Page 80 of Chaos Crown

“It had to be that way, Ivy.” Dad reached for her hand, and she took it. “Your grandmother did have a will. In it she left you and your sister everything, including the deed and its location. Eileen sent me to retrieve the deed, and destroy it.”

“Destroy it?” Jacques repeated. “Did you?”

Jack dropped his gaze. “No, I didn’t. I knew I had done too much wrong to ever call myself a good man again, but as I stood in that bank holding the last thing an old woman had to give her orphaned granddaughters. A woman who had suffered because of tricks and lies told by my family. I just couldn’t do it.

“Instead, I kept the deed and lied to your mothers, saying I destroyed it.”

My brow scrunched. “Why? You didn’t give the deed to Ivy and Rainey. You kept up the lie that there was no will, so why bother keeping the deed?”

“I didn’t plan to keep the deed, or back the lie,” he explained. “It was the day after I retrieved the contents of the safe deposit box that I found a black letter on my doorstep.”

“Cavendish,” Ivy hissed. “He did the farm’s taxes for free. How easy is it to imagine that Gran asked thekindyoung man she thought was her friend, to help her draft her will too. I know now that it was no coincidence that Cavendish was so near my grandmother when all of this happened. He didn’t offer his services for free because Gran was nice to his mother.

“Steven Ellis must’ve dug up Bedlam’s true history while he was looking into his own. He found out a de Souza owned it and still did. He had back-up plans on back-up plans. First, get Gran to sign over everything legitimately to AgriProspects. That wasn’t working so... he sent Scott to get close to her, and he killed her.”

“Scott did?” I asked.

She pressed her lips tight. “Who convinced me Andrew Clein had to be responsible after I got that autopsy report back? He’d been in my ear from the beginning—manipulating me. I didn’t even think about the fact that Scott had access to Gran too. Why would I? I didn’t know he had anything to gain.”

“Cavendish killed her.” As I said it, I knew it was true. “Triggering the release of her estate and a chance for him to get his hands on that deed. I bet that was too far for Ellis. If he was willing to resort to murder, we’d all be dead already. He wasn’t interested in getting in bed with a murderer, so he backed off and continued his plan through Foundry—without Cavendish.”

“Wasn’t like Cavendish needed him anymore,” Jacques admitted. “Once Ellis told him about Amadeo, Scott had all the information he needed. He set to work manipulating Ivy and his band of psychopaths. Anything Ellis tried to take, he would get back.”

Ivy scrubbed her face, suddenly looking bone tired. “That was his plan. Jack told me the letter said to hand the deed over. A new will was about to appear that said Rainey and I inherited, but Cavendish was our executor. He’d run my estate until I turned twenty-five, and if Rainey and I died before then, it would all go to him.

“I was never going to make it to twenty-five. When that will appeared, we wouldn’t have lived past Tuesday.”

“But that was another thing that never happened.” I cut to Dad. “Why?”

“Because there were three forces at play. One of them I now know to be Steven Ellis. At the time, all I knew was that I received an anonymous phone call stating Scott Cavendish killed Abigail de Souza. I accepted this right away. Between the letter, the forged will, and the way Scott Cavendish seemed to hover around Ivy, it had to be the truth.”

“You didn’t arrest him,” Roan accused.

“There was no proof. I thought she died of natural causes, so I closed the case pretty quickly. It was Ivy that suspected more. I suspected nothing until I got that letter and phone call. By the time she came to me with the autopsy report, I had already worked out a deal to protect her”—he flicked to me—“and you.”

“Protect me?”

“I arrested Scott Cavendish. Brought him into an interrogation room and said the case would be reopened, and he’d go down for what he did. Cavendish sat in that chair... and laughed,” Dad spat. “The twisted little shit laughed himself sick, saying unless I planned to bury my son, he wasn’t going anywhere other than home.

“I served a new master now, and while the Sisters wouldn’t kill Cairo for my disobedience—any refusal to do what he said, and he would. The next time he came back, holding that fake will, I was ready for him.

“I told Cavendish I entrusted everything to a friend. The deed, the true will, the town’s history, the Sisters, the Men of Honor, Abigail de Souza’s death, and who killed her. If anything happened to me, Cairo, Rainey, or Ivy, he was to send it to the news station. Cavendish walked away, shouting his threats, but I honestly thought it was over. He was beaten.”

“He wasn’t,” Rainey croaked. “Cavendish keeps his word. When you refused him, he tried to get me to kill Cairo. I wouldn’t do it, and my sister paid the price.”

“I didn’t know this, Ivy. I swear I didn’t.”

“Dad, you didn’t think it was weird when she suddenly lost her memory and started going by her sister’s name?”

“Of course I did,” he cried. “But it wasn’t as though she came to me saying there’d been another death. She kept saying her sister took off to Chicago and wasn’t coming back. That she was calling her sister by her own name worried me. But I went out to the farm and there was no sign of foul play. One room was empty as if someone packed. Plus, Ivy seemed fine other than whatever delusion gripped her.

“I concluded thatRaineyleft, and in her grief at being abandoned by the last of her family,Ivyhad a mental breakdown and tried to keep her sister around the only way she knew how.”

Very close to what actually happened.

“Rainey was eighteen and, to be frank, safer away from Cavendish and Bedlam. I thought I was doing the right thing by not tracking her down, and turning Ivy over to Doc Nash’s care.”

“You could’ve told her the truth of who she was.”You could’ve told me, went unsaid.

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