Page 7 of Cruel Riches

The ‘distasteful incident’ he was referring to was my father’s death.

He was taken from his jail cell in the middle of the night just a few days after his arraignment hearing. At first, everyone thought he’d escaped, so an island-wide manhunt ensued. He was found seven days later in a national park.

What was left of him, anyway.

They never actually found a body. Only several pints of blood, some hair, and a few teeth. We all knew he was dead, though. No one could lose that much blood and survive.

It looked like a vigilante had broken him out of his cell, driven him to a distant location, and murdered him in retaliation for his purported crimes. However, things soon pointed to a wider conspiracy. All of the security footage files from that evening at the prison mysteriously became corrupted and unwatchable, and the guards and other staff members claimed they hadn’t seen or heard anything.

Someone had obviously paid a lot of money for all of that to happen.

Because Dad’s death technically occurred while he was in custody, my family’s lawyer launched a suit against the State of Washington, and they ended up having to pay us a massive sum of money for wrongful death compensation. We ended up with twelve million dollars, and that made the Avalon locals despise us even more. Not only did our father kill all those people—allegedly—we were seemingly profiting from it.

As if we wanted things to happen that way. As if we wouldn’t prefer to have our father alive and well. Free and clear of the bullshit charges.

“How dare you?” I said, chest heaving.

Edward held up another palm. “Let’s all calm down,” he said, as if he hadn’t provoked the whole situation. “No need to shout.”

“I don’t understand,” Sascha said in a tearful voice. “Why don’t you want us here?”

“I think I’ve already made that quite clear.”

“But we aren’t going to tell anyone about our father.”

“Listen,” Edward said, sitting down again. “That may be true, but the thing is, it’s completely beside the point. We don’t look at you and see our grandchildren. We look at you and see him. Your eyes… your hair… you’re just like him. The Covington blood obviously runs strongly in your veins.”

“It’s dye!” I said, rolling my eyes at his dramatic act. “We both color our hair brown to make sure we look totally different than we did when we were kids, as an extra precaution. We’re naturally blonde, just like the two of you were when you were younger.”

Edward bristled. “It doesn’t matter. Half of you might come from our wayward daughter, but the other half comes from him, and the mere thought of it makes me feel sick. That’s why we never tried to get in touch with you over the years. We simply didn’t want to.” He paused and pressed his lips together. Then he shook his head and went on. “We aren’t your family. Not really.”

“No,” I said in an icy tone. “You’re not.”

Edward stood up again, and so did his wife. “I think it’s time for us to leave.”

“Yes, it is. You can see yourselves out,” I replied, not even caring how petulant I sounded. These people didn’t deserve niceties.

“If you must stay on Avalon, we would appreciate it if you continued to keep the matter of our blood relationship to yourselves,” Edward said. “In return, we won’t tell anyone about your true identities and cause problems for you.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll stay quiet,” I said, eyes narrowing. “I have no desire to admit that we’re related to people like you anyway.”

He tipped his head at me. “I’m glad we understand each other.”

A moment later, he and his wife were gone. I stared at the spot they’d just been sitting in, fuming.

Sascha’s expression was a mixture of anger and devastation. Her cheeks were bright red, her eyes were shimmering, and her body was trembling. She glanced down at the teacups our grandparents had used. Then she picked one of them up and hurled it across the room with a long, feral cry of frustration.

The china shattered on impact with the opposite wall, and streaks of milky tea trickled down the wallpaper, dripping onto the shards on the floorboards.

Sascha stared at the ruined china, chest heaving. I went over to her and wrapped my arms around her. “Hey, calm down. It’s okay.”

She took a deep, shaky breath and sniffled. “Please don’t say ‘I told you so’, Lexie.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

She pulled away and wiped under her eyes. “You were right all along,” she said thickly. “They want nothing to do with us.”

“At least we tried,” I said, rubbing her back in soothing circles. “It’s not your fault they’re such assholes, and no one can blame you for wanting more family. It sucks being so isolated sometimes.”

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