Page 60 of Liars and Liaisons

The girl pauses, glancing over her shoulder at him before sliding her gaze back to me. I can feel its heat bore into the side of my face.

“Don’t worry about Aiden,” she says. “Honestly, in terms of the James family members currently up at that mansion, he’s probably the best-case scenario.”

“You’re such a sweet-talker,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.

I notice that he has a hoodie that matches hers and realize they must be a couple.

“So, you’re not hurt.” The girl steps in close, examining me with narrowed eyes. They’re clear, likely a bright blue that becomes transparent in the moonlight. “Shock then? We have weed if you need help relaxing.”

“I don’t remember saying I’d share—”

Frowning, she cuts her significant other a dirty look, then pulls a recently rolled joint from her pocket. It’s small and white, and she holds it in the palm of one hand. “Look, I can’t take it back. My brother’s fiancée would kill me if I put used stuff back in their stash. You might as well try it.”

My mouth is dry, but somehow, I find a tiny drop of saliva, which allows me to speak. “Do you normally offer drugs to strangers in the forest?”

“This is not my first rodeo.” She smiles, and there’s something oddly disarming about it. “I’m Riley, by the way.”

I reach out and take the joint from her, but I don’t do anything with it, except allow the soft paper to ground me in the moment. It breaks through the paranoia and latent fear and replaces it with something almost normal, as if my nervous system is trying to right itself again.

I don’t look down.

“Well, this is sort ofmyfirst rodeo,” he says, running a hand through his brown hair. “Not all of us grew up around cold-blooded killers.”

“Violet’s not cold-blooded.”

My gaze snaps to Riley’s. So does his.

“How do you know who I am?”

She grins, tucking rosy strands of hair behind her ears. “Your brother talks about you all the time. I recognize you from some of the pictures.”

It takes me several blinks to register that because, outside of his wife and two daughters, I don’t see Kal interacting with anyone whom he isn’t in a business relationship with. Even our meetings have been tangentially transactional, though often as a guise for underlying issues.

I can’t imagine him talking about me at all, much less to this pink-haired pixie, who is apparently affiliated with my ex’s family.

God, this world is way too fucking small.

When I don’t respond, Riley purses her lips and casts a quick look around the immediate area. As if scanning for witnesses. She takes my hand and pulls it through her arm, gently tugging me away from the corpse.

The rock falls from my fingers, landing with a dull thud on the ground.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she says, patting my knuckles. “Then, we can talk about what the fuck just happened.”

20

The veinin the center of my forehead pulses painfully each time my father opens his thin lips to speak. Which, unfortunately, is far more frequently than I like even though Harrison is supposed to be the one in charge of this presentation.

It’s a poor attempt at an intervention with everyone—from both brothers and my parents to Priya and an old colleague of mine from NEAA. Even my nephew and his girlfriend made an appearance, though they snuck off half an hour ago, likely having come just for the escape Duris provides.

Everyone else is crowding a sitting room to give speeches on why they think the estate is bad for me.

As if you can glean such insight without having spent any actual time around me. Save for Nathaniel and Priya, this is only the second time Harrison’s been out, and my parents would likely have never come if the latter hadn’t forced their hand.

My mother prefers a hands-off approach, and my father… well, he’s always been hands-on. But he can’t exactly use his fists or even that solid-gold goat-headed walking stick on me when there are so many people around.

I know it angers him, not being able to shove me around the way he used to. That’s what the estate was for—letting off steam. Even after my brothers and I outgrew it, he wanted it kept in the family because it was an easy place for his sins to die.

It’s why I took it away from him. Forged my grandfather’s signature and altered his will so it’d belong to me.

---