Page 49 of The Best Wild Idea
“Don’t you find it just a little bit ironic, maybe even self-serving, that you’re sitting here halfway across the world, sharing a hotel suite with your dead best friend’sfiancée— making fancy dinner reservations to take me out for God’s sake — when it wasyourbuilding that fucking killed him?”
Chapter 20
Juliet
My words hit Silas like a nuclear missile, right on target.
He looks stunned.
“You think . . .” he repeats to himself then stops. His eyes widen, like each side is a laser ready to burn a hole into the floor between us. “You think that building had something to do with it?” He stands up to take a step toward me, a growl coming from somewhere deep in his throat. “Are you out of your damn mind?”
I instinctively step back, blinking. I’ve never seen Silas this mad, and I’m suddenly not sure if I want to, but it’s too late for that now. I’ve said what I’ve wanted to say to him for months and I can’t believe he has the gall to play dumb right now.
“Don’t be daft, Silas. You can snap your fingers and have the Rockettes high-kick at your next fucking birthday party if you feel like it. Plus you’re ivy league educated, not to mention one of the smartest men in the world according to every one of those stupid articles singing your praises across the entire fucking globe. Don’t tell me that it hasn’t crossed your mind, or God forbid, that you’ve already come to terms with it and you just don’t care.” My voice is now near a yell. “It took me a while to figure it out, but that’s why you came to my house after his funeral to offer me money, isn’t it? Because the guilt was already eating you alive?”
He looks like I’ve just physically assaulted him.
My heart is pounding out of my ears.
“What the hell are you talking about? Grant died of complications from a lung condition.”
“From that fucking building, Silas. The one you gave him to work from.” He shakes his head like I’ve lost my mind, so I goon. “How else would he have managed to die of a lung condition before the ripe ol’ age of thirty? You gave it to him to use when he was starting up the Starlight Foundation. Remember? That was your big, fancy contribution to get his nonprofit off the ground.”
I cross my arms over my chest and dig both feet into the floor. There’s no way I’m letting him walk away from this. I’ve secretly harbored this hunch since the very last week of Grant’s time on this earth but by then it was too late. I was too focused on giving him a few peaceful days without diving into this hunch, and then after he was gone, what was the point? It’s still too late to change any of it, but I can’t take one more second in this room without telling him what I believe happened. And how it very well might be his fault that Grant’s gone.
Silas paces the room, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck like he’s been shot from behind, before answering. This time more slowly and deliberately.
“I gave Grant that building to use because I believed in the work he was doing. Even when his parents wouldn’t support him on it, and our business professor thought he was out of his mind for wasting his privileged leg up in the world by starting it. I wanted him to take his shot without having to worry about pooling the resources or taking a loan out for a building or lease. His parents wouldn’t back him up on it so I . . .” He pauses, running a hand through his hair like he’s confused, thinking back over every detail in his mind. “You already know all this, Jules. It was exactly what Grant wanted.”
“That building was old and decrepit and full of all the toxic shit that I’m guessing killed him. You know it as well as I do. How else would he have gone from being young and healthy to—” I can barely get the words out when I think of Grant’s final days. My voice cracks when I try to finish. “To a wastedshellof who he was. And as fast as he did, too. There’s just no other explanation. What else could have caused it?”
Silas’ mouth hinges open and his eyes dart back and forth, searching mine. All the air in his lungs looks to be sucked out by what I’ve just accused him of.
He shakes his head.
“Let me get this straight. You’re convinced that the building I gave him is what caused him to die?”
That’s not exactly right. It’s just a theory and one I’m not even entirely convinced of myself given the gravity of it, but I nod my head and point my finger at him anyway. Needing to know if he’s ever thought about it too.
“And you know it, which is why you showed up at my house just hours after his funeral. Flashing your money around, promising totake care of mein his absence.” My veins burn like they’re filled with acid as I spit every word out across the room at him. “The guilt was already eating you alive which is why you came over.” I stop, catching my breath. I don’t know whether he looks closer to crying or tearing the walls down in here. His shoulders are heaving like he can’t contain the anger ripping through him.
“That’snotwhy I came by that day,” he interrupts, pointing back at me. “And you know it. It was more than that.” He shifts his eyes at the floor, searching his memory. “I had that building tested before I gave it to him. I would have known if there were any issues.”
“You gave him a shithole youthinkyou tested? What was wrong with his old office? Why did you have to give him that stupid building in the first place?”
“Grant’s business was going through a rough patch around the time my dad died. Growing pains, a slump. That building helped relieve some of the foundation’s overhead. I had offered to renovate it before he moved in, but he wouldn’t let me. I had to talk him into taking it in the first place.”
“Ah, you had to talk him into it so you could get the tax write-off that a building donation like that got you?”
“Jesus Christ, Jules. Not everything is about money. A deduction like that would have been a drop in the bucket to—”
My glare stops him mid-sentence.
“And you handled the testing? Personally?” I demand, wondering why I’d never heard about any environmental testing being done before Grant took everything over and moved in. I didn’t hear the deep ongoing details of his everyday business, sure, but I feel like I might have heard something about testing a whole damn buildingifthis testing had actually taken place. “What did the report say then? I want to see it.”
“I-I don’t actually know,” he stammers. “My assistant Ryan handled it. All of it. The one who—”
“That fucking nineteen-year-old you had deliver suitcases to my house a few nights ago? He was the one who handled something so important?”
