Page 4 of The Sweetest Obsession

Fuck.

I can’t bring myself to think her name.

Even after all these years, the ache of missing her stings. Just as fresh as if she only left yesterday.

No.

Like I only drove her away yesterday.

I never got a chance to apologize. Maybe I never will.

I don’t know if she’s ever coming back.

There’s a part of me that wants to break my silence. To demand that Lucia and Montero cough up that information, spill everything they know about my very personal lingering mystery.

For all their big fluffy speeches as First and Second Selectman of Redhaven, North Carolina, waffling on withWe can’t express enough how sorry we are for our son’s actionsandOur apologies to this beautiful town for the horrors its citizens have faced,I think they know.

Yeah, bull.

They know more about what their son was really up to than they let on.

“Captain?” Micah presses.

“Yeah,” I finally confirm, tossing my head at him. “Get going. Call it in.”

He nods sharply and walks off, slipping his fingers between his lips and whistling toward the ballroom to get Henri’s attention. I watch Henri glance up, then peel his tall frame away from the crowd and walk toward the red-carpeted stairs.

I beam a long look at Montero first, then Lucia. “Mr. and Mrs. Arrendell, where are your sons right now?”

For just a moment, the look in Lucia’s steely-grey eyes turns almost black with hatred.

Just the tiniest slip of her mask—because we both know whereoneof her sons is.

In the dirt. Forever.

The murderer a murder victim himself.

And his untimely demise happened with the Raleigh PD and not locally, but our badges aren’t that different. It’s not hard to tell what she thinks of us.

Lucia Arrendell blames me.

She holds the entire Redhaven police crew responsible for her son.

Still, she pins her mask back in place, her smile cooling, once more the grand duchess talking to the plebeians whose names she never bothers to remember.

“You know, Sheriff—”

“Captain,” I correct. “Redhaven PD isn’t affiliated with the county sheriff.”

Her lips twitch sourly before that frozen smile returns. “Captain. Xavier’s off in Dubai, closing a new real estate deal, you know. And Vaughn—oh, you know, he’s always too busy to call home to his mother. Who knows.”

Yeah, I’ve wondered about that for a while.

“Aleksander, though, he should be around here somewhere. I thought I passed him in the hall just a minute ago?” Lucia makes a great show of looking around, then raises her voice. “Aleksander! Darling, are you around?”

I just watch her skeptically.

Montero looks almost bored, hovering as silent and watchful as a crow. There’s something especially odd in his eyes today as he glances at the body of Cora Lafayette. The dead woman swings as Henri and Micah work carefully at the knotted drape tied to the banister.

---