Page 135 of Fall Into Me

“I’m an only child.” I cut him off. My stomach rolled with the idea of being related to that piece of shit.

“Declan is your father’s son with a different woman.”

Detective Ambros reached for another folder that he had tucked under his arm and pulled out another image of a woman I didn’t recognize.

It occurred to me then that Declan was almost exactly two years younger than me. The only thing I felt at the realization that there was another version of me and my mom just two years behind, likely enduring the same things we did, was pity.

The woman stared back at me through the photo with dead, sad eyes. Eyes that were almost black, just like her son’s.

It gave me a sick sort of satisfaction knowing that neither of the children that my father sired looked anything like him. Like the universe was doing its best to erase him from memory.

I also learned that where I tried to turn myself into nothing in order to escape any possibility of being anything like my father, Declan had taken to his particular tastes like a moth to a flame.

I sat there and listened while the detectives talked about how the injuries that both he and his mother sustained showed a pattern of abuse in the home even though nothing was ever admitted.

I learned that he lived down the street from me but went to a different school across town. I learned that’s where my father went when I told him if he stepped foot in the house again that I’d kill him, knowing he saw it in my eyes for the truth those words held.

From the ages of fifteen to eighteen, Declan was hospitalized twice, once for a skull fracture and once for a knife wound justbelow his collarbone. And just before he turned eighteen, his mother died.

“How did she die?” I didn’t need the question answered for me to be sure of the answer.

My head was pounding with the information they were shoving at me.

Declan’s apartment in the city was a wealth of depraved information. Of journal entries and video diaries. Of detailed plans on exactly what he wanted to do to our father.

“He was curious about you for a long time, and as far as we could tell, there wasn’t any serious sinister intent until—”

“Two years ago?” When I started working atMackenzie Co.

“No.” Dozen slid another image across the table. One of me, the image pinned to a wall with a knife through the middle of my face. “Six months ago.”

“When I asked for the Darling project.”

Ambros nodded. “It was a show of favoritism that Declan never received. He felt betrayed by both you and your father.”

“I didn’t even know him.”

“Well, he knew about you. His latest entries were centered on taking things from both you and your father. He said he wanted to—”

“Get what he was owed.” I could hear the words ripping from his throat through the phone. Images bombarding me of what he looked like on the other end. Of Cali, of how he was hurting her.

“He wanted to take Cali from you,” Ambros said, his voice heavy. The very idea made my skin crawl, and my muscles ripple under my skin. “And from your father, he wanted Mackenzie Co.”

I snorted a laugh. “There’s no way in hell he would have gotten a dime from that man.”

Ambros placed a third folder on the table. Where they kept pulling these from, I had no fucking idea. The contents insidegrabbed my attention, though, and if I was honest with myself, they didn’t surprise me at all.

Mackenzie Co. had always been a successful business. At one point, it had even been legitimate. But that hadn’t been the case for a very long time.

Over the last twenty years, the majority of the company’s success had come from developing towns that showed a lot of promise as up-and-coming weekend getaways. It turned out that not only wereallof those developments undertaken using substandard materials that couldn’t reach regulatory standards if they’d been propped on fucking stilts, but none of the projects had ever been legally approved.

Every single one moved forward because Mackenzie Co. paid off local town officials.

The hole of bullshit this company was in never ended. Zoning laws? Overlooked. Environmental regulations? Nonexistent. Building codes? What fucking building codes? They inflated property values like balloons at a kids’ party, leaving a mess behind every time.

“And what?” I asked, voice sharp. “You think I had something to do with this?”

“At the start.” Dozen leaned back, a hand going to his mustache, reminding me that these guys had arrested me for a murder they knew I didn’t commit and that I’d been here for ten fucking hours. “Warrant cleared that up.”

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