Page 224 of Cross the Line
“I’m so sorry, Salem.”
“So am I. Sorry I didn’t escape him sooner.” The bleakness of her circumstance coats her words. “He’s sick, Finley, and nobody does anything about it. Your father covers up all his dirty tracks…” With a hitch to her breath, she glances up at me. “Like what he did to Elijah. I heard them arguing about it some time ago, but I thought it was a spat during a game… You were still in Havenview.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, trying to keep my temper leveled.
“Because the conversation was clipped and roundabout.”
“But it was about Eli.My Eli.” I’m so mad, I can’t remain seated.
I woke up this morning thinking I was ready to have this conversation while Jayden and Eli went to the deli a few blocks away tograb breakfast and coffees for us. The reality is that there’s no moment in time when I’ll be able to go through this talk without dying inside.
“Never in a million years did I think he was capable of something so awful. He’s always getting into fisticuffs on the ice, and your father is forever berating him for it.”
“There’s a big difference between fisticuffs and rape, Salem. A big fucking difference.” My voice ricochets around us so loud that it jars my thoughts as she pushes back from the dining table and rises to her feet.
“For five years, I’ve been married to that monster. For five years, he has done everything and anything he wanted to me, to my body…” The entirety of her petite frame is trembling as she folds over the couch with a hoarse cry. “I did not know the severity of that conversation.”
I want to be mad at her. Iammad at her. However, I know the kind of coded conversations my father and Presley have. Where everything means something, but sounds like nothing. I’ve been there for so many of them, and it took me years to learn to decode them.
“When your parents took me back to Presley after Casey’s accident, Caleb was furious. I’ve never seen him that way before. He kept ranting about how his children brought him nothing but shame.” Salem swallows, her discomfort is painted on her face, past the garish bruising and her bloodshot eyes.
“And…”
“And he was raving mad at Presley about how he was ruining everything. He said he was disgusting and that he should have put an end to his wickedness when he found out he had violated the Sylkes boy. That he should’ve burnt him with the photos and the videos.”
Photos and videos?
I’m trying to hold myself together, but I’m being torn apart from the inside out. One word at a time.
“Caleb warned Presley he was done cleaning up his mess after getting the homosexual boy out of jail. Now he’s on his own, and I’m his problem.”
I gulp. “You said photos and videos…”
“Caleb…your father only mentioned them in passing, and it sounded like he disposed of them.”
“Does Presley have a safe in your house?”
“Yes, but he only keeps his firearms in it, along with physical copies of his contracts, our passports, emergency cash, and the jewelry your parents gave me on my wedding day.” She’s pacing in the opposite direction of me when she tells me, “There’s no way your father, beingwho he is and knowing what he knows, would keep hold of something incriminating like that. If he said he burnt them, then that’s what he did.”
It makes sense, because I’ve seen my father burna lotof things before. Mostly to do with The Fellowship, to protect it. I remember my mother shredding files upon files before using them as kindling in our fireplaces. I have no doubt that my father would dispose of the evidence, except it also incriminates the person who filmed it.
The homosexual boy in jail.
Ryker Hallman.
And his triple DUIs.
“Salem, do you know someone called Ryker Hallman? Or maybe you’ve heard Presley talk about him? To him?”
“No, I can’t recall,” she tells me with a shake of her head. “But, Finley, I don’t know much about Presley’s affairs. I’m sorry.”
So am I, I want to tell her. Sorry that her husband is a psychopath with a gross God complex.
One of these days, though, we’re going to watch him get his just desserts, and I hope she has a front row seat to it.
CHAPTER 63
ELI
