Page 53 of Revenge (Corrupt Empire 3)

I had to pull myself together. Aiden told me to wash away all the blood so I would. I released my face, reaching for the shampoo and begun the laborious process of washing my hair and my body.

When the water finally ran clear, I knew it was gone. All the blood. Somehow this made me feel a little better. I turned the shower off and stepped out, grabbing a clean towel from the rack and wrapping myself in it. I picked up a smaller towel and dried my dripping locks as much as I could.

I stepped back out into the bedroom, finding Aiden had stripped the bedsheets and unceremoniously dumped Tristan back on the bed, carefully angling him so that it was clear he’d been attempting to have sex with whoever had killed him. That girl happened to be me, but I didn’t want to think about it any longer. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry my eyes out. That wasn’t an option.

He looked up from where he was cleaning the floor and nodded at a pile of clothes he’d left by the door. I picked them up and dressed on automatic. I knew they were Tristan’s clothes, but I didn’t care at that moment. A pair of boxers, followed by shorts, a t-shirt and a jumper which I had to roll the sleeves up on. I slipped on the pair of flip flops, which looked ridiculously big on my feet.

When he was done, he stripped off the gloves he was wearing. He went into the bathroom and came out with my clothes and the knife. He stuffed my clothes and the towels into a black bag before, taking me out of the room.

“Take these downstairs and leave them by the door, please. I know this is hard, princess, but I need you to stay strong for me.”

I stared up at him, tears welling in my eyes.

“Okay,” I whispered.

His expression softened. He dropped the bags he was holding on the floor and cupped my face.

“Listen to me, Avery. I love you. We got out of this alive. I’m not going to let you go down for this either. No one is going to know we were here.”

I’d known that’s why he was cleaning up the scene, but somehow it made me feel worse. I should be punished for killing Tristan. I took his life. I had no right to do that.

But look at what he tried to do to you? He was going to rape you. You had no choice. You know that.

“Where’s Frazier?”

“He’s dead.”

I didn’t know whether that made me feel any better or not.

“What happened?”

“We’ll talk about it later. I need you to go to Frazier’s computer and make sure all the data transferred to the memory stick. Then you need to get rid of everything related to the company.”

He’d read my text messages then.

“What about the staff?”

“I think Frazier made them leave before he brought you to see me.”

I shivered. All the planning we’d done to make this evening a success had gone up in flames. Frazier already knew about us and had made his own plans. And now the Shaws were dead. This wasn’t clean at all. It had been messy. So very messy.

“Okay. The data. You need me to check the data.”

“Yes. Stay in his office until I get you, okay?”

I nodded. He leant down and placed a chaste kiss on my lips before he walked back into Tristan’s bedroom. I knew there were still things he needed to clean up before we could walk away from this.

Picking up the two bin bags, I carried them downstairs, careful not to trip over with the oversized flip flops. I left the bags at the front door and walked along the corridor to Frazier’s office. I flipped the light on and sat at his desk. The data had finished transferring.

I clicked on the folder and started looking at the files. There was so much here. So many incriminating documents. He’d covered up fraud, drunk driving and even a hit and run. There was more, but I wasn’t sure I could look at all of it.

And there was stuff on Daniels Holdings. Things that made me ill. Some of it was the same evidence Aiden had shown me about the bribes, but there were other things. Like how they’d circumnavigated a case against the company regarding shoddy building work. There was blood on their hands. A kid had died because of their negligence.

I felt sick. So fucking sick. How could they do this shit?

I sat back in his chair, drumming my fingers on the armrest. I wanted him to pay for this. Frazier was dead, but I wanted to burn his legacy to the ground. I opened one of his drawers, finding several blank memory sticks inside.

I set about selecting several of the cases that didn’t involve Daniels Holdings and put them on one of the blank memory sticks. Next, I typed up a message on the computer and printed it out. I folded the message up and put it in an envelope along with the memory stick.

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