms tightened around me, and I leaned down, pressing my lips to hers. I’d known this would be emotional for me, having to relive what had happened to my mother all over again, but I’d never imagined that it would take a turn like this. It gave me an entirely new outlook on the whole six degrees of separation thing.

“Aaliyah’s on her way over,” I told Payton when she pulled back from me.

“Do you mind if I go upstairs for a little while?” she asked softly.

“Not at all.”

The front door opened and Leif walked inside. Behind him was Aaliyah, her eyes wide as she looked around my house for the first time.

“I’m gonna say hi to her and then go upstairs,” Payton told me before making her way over to my sister.

The two women greeted one another and spoke softly before Payton headed up the stairs. I smiled at her and she smiled back, but it was forced. As much as I was worried about her, I had other pressing things on my mind. Things that I needed to get out in the open.

And this time, they involved Aaliyah.

My sister approached me slowly. She wasn’t smiling. In fact, her face was void of all expression as she looked around slowly.

“Nice place,” she said, her voice just as cold as her eyes.

She was pissed, but I had known she would be.

“Thanks.”

Aaliyah’s crystal blue eyes locked on mine as she said, “Why’d you ask me to come over, Sebastian? After all these weeks? You haven’t wanted to have anything to do with me, and all of a sudden here I am.”

“We need to talk,” I told her, gesturing toward the couch.

In that prissy way I was more used to from Lauren than from Aaliyah, my sister lowered herself to a cushion, placing her purse at her feet. “Then talk.”

Leif, who had disappeared briefly, returned to the room, nodding at me to take a seat in the recliner. I smirked at him but traded places so he could sit beside Aaliyah.

Aaliyah’s gaze darted back and forth between the two of us before stopping on me. “What do you need to say, Sebastian? I’ve got things to do.”

“Cut the crap, Aaliyah,” I said smartly. “I know you’re pissed and you’ve got every right to be. I moved out without telling you directly. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the least of my concerns at the moment. What we have to say to you is probably going to have you hating me more than ever.”

Aaliyah’s gaze lowered to the floor. “I don’t hate you, Sebastian. I’m just… I don’t know. I’m hurt. We all went to Vegas, and I know shit happened, but I didn’t think you’d turn your back on me because of it. Leif and I fought, but I didn’t think that would affect our relationship.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, not giving her time to answer me. “Is that what you thought? Shit. Aaliyah, that’s not what happened.” I hadn’t thought about the fact my sister would’ve believed I could turn my back on her because she’d had an argument with my best friend. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all, I could totally see how she would jump to that conclusion. “I’m sorry, Aaliyah. Really sorry. But that’s not what happened.”

“Then what did happen?” she asked, her eyes sliding over to Leif briefly.

Not giving Leif a chance to explain, I jumped right in. “The same day we came back from Vegas, I had a race scheduled. Then the unthinkable happened that night. There was an accident.”

Aaliyah’s eyes widened, and I noticed she looked me over as though she was trying to find signs of damage. “I wasn’t hurt, Aaliyah.” That wasn’t entirely true, but my injuries had been far less serious than what Leif had endured. “Leif was, though.”

Her head snapped over, and I watched as she studied Leif. “What happened?”

“Some asshole clipped the car and it flipped. Sebastian and Toby managed to get me out before the car went up in a fireball.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Aaliyah,” I said sharply, wanting her to turn her attention back to me. “That night, when Leif and I were in the hospital, Payton tried to call you. She tried to call Conrad first, but he didn’t answer, so she didn’t leave a message.”

“I didn’t get a message, either, Sebastian,” Aaliyah snapped.

“I know. Payton called your mother and told her what happened.”

“She actually spoke to my mother?” Aaliyah asked incredulously.

“Yeah. Payton explained what had happened, and Lauren said okay. No one showed up at the hospital to see how I was doing.”

I could tell Aaliyah was processing the information, and it wasn’t long before her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. “My mother knew what happened and she didn’t tell anyone?”

I didn’t answer her directly, just continued with the story. “Leif was in the hospital for two weeks. When he got out, he moved in here.”

Aaliyah’s attention was once again on Leif.

“Are you okay?”

“I am now,” he said, a note of indifference in his tone. I could tell he was happy to see her, but I could also sense that Leif didn’t want her to know that.

“But, Aaliyah, Payton did leave a message on your voice mail. She didn’t tell you what happened, but she did ask that you call her.”

“I’m serious, Sebastian, I didn’t get a message,” she said defensively.

“And I believe you. However, I believe that’s because your mother didn’t want you to get that message.”

Aaliyah stared at me in disbelief for a moment before she huffed. “You can’t be serious, Sebastian. Are you telling me that my own mother wouldn’t want me to know that my brother was hurt?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“There’s no way that’s true.”

“Oh, it’s true,” Leif stated, leaning back against the cushions, propping his arm on the armrest.

“Why didn’t someone try to call me again?” Aaliyah asked.

“Because by then we didn’t want to pull you into it. I knew that Lauren had kept you from getting that message. And she never told Conrad about the wreck. I was still living there for two weeks after it happened, Aaliyah. He never brought it up. Hell, he didn’t even ask about the scratches or bruises.”

“Is that why you stopped coming to dinner?”

“That and other reasons,” I told her honestly.

I got to my feet and started to pace the floor, trying to figure out how I wanted to tell my sister the rest of the story.

It wasn’t going to be easy, I knew that much.

Sebastian

Before I could come up with a rational way to tell my sister that I thought her parents were murderers and not sound like I needed to be put in a straitjacket and locked in a padded cell, Leif spoke up.

“Just tell her what’s going on. And
you
,” Leif said to Aaliyah directly, “I want you to sit right there until he’s finished. Don’t get up and try to leave just because you don’t like what he has to say. When he’s done, you can choose to believe him or not. Until then, keep your pretty little ass right there on the couch. Understand?”

I half expected Aaliyah to get defensive and tell Leif just what she thought of his commands, but she didn’t. She nodded her head and then looked up at me.

So what did I do? Leif had just given me the perfect entry for the hardest conversation I’d ever planned to have, and instead of blurting out all of the facts as I knew them, I panicked. And now I was pacing the floor of my living room, likely wearing a hole in the hardwood, contemplating what would happen if I ran out the door.

I knew I couldn’t. My sister would think I was a nutcase. Then again, maybe she already thought that. At this point, I was pretty sure that diagnosis wasn’t too far off the mark, but I really didn’t want Aaliyah to think I’d lost my damn mind.

Worse, she was just watching me from where she sat on my couch, waiting patiently for me to get to the point.

Perhaps because Lauren was Aaliyah’s mother, announcing my suspicions about my father and stepmother was far more difficult now than it had been when I’d shared my revelation with Payton. Although I’d thought Payton would bolt for the door, I pretty well knew that Aaliyah would.

And unlike Payton, I hadn’t kept any secrets from Aaliyah as far as Conrad was concerned. With Payton, she hadn’t even realized that Conrad was my father at first. Aaliyah already knew, so I couldn’t use that to ease into the harder parts.

“Sebastian,” Leif called out, pulling me back to the present.

I lifted an eyebrow in response.

“Get on with it, bro.”

Right. Get on with it. I wanted to see him try to tell his sister that he believed their father was a killer.

I’m pretty sure Conrad’s the man responsible for killing my mother.

Those were the words. Now if I could just get my voice to attach to them, we’d be in business.

My body went from eighty to zero in a matter of seconds, my heart stealing all the blood from my body, including my brain. This was a hell of a lot harder than it looked.

Meeting Aaliyah’s hard gaze, I decided to go for it.

Dropping to the recliner, I rested my elbows on my knees and lowered my head, speaking to the floor when I did finally find my voice. But I finally did. And I told Aaliyah everything I knew without looking at her once.

And the last words I spoke were, “I have reason to believe that Conrad and Lauren are responsible for killing my mother
.
”

I expected a shriek from my sister, or maybe a verbal assault. I got neither. So I forced my head up, my eyes sliding up to meet hers from across the room. Even as she stared back at me blankly, Aaliyah still hadn’t said a word. Even now, as her eyes pinned me to my chair, my heart rate double-timing it, she wasn’t saying anything.

But then there was a hand on my shoulder, and I flinched. Turning my head, I saw Payton standing beside me. She was watching Aaliyah with a concerned expression on her face. When she noticed me watching her, she looked down and gave me a sad but reassuring smile.

“I called my dad,” Payton said, talking to both me and the others in the room. “I’m gonna go to his shop tomorrow when they’re closed. I told him I’d stop by tonight and explain what I was looking for and why.”

Peering back at Aaliyah, her silence bearing down on me until it was difficult to breathe, I had no idea what I was supposed to do now. That was information that I’d never imagined having to share with her. None of it.

“Aaliyah?” I prompted my sister, needing her to say something.

“What?” she asked, sounding completely torn up on the
inside.
I knew just how she felt.

“Aren’t you gonna say something?”

Leif moved closer to her, and when he reached for her hand, Aaliyah didn’t pull away. She merely linked her fingers with my best friend’s and continued to stare back at me.

“I don’t even know what to say, Sebastian. When you first started the conversation, I actually envisioned myself jumping up and running out of the house screaming at you. But now…”

“Now what?” I asked when she left her sentence hanging.

Payton lowered herself to the arm of the chair and kept her hand on my shoulder. I needed to have her close, and she must’ve realized that.

“So you don’t think I’m crazy?” I asked, aiming for a little humor but failing when the words came out stricken with fear.

“Well…” Aaliyah gave me a small smile. The one that said she was my little sister and she would always think I was crazy. “Shit. I don’t know what to think. It all sounds so… I don’t know. It sounds too real.”

“It is real,” I told her. “Granted, nothing has been proven, and I have no idea where this will lead, but Aaliyah” — I paused to swallow — “I have to figure this out. I have to know.”

“I get that,” she replied. “I do.”

“I have a question,” Leif said, his attention on Aaliyah.

I watched as my sister turned her head to look at the man sitting by her side, offering her a comforting hand.

No one said anything; we just waited for Leif to continue.

He finally did. “Why don’t you sound surprised?”

“I… I…” Aaliyah stuttered, but didn’t finish what she’d been about to say.

We all continued to watch her, waiting. I was literally on the edge of my seat, my hands wringing together between my knees. I had just spilled some crazy shit, and Aaliyah wasn’t saying anything. Worse than that, I didn’t know what was going through her head. I wanted to shake her, to force the words loose, because I knew she had something to say.

Finally, Aaliyah’s back straightened. “I know my mother hates you,” she said. The statement was so matter-of-fact it was almost like my sister had slapped me across the face.

Not that I didn’t know that already, but honestly, it still hurt just a little.

“Hate is a pretty strong word,” Payton said.

“I know,” Aaliyah said sadly. “But honestly, I don’t think it’s necessarily Sebastian that she dislikes so much. I’ve heard her when she goes on a tirade. Sometimes I think she dislikes me for the simple fact that she has to share my father with me. I’m not making excuses for her, though.”

“Why not?” I asked, confused. “Why wouldn’t you be defending her, Aaliyah?” My voice rose with every word I spoke. If I’d been wrongly accusing someone, I’d like to think that her own daughter would come to her defense.

“I don’t know,” Aaliyah snapped. “I… Shit, Sebastian. I’ve lived with them my entire life. Do you think I’m clueless? Do you think I don’t see how volatile she can be? Or how selfish she is? I’m the one who has had to deal with it firsthand. Not you.”

“Not
me
?” I retorted angrily. “You don’t think that I had to put up with being treated like a visitor in a house that was supposed to be my home?”

“Sebastian,” Payton said, her tone soothing, as if she were trying to calm a wild animal.

I bit my tongue and stared at Payton. My eyebrow slid up into my hairline; my breath lodged in my chest as I waited. When she didn’t say anything more, I took a deep breath and briefly touched her hand with mine before turning back to Aaliyah.

“Look, Aaliyah,” I finally said, my hands sliding into my hair and then to the back of my neck. “I don’t know what all of this means. I know you’re trying to process it, and I’m a shithead for throwing it all at you at once, but I didn’t know what else to do. I moved out because I had to get away. Had to get out from under Conrad’s thumb. Your mother is practically celebrating now that I’m gone, but—”

“Why do you think that?” Aaliyah interrupted.

I was about to explain the conversation Payton had had with Lauren, but I didn’t have to. The woman I loved more than life itself spoke up, defending me as she relayed, very calmly, the threat that Lauren had made toward her.

“She threatened to have you fired?” Aaliyah asked, her eyes wide with her surprise.

“Yes. And on top of that, I feel like I’ve got someone watching me while I’m at work. Every time I turn around, Trevor is there.”

“Trevor?” Aaliyah asked, sparing me a brief glance. “My
cousin
Trevor?”

I nodded.

“Why is he there?” she asked. If I was reading her correctly, that was a hint of fear in her tone. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

“He works there,” Payton told her simply.

“For my father?” Aaliyah’s tone was bordering on hysterical now.

“What’s the matter?” Leif asked. I could see he had picked up on her mood change. He moved an inch closer to her, squeezing her hand.

“Dad promised me that Trevor would never be allowed back at the house. I only assumed that meant he would never be anywhere near any of us.”

The chaos seeped into my head once again, a blinding rage building in my bloodstream as I watched the fear on my sister’s face. She didn’t need to explain for me to know that something had happened. Something she hadn’t yet told me.

“Aaliyah,” Leif said softly, his fingers hooking beneath her chin to turn her to face him. “I need you to tell me what that means.” His voice was dead calm.

Tears formed in Aaliyah’s eyes, and I knew right then and there that Trevor wasn’t going to be walking for long. And for the first time, it probably wasn’t going to be me who doled out the beating he deserved.

No, if Trevor thought he should fear me, well, he was about to learn it was one thing to get me to unleash my anger. It was something else entirely for Leif to lose control.

Shit.