Page 57 of Hell of a Mess
“Look,” I said, “I tried asking her about her sister, but she…she…” I rubbed my jaw, hating that memory. “She checked out on me. She just stared with this expression that…damn, I don’t know how to explain it. But I couldn’t push her anymore. What I do know is, there is some dark shit in that fucking Halsten house. She was trembling and crying, lost in a memory or something. But it messed her up.”
Linc stared at me for a moment, then sat on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms over his chest. “And you had asked her about what exactly when she did this?”
I picked up my glass of whiskey. If he was going to make me go over this again, I needed it for my goddamn nerves. “I’dasked her what she did before, during the day. She said she took care of someone. I asked who. She didn’t respond, so I repeated the question. She said Dalia, and then she just”—I snapped my fingers—“checked out on me.”
He wanted more than that, but it was all I had.
I’d spent the rest of the day making sure she was happy. Doing shit I’d never done before. When I’d asked Jayda to pack us a picnic basket, she had just stared at me with her mouth slightly agape, like I’d just told her I no longer fucked women.
“Wilder was able to dig up some more information,” Linc informed me.
Why was he just now telling me this? I straightened in my seat.
“What?” The word came out sounding like a demand, causing Linc to pause.
He finally picked up some paperwork from his desk. “Seems Ravina gave birth twenty-nine years ago to a girl.Lassandra Madison Halsten,” he read.
We’d already known that.
“Six years later, Ravina drowned while boating in Lewisville Lake. Lassandra is said to have also drowned. Ravina had been trying to save her,” he said, glancing up from the paper. “The official statement is that she rented a boat to take her oldest daughter out for the day. However, Wilder found that Ravina had been seen with the man who owned the boat—a Timothy Walter, who went by the nickname T—on more than one occasion, and Alpheus paid to keep that silent.”
“Why the fuck did the bastard claim that Lace was dead?”
Linc looked back at the papers. “That’s a question we don’t have a solid answer for. Lassandra’s body was never found. I’m going to make an educated guess, however, that Alpheus knew she wasn’t his. Especially considering their wedding date was almost a year after Lassandra was born, and then there is the fact that Lace believed she was a year younger than she actually is.”
“So, Mal knocked her up, and what, they waited until she had the baby before getting married? Did they hide her? And where is the sister? Dalia?”
Linc’s brows drew together as he read. “It seems Ravina lived in a home Halsten had in Florence, Italy, the year leading up to their marriage. Then they honeymooned in Spain and Greece for six months. There is a write-up in the newspaper, congratulating them on the birth of their daughter, Lassandra, shortly after Ravina returned from her travel abroad—Halsten had come back sooner than her,” he said. “And I thought it was Dalia who drowned and that Alpheus claimed it was Lassandra for whatever fucked-up reason. But if Lace said that she took care of Dalia, then she’s not dead. But something is wrong with her. Dalia would be twenty-five years old. Well past the age of needing someone to take care of her.”
I rubbed my temples in frustration. We were normally good at figuring stuff out. But this motherfucker had done some twisted shit. Why trade out his two daughters?
“You’ve got to ask her what is wrong with Dalia,” Linc said.
I glared at him. “No.”
“We can’t fix this if we don’t know what we are dealing with!”
Fuck! I knew that, but I hated the idea of her doing that thing again. Going to that dark place.
I stood up, taking my glass with me, and started for the door.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“To check on things outside,” I replied, not giving a shit what he thought about it.
Just as I jerked open the door, he called my name.
Pausing, I clenched my teeth and took a deep breath. “What?” I asked.
“She’s fragile,” he said.
“I know that.”
“She needs something you can never give. Don’t let her getattached.”
“I’m helping her. That’s all,” I spat out, then stalked from the room before he could say any more.
Twenty-Four
