“I saw it all too,” Ruby said. “But there are ways to fake a death, and your father had all the money in the world to figure out how.”
“What happened to your eyes?” I asked Bryce.
“Pepper spray.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. It’s a long story and I’ll tell you later.”
I sighed. I loved this man with all my heart. Who had harmed him? When was this all going to end? “My father wouldn’t fake his death twice,” I said. “He just wouldn’t.”
“Look,” Ruby said. “I never knew your father. I get that. All of you did know him, including you, Bryce. You say he wouldn’t fake his death twice. Okay. Let’s go with that for a minute. But let me ask you this. Did any of you think he would fake his death once?”
She paused. Was she waiting for us to say something?
“Because he did,” she continued. “We know that for a fact.”
Talon, Ryan, and I said nothing. What was there to say? She made a valid point. I would have bet the entire Steel fortune that my father would never fake his own death, leave his children, leave his business.
But he had.
Why would he do it again? It didn’t make sense. Wendy Madigan was dead. Ruby had killed her. Tom Simpson, Larry Wade, and Theodore Mathias were all dead. We had proof of this. Joe had witnessed Tom kill himself, Larry had been killed in prison, and Wendy had killed Mathias when he tried to save Ruby, his daughter.
All of the people from whom he was protecting his mentally ill wife—whose death he’d also faked—were gone.
Except they weren’t.
Someone had taken my mother from her facility—the best facility available that supposedly had top-notch security. If Dominic was to be believed, it was for her own protection, which meant someone out there meant her harm. Meant me harm.
Even if this had something to do with Ted Morse or Bryce’s childhood friend Justin Valente, why would either of them care about a mentally ill woman? Ted might have had a beef with Tom Simpson, or he might have sold his son to him. Either way, it had nothing to do with our father. Nothing to do with our mother.
> And Justin Valente? If he was indeed still alive, his beef would also be with Tom, who was dead. He couldn’t seek revenge against a dead person.
But if Justin was alive, if he’d somehow survived whatever Tom had done to him that weekend three decades ago, he might blame the two people who’d invited him to that camping trip.
My brother Joe.
And the man I loved. Bryce.
Joe and Bryce.
Who were their Achilles’ heels? For Joe, his pregnant wife. For Bryce, his son.
But one person was a weakness for both of them.
Me.
I’d be the first target if Justin wanted to hit Joe and Bryce at the same time and avoid harming a pregnant woman or a little boy.
Bryce had been right to send Henry away. He didn’t yet know how right.
Had there been truth to Dominic’s ravings about the order coming from my father? He hadn’t said my father was alive. He’d only said a system had been put in place. My father didn’t need to be alive for a system to work in his absence. But if Dominic had been telling the truth, my father had known there were still threats beyond Madigan, Simpson, Wade, and Mathias.
He knew.
For a moment, I allowed myself to have a smidgeon of hope that my daddy was still alive. That he hadn’t been killed by his crazy ex-lover, Wendy Madigan, right in front of my eyes.
But he had been.