“Mandy died, Sebastian.”
He froze, his hand on the taxi door handle. “Say that again.”
“Mandy died,” he said of Ethan’s wife. “I’ve been with E all night. So has Sierra. So get your ass to his place, like, yesterday.”
The cab driver honked the horn, letting Sebastian know he’d better climb in the back seat or the man would take off. He opened the door and slid onto the taped-up pleather, his heart heavy and thudding inside his chest.
“What happened?” he asked through his thick throat and dry mouth.
Everyone loved Ethan’s wife, Amanda, Mandy for short, who had been an executive at Knight Time Technology.
“Buddy, where to?” the cab driver asked impatiently.
He gave the address of the apartment building uptown that the company owned, where all the siblings resided.
Parker waited for Sebastian to finish before he answered. “Accidental overdose.”
“What the fuck?” Mandy didn’t take drugs, not that he knew of.
“It’s a long story.” Parker sounded exhausted. “Just come home and I’ll explain everything.”
“How’s Ethan?” he asked, worried about his older brother, who felt it was his job to look after everyone else.
He’d taken on the role of caretaker after their mother passed away when Sebastian had been fifteen. Only nineteen at the time, Ethan had stepped up because, frankly, their father had never been the responsible parent.
“About as good as you’d expect,” Parker muttered.
Which meant not good at all.
He needed to get to his sibling, but the Manhattan traffic moved at a snail’s pace and the ride seemed to take forever. He closed his eyes throughout the trip uptown and pictured Ethan’s wife, a petite brunette with a vibrant personality. Granted, she’d been more subdued lately, her shoulder surgery almost two years ago having been hard on her physically and mentally. But an accidental overdose? It didn’t compute.
The cab finally came to a stop. He shoved his credit card into the slot and completed the transaction, climbed out of the car, and made his way past the doorman, into the building and up the elevator, another ride that seemed endless.
Arriving at Ethan’s door, he knocked once and Sierra let him in, wrapping her arms around him, her smaller body shaking as she cried. The Knight siblings were each two years apart and he was close to his twenty-four-year-old baby sister. He walked into the apartment, Sierra holding on to him, and found his brothers in the living room.
She stepped away, sniffing as she sank into an oversized chair. From his place on the sofa, Ethan rose to his feet. His brother’s dark hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot and red.
In silence, Sebastian stepped forward and pulled him into a brotherly embrace. “I’m sorry, man,” he said at last. “What happened?”
Ethan straightened to his full height. “I came home. Thought she was napping but I couldn’t wake her up. I called 911 but it was too late.” His voice sounded like gravel, the pain etched in his face raw and real.
“Parker–” Sebastian gestured to his brother, who was now sitting on the far side of the couch. “Parker said it was an overdose, but I don’t understand. Overdose on what?”
“Sit,” Ethan said and Sebastian chose a matching chair next to Sierra’s. “It was Oxy.”
“What?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Ethan shook his head, obviously at a loss.
“It started after the shoulder surgery,” Parker said, taking over when Ethan’s voice failed him. “The doctors loaded her up with drugs to help with the pain. We had no idea they kept giving them to her until she was hooked.”
Sebastian blinked in surprise, whether at Mandy’s addiction he’d known nothing about or his middle brother’s use of the word we when describing the situation, he couldn’t be sure. The one thing Sebastian did know, he wasn’t part of that we.
“Shit. I’m sorry.” He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair.
As he began to put the pieces together of the story his brother was telling him, Sebastian reeled with what, so far, had gone unsaid. “You aren’t shocked by this, and not because Ethan told you last night, after Mandy died.” From the matter-of-fact way Parker had relayed the information, as if he’d already digested it and it had settled inside him, it was obvious. “You’ve known all along.”
Parker merely nodded.
He glanced at his sister, who sat wide-eyed on the chair next to his. “What about you? Did you know?” he asked.
She swallowed hard. “Mandy told me recently that she was having problems. I talked to Ethan about it,” she admitted.
“So everyone knew something. But me.” Sebastian rose to his feet, hurt and betrayal warring with anger, combining with grief inside him.
Parker met his gaze. “I was there the first time he found her pills. That’s all.”
But Sebastian sensed there was more to it. That he’d been left out of the loop for a reason. He glanced at Ethan.