Page 157 of Wicked Sins

“Suit yourself.” Joah glances at me, takes hold of my wrist, and draws me out from behind him.

For a heart-stuttering moment, I think the tables have turned. That this was all just a sick joke at my expense, and he was in fact—literally—handing me over.

But then he calmly pushes my mother aside and herds me to the door. He opens it for me as he stares back at my mother. “You’ve had years to start mothering her,” he says.

His eyes meet mine, and just like before, strength flows into me. I look back at Mom in time to see her deflate as Joah adds, “Bit late to start now.”

* * *

“You can’t liveon the beach,” Quinten snaps. His scathing glare should have set my hair on fire…but I let it slide right off me.

“Sure we can,” Candy says, sitting forward and squeezing my hand.

When we’re around Uncle Quinten, we don’t bother hiding our affection. He’s never commented on it directly, but his opinion is clear from the way he twitches his mouth.

He could suck a dick for all I care.

“Definitely not before you finish school.” Sitting there in his suit and tie, prim and proper hands shuffling around his papers as if he’s permanently trying to put them into order, he could be our actual Uncle and not just the family lawyer.

“It actually says that?” I crane forward, but Quinten hurriedly closes the file.

“You don’t trust me?”

“Not one fucking bit,” I say through a chuckle before sitting back in my chair.

We’re still in the same hotel. It’s been a week, but there’s been no reason for us to leave yet. Besides Diana, no one’s tried to claim us at theirs, and the hotel doesn’t seem to have any issues charging my credit card for the stay.

“Your trust will remain in my care until you’re twenty-one,” Quinten says. “And your father’s life insurance policy might still be in a state of…flux…for a few weeks until the claims investigation runs its course.”

Candy’s grip tightens, and I glance at her from the corner of my eye.

We got the news a few days ago during one of our ‘discussions’ with Reed. He doesn’t like to call them interrogations, even when that’s exactly what they feel like. We’ve both been cleared, of course. Everything we told them corroborated with the evidence they got back from my father’s autopsy report.

And holy fuck, I still can’t believe it, but we told them everything.

The pills I’d found in Dad’s drawer? Rohypnol. Fuck knows where he got it—it’s the kind that doesn’t turn blue in liquid, which, according to the cops, is kinda difficult to find these days.

They also found a bunch of illegal porn on a laptop he had stashed away in one of his safes. Even an old film reel—stuff from the eighties. Seems he’d been feeding his urges for several decades before Candy walked into his life.

I’d told them about how he tried to gas me. They said they’d reopen Bonnie’s case and see if there was any evidence that her suicide had been a setup. I didn’t do it for closure—I know he was involved. Perhaps not the first time around, but definitely the last.

“Why do we have to pay for a hotel room when we can live at the beach house?”

Quinten sighs and rubs the length of his nose with a finger. “School.”

“We’ll do it online or something. The place has got wi-fi.”

“I can’t…I mean, there has to be someone, a guardian or something that can—”

He cuts off when I lean across and pat the back of the hand he still has pressed over the file. “What do you think I’m paying you for, Uncle?”

He grimaces at me. “I can’t abandon my entire practice just to babysit you, two delinquents.” He glares at us each in turn. “I have a business—”

“We won’t tell if you don’t.”

We stare at each other for the longest time. Quinten’s the first to blink, and I take that as a victory.

“I’d have to check in every few days,” he grumbles as he starts packing things away in his briefcase.

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