Page 115 of Undeniably Corrupt
“Does my father know about your past?”
“Maybe. Possibly. Probably. I don’t know. But if he does, it means he was watching me very closely back then. There’s no other way. I don’t know for sure.” But I’ve found some of that. Files on me in hidden, encrypted folders. It wasn’t easy to get access to his systems. It actually took a lot of work and rooting around and a backway entrance, but I got in. I just haven’t had the time to really dig through everything yet since that all happened in the wee hours of Saturday morning after having Liora.
She swallows, absorbing that. “And this guy was here asking about me?”
“Also, yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I knew you were keeping things from me, and honestly, I had to protect my ass too. I didn’t know your angle. I still don’t other than you’re afraid of your father and he’s doing some crooked shit.”
She scrubs her hands up and down her face and leans back against the table.
“Vander…”
“You can tell me anything. You’re safe with me. I swear it.” My forehead drops to her chest. “God, Liora.” I press a kiss to her left breast, over her heart, before I cup her face, and our foreheads meet. “I’d die for you. I’d kill for you. I’m every bit as obsessed with you as you said. Please tell me. I can help. I swear I can. You just have to trust me.”
Her fingers drag through my hair, but she’s trembling so badly, I’m shocked she’s not vibrating the table with it. “Cassian didn’t fall, and he didn’t jump. My father had one of his men kill him. They pushed him, and he fell four stories.”
I freeze, everything inside me seizing up. Hell, I’m not even breathing.
“My father paid off the medical examiner to corroborate that, and after he filed his report claiming Cass was drunk and fell, he had him killed too so there were no loose ends.”
I fall back against my seat, staring at her as if I’ve never seen her before. Her face is streaked with tears and fear, but she’s calm, and it shocks me because I’m anything but. It’s as if I’m being sawed in half and my insides are being ripped from me. Cassian was murdered. By his father.
There are no words to describe that. It’s unfathomable. It’s horrifying. It’s gutting.
“If you had been there when you were supposed to be, he would have killed you too. And part of me always thought that’s what he wanted. Now I’m nearly positive it is.”
“I… I was there. I saw the men, and at the time I thought they were police officers. One put me in the back of a car and drove me into town and left me. I was so fucked up by seeing Cass on the ground that I never thought about the details of it. Until Saturday morning, when I went back to the site where he died. I realized then that there was no way the police could have gotten there that fast. It was the men who killed him.”
“Yes. And you were lucky they didn’t kill you too. In fact, I’m shocked they didn’t.”
“I had my phone in my hand,” I murmur. “I was calling my dad. I think by that point, if they had killed me, it would have been too suspicious.”
“Maybe. My father knew we were together. The… man he had visit me today said as much. But then you broke up with me and left and never came back, and he lost interest.”
“He didn’t lose interest, Angel. He just watched from afar and didn’t act because he didn’t need to. Until you started working for me.”
She nods. “Yes.”
I pick her up and place her back on the table as I shoot out of the chair. I kick one as I pass it, sending it careening into the wall with a loudbang. My fingers rake through my hair as I pace, thinking this through. Fuck.Fuck! This is just… in-fucking-sane.
“Vander.” She says my name softly but resolutely, and I already know I’m not going to like what she has to say next. “Hazel and I are going to move out today.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
I round on her and march back until I have her face in my hands. “You’re not moving out. You’re not going anywhere.”
“If I don’t, he won’t only kill you, he’ll kill Hazel. And me, but he’ll kill Hazel before that. I know his secrets. I overheard him discussing Cassian’s and the medical examiner’s deaths as well as some other things one night. He caught me and told me that if I left, he wouldn’t kill my mother or me. But if I ever talked or ever came back home, he would, and he’d make it hurt. So I left. But his threat remains, and now that I have Hazel, it’s grown. I can’t risk you too.” She hiccups out a sob. “Please, Vander, I’m trying to be strong and brave, but I can’t risk you, and I can’t risk Hazel. He knows you’re a hacker. He knows we were together in the past. He knows you were in Maine.”
“Angel, Vega is a real FBI agent. He’s undercover, and he’s working for your father. As far as I can tell, he’s only been there three months. That’s not exactly long enough to build a case, if that’s even what he’s doing. But it means the FBI is onto your father. I don’t know the full extent of his crimes, but they go far beyond killing Cass and a medical examiner. Cass had to know something and was going to talk. He had to know Cass asked me to meet him there. Why else would your father kill him?”
“So the man who waited for me outside the hospital todayon my father’s behalf, loaded with threats, is actually an undercover FBI agent?”
I nod. “Yes.”
