Page 64 of Sinners Atone
But I trap all my questions behind pursed lips. I’ve asked enough of them for one day.
Instead, I give her a curt nod, and when she leaves, I turn my attention to Emile.
“Denis just got back to me,” he mutters, turning on the tap with his elbow. “Blake is Griffin’s nephew.”
I glare at the water running from clear to red to clear again. “Does my brother know?”
“I doubt it.” He turns off the water and reaches for a hand towel. “He’s got nothing on record.”
I drag a knuckle through my beard, fighting the unease creeping up my back like graveyard fog.
Something stinks.
I’ve had my suspicions about Rafe’s head honcho, Griffin, for a while. No reason in particular, just a hunch. But now it’s come back that he’s got family ties to the new hire, I know I’m on to something bigger.
“Track the both of them,” I say through gritted teeth. “I want to know when they eat, piss, and shit.”
Emile nods and tosses the bloodied towel in the waste bin. “Anything else?”
The veins on my hand bulge as I curl it into a fist.
I told Rory I’d leave her alone.
Told myself many times too.
“You’re with me tonight. I’ve gotta pay someone a visit.”
Guess the only rules I’m good at sticking to are my father’s.
Everyone has a claim to fame.
My uncle plays golf with a man who cowrote a Led Zeppelin song. A girl I went to school with has a sister with a YouTube channel; she’s got over 100,000 subscribers and counting. Matt has a hockey puck signed by Wayne Gretzky.
Mine isn’t a cool anecdote, a humble brag I can pepper on small talk at parties. It’s a stain that won’t wash out, no matter how hard I scrub.
Scrolling through the camera roll on my cell, I select the new photos added to the album titled “Wren’s Good Deeds” and send them to my laptop. There’s one of me sweeping up debris in the port, another where I’m pushing my candy cart through the hospital hallways.
I attach them to a passive-aggressive email, along with a local news article about the explosion, and fire it off. Then I close my laptop and flop back on the bed, the weight of that unfinished sentence pinning me to the mattress.
Sometimes, I wonder why I poke the hornet’s nest. Because sending all this evidence to Damien Asshole Cross isn’t me righting a wrong, it’s just me finding another way to bury it.
Lungs tightening, I roll over and bury my face between the pillows, waiting for the guilt to pass.
It always comes in waves. They ebb and flow and pull me under. Back to the butterflies, the letters, the bar. Back to the house with the flowers and perfectly striped lawn. Back toher.
Her cackling laugh plays down my spine, and I burrow my head deeper, my ragged breaths damp against the sheets. I breathe until it hurts, and when I can no longer stand the pain, I drown out and distract.
I flip over and grab for my laptop again. ABBA on. Google open. My search history is made up of a million variations of “Incidents in Devil’s Cove”, but I’ve found nothing that reveals the fate of the creepy phone booth guy. This time, I have every intention of typing “Dogs meeting puppies for the first time” into the search bar, but my forefinger has other ideas and strikes the letter G instead.
A. B. R. I. E. L. V. I. S. C. O. N. T. I.
My hands hold a tremble as I tap theEnterkey.
I scroll through the search results. Raphael’s and Angelo’s Wikipedia pages are at the top, and below, there’s an obituary page for a guy in Italy, another for a man in Australia. I keep scrolling and scrolling, but there’s nothing about Gabriel Visconti himself.
I click on the “images” tab because surely, I’ll at least find a mugshot. There’s no way in civilized society a man like him can go through life without spending some time behind bars. But it’s all smiling pictures of Rafe at fundraisers and scowling paparazzi shots of Angelo leaving shiny buildings. It’s like the internet has no idea they even have a brother.
I didn’t either until our eyes locked across the dance floor at Rory’s bachelorette party, and now I wish I was still blissfully ignorant.
