Page 86 of The Fix
There was no readily available information online about who the judge had been, but based on location, Rex was pretty sure he could guess. For now, a guess was good enough.
How in the hell Seraphina had wound up engaged to the man Cami was dating at the time of her own family’s crime, he couldn’t fathom. But he knew for sure it wasn’t by accident.
Rex grabbed his keys. He couldn’t sit around waiting for Cami to return his call. They weren’t meeting for dinner for another forty-five minutes, but he needed to find her now.
Chapter Fifty
Cami heard someone calling her name, the voice female and far away.Mom? Elle?She struggled to find them, but her muscles wouldn’t move, and her head felt so foggy she didn’t know which way to turn.Where are you?
She slurred her mother’s name through the thick cotton in her mouth, the sound muted and ineffective. The image of a gag sent a jolt of fear through her and brought her through the mist.
Her eyes cracked open, and she blinked at the woman staring back.Seraphina.Cami’s gaze darted around as she attempted to orient herself. Scenery streaked past the tinted car window, and Seraphina sat in a plush leather seat just across from her. They were in a moving limo.
How? What?
Memory trickled in. This woman had been waiting for her. Cami had started to call Rex and then someone had come from behind ...
She tried in vain to lift her head from where it rested on the seat back, but her muscles didn’t respond. “What did you give me?” she said, slurring.
“A muscle relaxant,” Seraphina explained. “I’m sorry to have drugged you. And tied your hands. I knowtheydid that to you too. I read and watched everything about the crime you suffered. Unfortunately, I’m not strong enough to subdue you, and so I required narcotics. Oh, and a morally gray employee with a substantial amount of debt and a good reason to accept some under-the-table cash.” She inclined herhead backward toward the outline of the limo driver’s head behind the tinted partition.
Cami looked down, and just as Seraphina had said, her hands were bound by zip ties. And when she cast her gaze toward the floor, she saw that zip ties constrained her ankles as well. Her breath stalled, and though she tried desperately to move her body within the confines of the seat belt, her muscles remained inactive, and her frenzied attempts did nothing but make her woozier.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To Hollis.”
A cascade of fear moved through her uncomfortably, but far too slowly. Her body couldn’t process her emotions, much less fight back. “Why?”
Seraphina glanced out the window and then back at Cami. “I can’t tell you everything, but we have a bit of a drive, so I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
She attempted again to struggle against the zip ties, but she was too weak and ineffective. All she could do was listen.
Seraphina removed a photo from the purse next to her and held it out for Cami to see. It was a photograph of a family—the mom a pretty redhead with a regal neck, the father a broad-shouldered man with a crooked smile, and between them, a little girl with glasses, short blond hair, and a gap-toothed grin. “That’s me,” Seraphina said, pointing to the child. “My awkward stage lasted longer than I’d have liked, but I did eventually emerge.” She shrugged and smiled. “As you and I are both aware, if I hadn’t, Hollis would never have looked at me twice.”
The beautiful, grown-up version of that once-awkward child leaned forward and tapped the woman with the red hair. “That was my mother, Glory. She was a classical violinist.” A sad smile flitted across her mouth. “God, she played so beautifully. It lit up her whole face. It brought her entire being to life. Have you ever seen a person glow like that? She was just beginning to gain notoriety. It was only a matter of time, and she’dhave been a star.” She paused, her gaze moving from where it’d drifted, back to Cami. “She ordered the hit on your family.”
All the air left Cami’s lungs, and the additional lightheadedness caused her to see spots. “What?” The word was whispery and small and as vaporous as she felt. Boneless. Floating.
That was my mother, Glory. She ordered the hit on your family.
“To understand why, you have to first know what happened to us.” She nodded to the photo that she had set on the table. “He broke in through a back window, the man who terrorized our family. He was looking for money, or drugs, and he tied us up and ransacked our house. My mother attempted to fight back, and he broke her hand. Smashed the bones in those talented fingers with the heel of his boot. He stepped on that precious hand, Cami. He ground it under his shoe like it was nothing more than worthless trash. She never played again. My father peed himself.” Her face contorted momentarily, and she shook her head. “Sometimes I think that’s the real reason he ended up leaving, not my mother’s drinking. He couldn’t bear to know that we’d seen a grown man piss himself in fear.”
The fuzzy dots that had threatened to steal her consciousness again dissipated, but the shock remained. “Your, your mother, where is she?” She knew now, finally, after so many years of grief and torment, who was responsible for the murders of her mother and her sister. And yet she still couldn’t fully connect to her emotions. This barely seemed real, and she was still fighting to stay alert.
“My mother’s dead,” Seraphina said. “She died a long time ago. But in the wake of the crime, my father left, and my mother numbed herself with alcohol, her career over and her dreams all ended. I’ve wondered over the years why the media didn’t pick up our story. We barely received more than a two-paragraph, back-page write-up. They reported it as a break-in with minor injuries. But our life was demolished. Our family was destroyed, and they called itminor. You can’t imagine what that feels like, Cami. To be dismissed that way.” She ran a finger under her lip, fixing her gloss. “I wondered if it was becausemy parents were unmarried, or maybe neither of them was important enough, my mother pretty, but notprime-timepretty. Not like your mother. Not like you and your sister.” She tilted her head as she again watched the road go by out the window. “Maybe it just didn’t play well. Too little drama.Maybethere was a bigger story that day, something even juicier, and ours got lost in the news cycle. Anyway, I suppose it doesn’t matterwhy. What happened to us was swept away. Not for us, though. We had to live with the fallout every single day. I bet you never even heard about it, did you? Even though it was your father who let the man who victimized us go free.”
Cami swallowed, shutting her eyes momentarily. There it was. She and Rex had been right. It felt like a balloon had deflated inside her chest, and, for the briefest of moments, she swore she smelled the sour scent of Trig’s breath as he’d tortured her.
This woman’s mother had sent those men to get back at her father. She wanted done to Cami’s family what had been done to hers.How?“How could she?” she asked. How could anyone who’d experienced something like that want to see it happen to someone else? “How could that ever feel like justice?”
Seraphina’s gaze hung on her for several long moments, but in the end, she didn’t really answer Cami’s question. Maybe even she didn’t have one to give. “My mother became obsessed with Judge Cortlandt. He was her singular focus. She sat around all day doing nothing but nursing a bottle and her downfall. It was all she ever talked about. Week after week. Month after month.”
A chill moved over Cami, the zip ties at her wrists biting into her skin again as she instinctively attempted to grip something. Anything. She forced herself to breathe, to focus and digest. Seraphina had been a victim then, too, but she’d withheld this information, knowledge that might’ve brought her and her father an ounce of peace, for a long, long time. “You said your mother’s dead. How? Why?”
Seraphina made a soft humming noise. “An accidental drowning in her bathtub a year after your mother and sister were in the ground,or that’s what her death was ruled anyway. Her blood alcohol level was many times the legal limit.” She paused for so long Cami thought she was done speaking on that topic. But then she went on. “The way the media was obsessed with your case, I think it was the final insult. I hope she felt guilty, too, though I can’t speak to that. Anyway, her drinking increased. Most days she didn’t leave her room. I often picture her just slipping peacefully under the water, and sometimes it brings me comfort, and other times, I know she got off far easier than she deserved.”
She did. She did get off easier than she deserved.But her daughter was sitting here now; her daughter was the one who’d drugged and kidnapped Cami. “And you?” Cami asked. “You must’ve blamed him too. Is that why you kept her secret?” So long. Eleven painful years.
