Page 16 of The Golden Hour

If, in fact, she’s a spy.

I’m so tired, facts are starting to bleed into feelings and feelings into facts.

Regardless of whether Callisto was telling me the truth or not, I know my aunt was right to warn me away from this path. Going after the Avellinos is a million shades of Bad Idea. I’m not crazy. I know this could—probably will—end badly. But I’m resigned to the fact there’s nothing anyone can say to stop me. One thing I have in common with my dad, apparently. Stubbornness. Or maybe unfailing dedication to a cause, no matter how unworthy it may be.

Please don’t go to the deposition today. My mother had begged him to leave it alone. To let someone else take the risk. But he still went. Sir Charles, ready and able to fight the good fight, whether or not it put a blazing target on his back.

Sometimes, I hate my father just as much as the Avellinos. Hate him for always doing the right thing. For putting justice above his family. For ignoring all the warnings and the danger when the law demanded his testimony for the crime he’d uncovered.

I always knew this would be my path. While most of my friends are married and starting families, I remain alone.

I won’t do to a family what my dad did to ours.

* * *

After leaving Callisto at the cove, I head back to the motel. I need a shower and at least five hours of sleep. Mentally, I’m off the fucking rails.

Hot water on my stiff shoulders goes a long way to making me feel normal again—or at least more like myself. By the time I close the curtains and crawl into bed, I’ve decided that even though I’d love to ride the Callisto as Trojan horse train, I’m being paranoid.

On the off chance Vivian Avellino even remembers my mother, there’s no way she’d orchestrate a long game like faking the death of her stepdaughter to use her as bait in a revenge plot.

Not only is it ridiculous, instinct tells me Callisto’s not that good of an actress. And my gut is rarely wrong.

As a photographer, I’m essentially a highly paid voyeur, and I’ve been doing it a long time. It’s why I’m so successful—reading people comes naturally. Even in the most resistant client, I can dig past the superficial layers and find a spark of honest emotion. Longing. Lust. Hope. Confusion. Anger…

Fear.

Callisto is afraid of her family, that much I know. It’s no surprise her uncle tried to toughen her up by telling her she was too weak. In the world she comes from, goodness is a flower destined to be overcome by weeds, while traits like kindness, charity, compassion are merely tools to advance an agenda.

Vivian Avellino, on the other hand, is a stellar actress, her propaganda flawless. Last year she donated a wing to a children’s hospital and funded the construction of several youth centers in underprivileged communities. Every year, she donates millions to various organizations. A pittance of the family’s actual worth. A payoff to the public so they don’t look harder at the how or why.

I lied to my aunt when she asked what my investigators turned up. The man who died—he found something. Something big enough to prompt his murder. His last voicemail to me was urgent, his voice thick with fear.

We’ve got ’em. Call me back.

I did, but it was too late.

I’ll find out what he discovered no matter the cost. Because as much as the old hate burns unquenched inside me, I’m tired, too. Tired of living with this darkness. Of pretending everything’s fine. Of photoshoots, screwing strangers, and partying as I travel the world like I don’t have a care.

If I have to be like the Avellinos in order to destroy them, that’s a price I’ll pay.

I’ll be the villain.

I’ll be a better one.

10

Sometimes the world clears up. All the way up to blinding clarity. And you realize you’ve been looking at life through a foggy lens. What you thought was important isn’t. Actions you believed justified weren’t.

I’m no hero, and neither are you.

After Finn left me at the cove, I retreated to the only other place I knew would give me the peace and quiet I needed to think.

Mud squelches beneath my sneakers, the worn trail crowded on either side by trees: pine and spruce, hemlock and fir. Ancient and tempered by the sea, they offer me a portal to a timeless world. A world in which I am right-sized. No better or worse, weaker or stronger. Here, in the pause between breaths, I’m forcibly separated from all my preconceptions and biases toward life and more profoundly, myself.

The air is still, heavier and warmer than at the coast. It seeps through my pores, into my blood and mind. Calming. Stabilizing.

And then it happens.

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