Page 87 of Ugly Truths
What happened when they died?
Did they have families waiting for them? Were those families told the truth? Or were they left to wonder, to grieve someone who disappeared into the system, never knowing what happened?
Did they get the funerals they deserved? Or were they discarded and erased as if they never even existed?
The questions keep coming, and this time, we have no answers.
There’s no strategy, no power move, no clever manipulation that will undo decades of atrocities. This isn’t a broken deal, or an honest misstep. Nothing Silas can salvage, bend to his will, or force into something manageable.
This is beyond me.
Beyond him.
Beyond everything.
Chapter 35
Silas
“What the fuck,” Lloyd breathes, slumping on the leather sofa and fingers threading through his dark curls.
My throat is raw from speaking, legs stiff from standing behind my desk with Cillian, Lloyd, and Steven on the other side. Davey and Paul are on speakerphone, with Davey on his way here. Paul stayed behind at the satellite office with Corey, Ben, and Luis.
My desk chair, where Elena sat an hour ago after collapsing into it, is empty. She slipped out quietly when the others walked in, murmuring that she'd be downstairs if needed. I didn’t fully grasp her departure until it was too late.
Cillian’s expression is stone-cold. Steven rubs his face wearily next to Lloyd, who shakes his head at the ceiling. I've outlined everything we've learned, barely controlling the turmoil raging within me.
William did it all right under my nose, releasing a type of evil into the world that I never thought anyone could be capable of. And I contributed to it, whether I knew it or not.
All of my father’s erratic and nonsensical power moves in the past six months have come into stunning clarity. Of course, he wanted Jeremy as COO. How else can he keep pulling his strings if he doesn’t have one of his loyal dogs sitting at the helm?
But he chose Jeremy, who wouldn’t be able to handle even the everyday tasks of a COO, let alone juggle those and some giant, demonic operation like this in secret.
I can’t tell if it’s William’s age catching up to him or if he’s just so goddamn desperate he’d latch onto anything with a pulse. Maybe it’s both. Either way, it only shows how out of his depth he is now that I’ve dismantled every plan he had to manipulate me.
Everything I’ve worked for, every effort to help or improve the company, feels meaningless against this.
“Did you have any idea this was happening?” Cillian asks. The barely contained fury in his eyes might upset someone else in my position. As the first member I recruited—an ex-Seal recommended by a mutual friend—Cill is only more honorable than he is loyal. It’s the reason I hired him and why he leads this team.
“If I had known, I would have stopped it myself,” I answer.
He eyes me. I’m not sure what he’s looking for, but after what feels like an eternity, he nods once. That small gesture causes both Steven and Lloyd to relax slightly in their seats.
Davey’s voice cuts through the quiet. “Ben is cross-referencing Redwell Group and North Hollow Ventures on both the cloud and servers,” he says, referencing the companies we bought the Deming facility from six years ago.
I remember thinking how remarkable it was that my father acquired such an incredible property while dealing with Shaw’s departure. The board loved the space, and we signed the paperwork in a matter of weeks. Major news outlets covered the development, praising William for bringing more jobs to a remote area of New Mexico with so few career opportunities.
How were we all so blind?
My brother-in-law thinks we’re going to find that one or both businesses have always been a part of our portfolio and buried in our company structure. I want nothing more than for him to bewrong, but it fits. My father is a selfish prick who would never riskjusthimself. If he’s going to be caught, he’s taking down everyone with him.
If that proves to be true, he likely used the same process for Sierra Blanca.
“Who else do we think knows?” Steven asks.
“Shaw, though we don’t think his involvement extends past Deming,” Paul answers, shuffling paperwork on the other end of the phone. “Maybe a few others. Besides that, hiring external contractors would be the only way he’s kept it quiet for so long.”
My mind spins.
