Lies We Tell (Thistle Cove 3)

“Rose is my daughter. Your half-sister.” He sits on the edge of his desk. “Regina and I, we have a long and complicated relationship. Nineteen years ago, we had a brief affair and she became pregnant.”

An image of Rose pops in my mind; beautiful, dark, manipulative.

“Rose is your daughter,” Kenley repeats, sitting on the couch.

“I didn’t know for certain until she was older—about sixteen. We didn’t live here when she was born and there was no reason for me to believe she wasn’t Brice’s child, until…”

“Until?” Ozzy asks.

“Until she started having some high-risk behavior, and Regina came to me for help. First, to ask me to get Ezra to stop selling her drugs, then, if I could assist with my legal expertise in any other high-risk activity she was involved in. She’d noticed she’d become increasingly withdrawn—she was sneaking out a lot, staying out overnight, and that her relationship with Jason Chandler seemed increasingly inappropriate.” He pauses and holds my eye. “I didn’t want to get involved in any of it. You were pissing your life away, and I was tired of trying to get you back on track. And Jason? We were lifelong friends. I was well aware of his preference for young women. Brice was, too. I felt like this was something her father should handle. That’s when she told me he wasn’t her father—that I was. It suddenly became my concern.”

“So you didn’t care about Chandler preying on students until it was your own child,” Ozzy says.

My father shrugs. “I’ve never claimed to be a good person. I was focused on my own life—my own desires and pleasure. My career. We all were. It was how we were raised, how we evolved. We’re champions—the world was ours to conquer. Sex. Power. Money. It was ours for the taking. I did it my way and they did it theirs, but learning about Rose adjusted my perspective.” He glances at Kenley. “Having a daughter changes things.”

Kenley’s face is pale, and I feel…just very confused.

“If you tried to help her,” Kenley asks, “then why is she gone? Why did Monica get a chance to hurt her?”

“Rose was determined to push boundaries,” he laughs darkly, “she probably inherited that trait from me. She was caught up with Chandler and already experimenting with the SugarBabies dating app before I had a chance to intervene. Jason didn’t have enough money to give her the life she wanted. Regina went to Brice and told him about the dating app. He became furious—not for her safety—at the risk to his political future. That’s when I created the profile.”

“You’re BD,” Kenley whispers.

“Yes,” he looks between us, “and no.”

“How can you be both?” I ask, unsurprised at him trying to get out of this.

“I made the account as a way to keep track of Rose. I followed her when she met other men. Dragged her out of bars—”

“The Dollhouse,” Kenley says, looking at me. “The waitress said she’d left with an older man—upsetting her date.”

He nods. “Things were escalating at home. With Finn—you two were falling apart—and she couldn’t keep up her double life. Jason couldn’t handle losing her. Monica became suspicious. Rose…she had information that could take all of them down. The hero coach. The up-and-coming politician. The whole thing was a powder keg, so, I set up the apartment and told her that it was hers if she needed a break. When she didn’t show up for the first day of school, then the bonfire, I called her. I thought maybe she finally took me up on it.” He looks at me. “That was my call you saw that night. She answered it and told me she was headed out of town. I told her to go to the apartment. Someone—Monica, I now know—showed up and she hung up on me. I never saw or heard from her again.”

“Why did you harass Kenley like that? The flowers—the gifts?” Finn asks.

“That wasn’t me.”

Ozzy scoffs. “You think we’re dumb enough to believe that?”

“I’m serious,” he says. “I shut down that account once she went missing. The last thing I needed was the police connecting that to me. The last thing I wanted was for the truth about this to come out—not just for my own reputation—but for Brice and the election.”

Even in this—they protect one another to the end.

“Well, it’s

still active. Or it was,” Kenley says. “I was communicating with someone and they were leaving me gifts. Personal things.”

“I hate to tell you, but it wasn’t me.”

“Then who?” Kenley looks at each of us. The fear I’d seen in her eye when she walked in tonight stopped me cold. Pushed me into confronting my dad. It’s still there and all I want to do is help her. “Who’s doing this?”

“I don’t know.” He looks at the photo. “You said there’s other things?”

“There were,” she says. “But tonight, when I looked for them, they were gone. Whoever it was completely covered their tracks, including the SugarBabies account.”

My father runs his hand through his hair, a tell that he’s uncomfortable. “This is why I pushed you two to stay away from one another. Neither Brice or Jason are people you want to fuck around with. They have no problem doing what they need to do to protect themselves and their lifestyles.”

“Including terrorizing a teenage girl?” Ozzy asks.