Page 39 of A Trap So Flawless

Chapter 15

Darragh

Rowan’s finally managed to get us into Grandda’s laptop. “There’s a lot to go through,” he says. “I’ve had a go at it already. But this is what I wanted to show you first.”

He clicks open on a file – a video – and pushes play. I go very still as I watch a tiny, two-dimensional version of myself throw Dario Fabbri off that Toronto condo building roof.

“Where the fuck did he get this?” I ask. I don’t recognize the video. Don’t recognize the angle. It looks like it’s been taken from inside an apartment, the camera aimed out a window that faces the Fabbris’ condo building.

“From what I can gather, the apartment this was filmed from isn’t occupied,” Rowan answer. “It’s owned by an investor who resides in Hong Kong. They have a number of security cameras running inside the unit at all times. Including this one.”

“So, what then? Some rich fucker in Hong Kong was reviewing the footage one day and saw this? And sent it to my grandda, to, what? Fucking tell on me?”

“A good man would have sent that footage to the police,” Rowan says. “A smart one would have looked for a better deal first.”

“Callum paid him off to destroy the footage?”

“It looks that way.”

“Why’d he keep the fucking file himself?” I mutter. I push play again, getting a smug little thrill at the sight of Dario going sailing over that safety barrier. That thrill gets hot in my belly when I remember that Valentina was there. In this video, I’m not even aware of her yet.

Not aware of the fact that she’s about to split my skin with her nails.

And in turn, split open the entire careful chaos of my world.

“But here’s something else,” Rowan says. He switches from the video player to what looks like an email provider’s page open in a browser. “Not only did Callum not delete that file, he sent it to someone.”

“Who?” I demand, already scanning the sent folder. Rowan selects a message with a subject line that reads “we need to talk.” There’s nothing in the body of the email but the attached video file.

“It’s an email address I recognized,” Rowan says. “It’s linked to the corporation that owns the cottage beside the one you purchased.”

But that cottage belongs to…

“Callum sent this video to Vincenzo Titone.”

“When?” I ask, even though my eyes have already found the date at the top of the email. It was sent after I arrived in Halifax.

After I told Grandda that I was marrying Valentina.

So not only did he cut me out of his will, but he went to my future father-in-law with this shit, to destroy my chance at a marriage to Valentina before it even began. Dario may have been a slimy piece of shit not fit for the bottom of Valentina’s shoe, but despite his lies and betrayals, he was still the son of one of Vinny’s most loyal allies. Vinny had hard evidence that I not only killed Dario, but that Valentina and I both lied about it.

Which normally, I wouldn’t give a fuck about. I’d lie to Vinny Titone as soon as I’d shake his fucking hand.

But this had consequences. My engagement to Valentina ruined, and an engagement to Sal Di Mauro slapped together, all in the span of two fucking weeks.

“What the hell did they talk about?” I ask. My temples ache. There’s no reply to this email. No more clues.

“I don’t know,” Rowan says. “There’s no other correspondence between them that I can find. But Callum didn’t change his will until after he sent this video.”

“So they cooked this shit up together. To keep Valentina and me apart.”

“Probably.”

It takes everything in me not to pick up the fucking laptop and hurl it across the room. But we might need that later, so instead I turn to the shelf of booze. I throw bottle after bottle against the walls, the floor, revelling in the symphonic violence of the sound, the glittering flight of broken glass like the ocean’s spray.

Or the spray of Georgian Bay.

I don’t smash the last one – a bottle of very fine whiskey indeed. Instead, I open it up and take a gulp, letting the liquid burn me all the way down.

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