جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 140

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SEVENCassie set the phone down slowly, face down again on the table. She facepalmed and took a deep breath, slowly taking in everything that was happening to her. "What if he finds out?” She finally asked. voicing the fear that had been sitting underneath everything since she'd first read the message. "What if he reads my silence as discovery and does something before the warrant even goes through? You know that after the visit we paid him he knows we are not on his side, it makes it harder.” "Stop worrying about what hasn't happened, Cassie. If it ever comes to that, we will handle it.” Whitfield said refusing to offer false comfort even now. "But right now, that is unlikely. Cassie, in my long experience with cases like this one, men like your father who have spent too many years believing they're smarter than the system to actually realise that they could leave some loose ends without realising. Worse, if he is truly working with Marcus, there are

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINEWhitfield asked them back to his office two days later, and this time he didn't bother with the careful preamble he usually used on a normal day. He simply turned his laptop around on the desk and slid it toward Cassie."This is the draft message," he said. "Saved on the phone, timestamped the same night Locke's testimony first surfaced. He wrote it, and then he never sent it."Cassie stared at the screen for a long moment, not reading anything in particular. She could see the words, but her mind refused to process them. Her eyes moved over the first line, then the second, before returning to the beginning.A huge part of her was scared of what she was about to find out.For days, she had tried to convince herself that she already knew what kind of man her father was. It had been easier that way. Easier to put him into a box and call him cruel, manipulative, selfish. Easier to believe that everything he had done had been deliberate, that he had neve

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTYThe visitation room was smaller than the one where Marcus had been kept back then, fluorescent light shining brightly above. The brightness made the room feel even colder, almost too exposed for the conversation she had come here to have. There was nowhere for either of them to hide. Richard looked older than he had two days ago, the county jumpsuit doing nothing for a man who'd spent his whole life in tailored suits, his hands folded in front of him on the table, no cuffs this time, just his own hands, restless.Cassie couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him dressed so simply. It should have made him look smaller, less intimidating, but somehow it didn't. He was still her father sitting across from her, and that fact alone made her chest feel tight."You came," he said, something cautiously hopeful in his voice that made her stomach turn.There was almost relief in his voice, as if her showing up meant there was still something left between them

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THREE The club was buzzing with life, exactly the same as it always had, the same low gold lighting pooling over dark leather booths, the same murmur of expensive conversation threading beneath music that existed more to be felt than actually heard, and the host recognized Dom the moment he stepped through the door, like no time at all had passed since the last time he'd walked in here a different man."Mr. Hale." He greeted me. "It's been a long time. Your usual table?"“Yes, please," Dom replied and let himself be led through the crowd toward the corner booth he used to consider his own.He ordered whiskey before he took a seat."Rough night, sir?" the server asked, setting the glass down carefully."You have no idea," Dom said, and drowned half of it in one go.He turned the fight over in his head, again and again, Cassie's exact words replaying. He pulled his phone out of his pocket twice, thumb hovering over her name, and put it back both times, no

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVEThe rain started the second Leo pulled into the driveway, sudden and hard and it soaked through his jacket in the ten seconds it took to get from the car to the door. Cassie was standing at the top of the stairs when they came through it, watching Leo half-carry, half-drag Dom across the threshold, both of them dripping onto the hardwood."Cassie." Dom's head came up the second he saw her, and even drunk, even barely able to hold his own weight against Leo's shoulder, something in his face lit with the particular desperate hope of a man who thought seeing her might fix something that had already broken hours ago. "Cassie, thank God, I need to explain…""Get him to the couch," Cassie said, her voice flat, even."Cassie, please, just listen…""Leo. The couch."Leo guided Dom down onto the cushions, and Dom immediately tried to stand back up, swaying and reaching for her again. "It's not what it looked like. I swear to you, it's not …""What are you ta