Own My Soul (Sixty Days 3)

“And it was him?” I asked again. “You’re pretty damn sure it was him?”

The nod of his head was frank and bold. “Yes, sir. I’m sure it was Henry Drake. I watched him that morning, head on upstairs with your father. I was on the landing replacing some chandelier bulbs when I heard them with raised voices through the study door.”

I managed a nod in return, my throat tight from the pressure of this crazy fucking revelation.

“And that’s all, Fred? You’ve told me everything you’ve been waiting to tell me?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I have indeed. But maybe your father has not.”

I could only stare as he dropped to his knees by the kitchen fireplace and pulled out one of the hearthstones. The box he dragged out of there was dusty and black, leaving his fingers filthy as he brushed clear the top of it.

So this was the thing I was looking for.

Some dusty old box of my father’s secrets.

“You’ll need a key to open it,” he said. “That, or crack the lock on the hearth like a nutcracker and dive your way inside.” His eyes twinkled as he handed it over, but I knew it was a redundant suggestion from the second I took it.

I pulled the strange little key from my inside pocket. The one I’d taken so randomly from my father’s middle desk drawer.

It seemed the universe really did have these strange little pointers which came together.

I couldn’t hold back the sad smile as it clicked in the lock.

“Well, I never,” Fred said. “I guess he really did want you to hear his tales.”

“If there are any tales in here,” I countered, but the second that lid flipped up, I knew that was definitely the case.

My heart prickled at the sight of my father’s handwriting so vivid after so long. The notes were hand scrawled. Some of them nearly frantic.

I could picture the sweep of his hand as he wrote them, the tight grip his fingers would have had on the pen.

“I’d better leave you to it,” Fred said, and patted my arm on the way past. “I’m in the staff annexe if you need me, just like always. There’s fresh sandwiches on the counter if you’re hungry.”

“And you’ll be ready to stand up and speak your truth if I call on it?” I asked him. “Whatever the cost?”

“I always would have been,” he said, with an honest smile. “I just didn’t know who it was worth saying it to. Not until you walked back in through the door.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it.

“You’re welcome, Mr Grant, sir,” he said, and so did he.

I wasted no time in getting down to business. I sat myself at the kitchen table and sprawled the notes out in front of me.

They were fears. Scrawlings of fears that turned my blood to ice.

Some mistakes are hard to live with. Others are impossible.

This one has a huge price to pay for one of us, and I suspect it’s going to be me.

Drake’s interfering with my shares. He’s denying it, but I suspect he’s setting me up for something. Something I won’t easily come back from. After the Amelia George affair I’m not so certain I’ll come back from anything. So help me, fucking Lord.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

If he comes for me, I trust Frederick will know to keep a hold of these words and use them at the right time. If Henry Drake is the one who turns our friendship into piles of dirt worth nothing after all these fucking years and takes my fucking life, I trust people will put the strings together and hang the bastard up with them.

These notes didn’t sound like my father. My father was strong and calm. Powerful.

Whatever was going on with him must have rattled him to his core.

My brain ticked and turned.

Whatever was going on with him must have rattled him to his fucking depths not long before the end of him.

I caught the scrawl of one of the dates at the bottom. Two weeks before he died.

Just a few short months after Amelia had ripped my heart into fucking pieces.

Amelia George’s pay out should have been genuine. It was supposed to be fucking genuine. If I find out it wasn’t, I’ll take the asshole down for it, whatever the cost.

I wanted to send her away from my family, not put her in the fucking ground.

It took me three attempts to read it. Three attempts with shaking hands.

What the holy fuck?

If he put her in the fucking ground and puts me down there too, I hope he regrets it in sin and pain until the very moment he joins us.

I knew my father was a business associate of Henry Drake’s, and I knew they were involved on some side-line activities skirting the edges of morality for a damned heavy chunk of my lifetime, but I’d never known any of the extent of their business dealings until Drake had filled me in on his version of events while tugging me under his wing.