Old Fashioned - Becker Brothers

I blinked. “Like, the last entry in his journal… ever?”

Jordan’s expression tightened as he nodded. “Yes. Written on the day of his death.”

A violent chill shot through me, so powerful I trembled where Jordan held me.

“And,” he added. “This one wasn’t in Latin. It was in English.”

I shook my head, confused. “But… I don’t understand. Wasn’t that the whole point of him writing in the journal? Like… he wanted to learn the Latin language, I thought?”

“He did, at least… that’s what we think. And I didn’t understand it either, not at first.” He swallowed. “Not until I read it.”

His energy was flowing off him in tidal waves, and I was wrecked by each and every one of them, my body reacting like I was in danger of falling off a cliff at any moment. “What did it say?”

Again, Jordan looked around us, then he lowered his voice so much I had to bend in closer to hear him. “Dad read the Will he found, Sydney. The one Robert J. Scooter left behind. And we were in it. My grandfather, my dad, all of us. We were supposed to get fifty percent of the company shares when Robert passed.”

My jaw hinged open, and my eyes found his, mirroring the terror I saw reflected in them.

“Patrick knew,” he continued. “My dad wrote in that last entry that he’d gone to him, that he’d told him and showed him the Will and everything.”

“So Patrick knows about it?”

“He knows,” Jordan confirmed. “And he told my dad he wanted to rectify it immediately, make him partner, announce it to the whole board and the company and pay our family what we were owed. All of that.”

I shook my head, so confused that I ached all over trying to reach for understanding. “I don’t get it. If he knew, if it was all right there in the Will—”

“He told my father he was giving him Robert’s old office,” Jordan continued.

“The one he’d been cleaning out, right? Where he found the Will?”

Jordan nodded. “Exactly. He said that it’s what his father would have wanted, and he told my dad to meet him there after their four o’clock board meeting to discuss next steps.” Jordan’s face went ashen. “He wrote in the entry that he’d already packed up some of his things to move over, that he couldn’t wait to get home to tell Mom.” He swallowed. “To tell all of us.”

My hands ripped from where they were holding Jordan’s, and I shook my head in disbelief. “No…”

“Yes,” Jordan said, and he spoke the words out loud that I knew we were both thinking, but I was too afraid to breathe to life. “Sydney, I think Patrick Scooter murdered my father.”

Those words hung between us like the razor-sharp blades of a thousand knives, like if either of us moved a single centimeter, we’d be sliced to ribbons.

I couldn’t be sure how long the silence stretched between us with my vision fading in and out of blackness before I leaned back, letting out a long, cooling breath and pressing a hand to my forehead.

“I know,” he said. “It’s a lot. I think this is why Dad was writing his entries in Latin. I think he was covering his tracks, in case someone found his files and tried to read them.”

I shook my head, speechless.

“And I need to tell my brothers,” he continued. “But… I couldn’t tell them yet. Not today. Not when we’re celebrating Noah and Ruby Grace.”

“When will you tell them?”

“Tomorrow,” he said, definitively. “At least, I think. I mean, I don’t know how I could sit on this any longer. It’s not proof, by any means,” he admitted. “But… it’s something, right? It’s written evidence that Patrick knew about the Will, that he has never told us about it even though he knew, and that he’d asked my father to meet him in that office on the evening of his death.” He shook his head. “I’m no lawyer, but I’d say there’s a leg to stand on there somewhere.”

My gut twisted, and I sat upright, facing Jordan again as I steeled myself. “Jordan, there’s something I need to tell you. Something that… oh, God,” I said, tears flooding my eyes as I pressed my hand to my forehead again. “Something I can’t be entirely sure of, but that I feel like I have to tell you.”

His brows bent together, and he pulled my hands into his again. “What is it?”

I blew out a breath, holding onto the next. “That night… the night of the fire. I… I was pregnant, and Randy came home late, and he was talking on the phone to someone in the kitchen, and… I don’t remember everything, okay? And it’s all a little fuzzy and I don’t know if this even means anything, and—”