Page 71 of Release You

My mouth twitched when I took a swig of it, but I let the whiskey wash down the last of the fighting adrenaline in my body. We stopped moving. The abrupt change made my stomach roll. Maybe it was time I stopped chugging whiskey.

When the doors slid open, Dom stepped out of the elevator, calling out for me over his shoulder. “Come on.”

With the amount of alcohol I’d had in such a short amount of time, I should be drunk, but instead I felt hungover, complete with a pounding headache and cottonmouth. I rose and followed Dom down a carpeted hallway. At the far end of the floor, he touched his wallet to the door lock magnetic strip. When the light turned green, he gestured for me to go in, and Iobliged. If Dom wanted to get rid of me, he would’ve had the security guards throw me into the trunk of his SUV. Why had he brought me to his grand suite instead?

“There’s water on the dining table.” He closed the door behind him. “Now. Care to tell me what the fuck that was all about?”

“Nice place.” I took a bottle of water and drank until it was all gone. “You live here?”

He gave me a half smirk. “Perk of the job.”

“More of Derek’s money, I’m sure. Tell me. Is this what you and Nikki do? You go around finding pathetic fools with their heads so far up their asses they can’t tell a beautiful woman from a con artist?”

“Ouch. That sounds painful.” He let out a laugh. “I should’ve known Nikki had something to do with this. What did she do now?” He rubbed his side where I’d punched him.

I pressed my forefinger and thumb to my eyelids and winced. “Don’t pretend, asshole. You know exactly what you two did. Conning me out of my father’s will and the little money my mom had.” That slow burn in my stomach was back. I sounded like a complete moron. How had I not seen it?

He chuckled. “I really thought she’d retired. Maybe she figured she wasn’t ready yet. Or maybe she had a damn good reason for walking away with your mom’s money.” He sauntered to the head of the table where he had a laptop and piles of manila folders laid out. He shuffled through a couple, picked up the one with Cavalier on the label, and slid it across the table to me. “Is that the will Nikki stole?”

I took another bottle of water and downed it, glaring at the papers in front of me. “You didn’t give it to her.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What the fuck is going on, man?”

“She left me.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. Pathetic didn’t begin to cover it.

“And you automatically thought she left with that will?”

I nodded. “She left a note. Took some of Mom’s jewelry and money. I assumed she had this too.”

His eyes turned a deep blue, and a half smile pulled on his lips. After the beating I’d given him downstairs, he wasn’t mad. Instead, he was intrigued. Was he trying to help me?

“I’m sorry I punched you. Obviously, you had nothing to do with this. It all came down on me so fast I haven’t been able to digest any of it.” I sat back and let out a breath.

“Well, the good news is the will is valid. If you sue your uncle, it should be an easy win. Question is are you ready to move forward with it? The way I understood it, if you pull the trigger on this, Nikki’s sister will be the one having to bite the bullet, so to speak.” He sat at the end of the table.

Nothing about him said crook to me. Yeah, I’d seen Dom dance the gray area with ease and little regard, but he wasn’t a petty thief. Even if Nikki had no problem playing me, I could tell he had no part in it.

“I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.” I fished the chip out of the back pocket of my jeans, my hand tight around it. I needed to trust him. Not everyone was like Jonathan. Dom was a friend. “There’s a recording that suggests my uncle was involved in my dad’s murder.”

Both his eyebrows shot up as he shuffled through more folders until he found the one with Lisa Morrow on the label. “Fuck, man. That’s hard core.” He flipped through the pages and all the bloody pictures. “He had an alibi, though. The maid swore he was in his study when it happened. She also swore she saw Lisa punching the victim’s chest…” He mumbled as he ran a thumb over his jaw. He met my gaze, his eyes darting between my hand and my face. “Is that it?”

I nodded and tossed it to him. He inserted the chip in the SD slot of his laptop and sat back on his chair. My stomachrolled, as the voices began to play in my head. I trudged to the window, leaned on the frame, and focused on the dark sky and the city lights below us.

“Henry, this changes everything. We’ll need an expert to confirm this recording hasn’t been tampered with. But I’m willing to bet this is enough to get Lisa out. With this and your mom’s confession, we can put Jonathan away for a long time.”

I snorted and turned to face him. “Don’t count on it. Did you not hear her in the recording? She helped them that day.” I raised my voice.

“We can’t say that for sure. Listen to it. Something happened at the end there. A struggle maybe?”

“It’s just static.” I shook my head. “Maybe she had her phone in her purse when she recorded that.”

“Are you sure?”

My chest hitched. I’d been so mad at Nikki for leaving me I immediately transferred all that anger to Mom. Dom played the recording again. I sat in the chair next to him and listened. Really listened this time. There was shuffling again, like a wallet or something soft rubbing against the phone microphone.

At the very end, I heard the softest gasp, a wheeze. It sounded like there was a struggle. Did Jonathan figure out Mom was recording the conversation? But if he did, how had it ended up in Mom’s security box?

The realization hit me like a runaway train. I jerked to my feet, mouth open. Fuck. Mom had nothing to do with Dad’s murder. Just like Lisa, Mom had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. I thought of Mom and the day I’d seen her at Cavalier Manor with Francesca seemingly tending to her. I’d been right about the fear I saw in her eyes.

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