Flock (The Ravenhood)

“But why?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Delphine was outraged, but she was young, and at the time too afraid to go head to head with Roman. Something happened that night, and he buried it. And we’re determined to find out what.”

This rattles me to my core. “You’re saying my dad may have covered up a murder, two murders, here, at this plant?”

“Not sure, but Dom’s parents weren’t the first to ever question your father’s business practices. Your father has been pulling a lot of shit for a very, very long time and getting away with it.”

“So, you’re spying on him? Workin

g here to find out the truth?”

“More than that,” Sean says warily. He gives me a telling stare, and I try to read between the lines.

“You’re going to hurt him?”

“We’re going to make him suffer. For everything he’s done and everything he took from Dom, and from every other family who’s worked for him since he opened this fucking plant. That’s why you need to stay away from us. You can’t be implicated in anything that goes down. It’s not safe.”

“What are you going to do?” He reads the budding fear in my eyes.

He shakes his head. “If we wanted him dead, he would be. That’s not who we are.”

“So, what’s to stop me from going to him right now and telling him everything?”

His shoulders bulge with tension. “Nothing. But there are other players in this, with a broader reach, and they know we have you.”

“Had me.”

“That’s what we were trying to convey, but when they saw us together, when they saw…”

“Saw what?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “That we fucked up and caught feelings, we had to end it, the way we did, to keep you out of it.”

“You’re telling me that was a performance?”

“To keep you safe. But now you’re on their radar. And I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.”

“So, wait. All of this started because of my dad? He owns a fucking technology manufacturing company. He makes calculators. Shady business practices do not make him a murderer.”

“He owns more than that. He owns Triple Falls and everyone in it, including the police. He’s run a monopoly on this city, and no one is willing to let him have it. Not anymore.”

“This isn’t happening. This…can’t be true.”

“I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry, but it is. The man you’re living with is hiding as many secrets as we are. And he’s damn good at keeping them and at keeping his nose clean.”

He presses me against the door. “I want you far, far a-fucking-way because your dad has a lot of enemies, aside from us, for the shady shit he’s pulled over the years. You aren’t safe here.”

“Sean—”

“I miss you so much,” he murmurs, gripping my face in his hands, his eyes roaming over me. “I fucked up, we both did, but you weren’t something we saw coming.”

Mind racing, I realize my mother, her security, everything I’ve worked for will disappear if they see their plans through. But it’s my father’s eyes I see before I speak up. “And you’re sure they’re not going to hurt him?”

“We’re going to take back the town he stole and give it to the people who deserve it. It’s greed-coated money he’s stacking up. Their money.”

Roman’s words the day I confronted him run through my mind.

“He corrected their pay. It’s no longer an issue.”