Page 37 of Stolen Love

“So go on then.” He rests an elbow on the surface behind him. “You better lay it on me. There is no point in drawing it out.”

“Nicole killed my dad.” Each time I say it it’s like reopening the wound.

Adira stiffens, his hand flying to his throat.

“She paid the man who caused the accident,” I continue. I just want to get this over with.

Adira frowns and his hand slips to his lap, his fingers twining. “That’s some allegation. Do you have proof?”

“I…” I thought he would believe me when I told him. That he would see the truth as clearly as I do. “You don’t believe she would?”

“Nicole is as vicious and cold as they come. She had to be to birth your brother, that devil spawn.” He leans forward. “So yes, I believe she could and would do it. But a car accident… that’s not a bullet. Or a disappearance. Especially when the man who caused it is doing time. It’s an accident and even if it were caused on purpose there’s no guarantee on the end result.”

I gape at him.

“What?” He wipes a palm over his short skirt. “I like crime shows. And I know things about cars. Every queen should.”

“So you think Ivy’s dad’s death might not have been the end result Nicole was looking for?” Rogue nods, deep in thought.

“There’s airbags, and crumple zones, and anti-locking brake systems,” Adira says, rattling off safety-features. “It’s a big risk for something that isn’t guaranteed. It’s certainly not how I would choose do it.”

Rogue moves to one of the racks. He starts flicking through the costumes without paying any attention to them. “Perhaps she didn’t need to kill Richard. Or even mean to kill him. If it is about money…”

“Then making sure he couldn’t leave her would have been enough.” And that’s worse. Did she hope he wouldn’t come home? Or that he would come home a broken, crippled man unable to fend for himself? Would she have tried again if it didn’t go as planned or would she have made his life a living hell?

“But when he died that worked too. She still had you under her control,” Rogue says. “She had access to the money either way. You were going along with her plan to marry you off to that bastard in whatever deal they worked out between them. Until you ended up at Sunny.”

“I only ended up at Sunny because Alec saved me from drowning. And I’m not even sure that’s true anymore,” I say. My memory is too unreliable. Not just the months I lost with Rogue, but before that. The past is like a photograph with holes burned into the most important visual cues. There are too many pieces missing for me to be sure what’s real and what’s not. “But we also have no proof that Nicole’s motivation is the cash.”

Adira tilts his head. “From what I understand she had plenty of her own money. Although I suppose that could have been hearsay. It’s not like either of us had intimate knowledge of your parents’ finances, other than Nicole made such a big to do of taking away the trust fund she had set up for you when you came to stay with me instead of going to live with her.”

“What if that trust fund is a lie?” Rogue asks.

I shake my head. “I saw the paperwork. Both Alec and I have one. He was granted access to his years ago. And this is all conjecture without anything to back it up.”

“What we really need to know is what your dad was doing in Phoenix,” Rogue says. “He must have been there for a reason.”

“It was a business… trip.” I stumble over the reasoning he gave me before he left. Right before he also made me promise not to get on Nicole’s bad side. “But now I don’t know. He also, possibly, signed a contract with Nathaniel for my hand in marriage. Something I would never have imagined he’d do.”

“He did what?” Adira gapes at me.

“I still think it’s bullshit,” Rogue says.

“What do you think?” I turn to my bestie. If I can trust anyone to know, it’s him. “Could my dad do that?”

“I wish I knew, Love.” Adira frowns. “He was as likely to do that as he was to do business in Phoenix, but it certainly looked like a business trip on the books.”

“Marty seemed to think there might have been more to it. That was right before we lost touch,” Rogue says.

“So he could have been there for some other reason then.” But what? I turn to Adira. “He didn’t mention anything to you?”

“Not that I can recall.” Adira rubs his temple. “But thinking back, he was off that week. I must have disregarded it because it was the same week I opened the club, and I was positively overwhelmed with preparing for it. I wish I’d been more aware.”

“We didn’t know.” I hug my bestie, try to ease the guilt I see on his face. “Not about Nicole or the deal with Nathaniel. Or… that he wouldn’t come back. But we need to work out why.”

“There has to be some way of finding out why he went to Phoenix,” Rogue says while my phone vibrates against the back of my knee.

I take it out of my boot and check the message. “It’s Dizzy. She wants to know where I am.”

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