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“It was your father, Alexandra. Your father hired Erik Marquez to make sure that Lucas died at the meeting. Lucas had found out that your father was working independently of the MC and selling drugs. Once he arranged for peace with the Road Kings, Lucas was going to force your father to get out of the business. Your dad didn’t want that. So he and one of his cronies — some other member of the Crimson Fury who was also at the meeting and whose name started with an ‘M’ — made sure that Lucas didn’t survive that meeting.”
“Mateo? My father and Mateo killed my brother?” The voice that leaves my throat doesn’t sound like my own. It’s too broken, too weak, too pitiful. Then, the rest of me does, too — it’s as if I’m outside my body. I see myself drop to my knees, shaking.
Dixon runs to me and holds me upright. “That’s him. Yes.”
I shake him off. It can’t be. I can’t accept that my father and my best friend — my dead brother’s best friend — would kill Lucas, and all over some fucking money. Money and drugs, that’s why my brothers’ dead. What a fucking pathetic way to go for such a good man. Even thinking that feels like a disgrace to who my brother was as a person.
“You’re wrong. You’re lying.”
“Erik confessed. He admitted to all of this.”
“And now he’s dead? Beaten to death after giving you a story that conveniently absolves you of my brother’s murder? As if I’m supposed to believe that my father and my brother’s best friend had him killed.”
“He escaped. He came after me,” Dixon insists.
I turn.
Ghost is still there, at the far end of the garage, yet still within shouting distance.
“Ghost, you tied Erik up, right?”
“I did,” he answers.
“You’ve done this before, right?” I say.
“Many times.”
“And you know what you’re doing?”
“Oh, I could write a book on it. Actually, I wrote one. No, two. Part of an instructional that the government will disavow every using, and then, in my novel The Darkest Confession—”
I turn back to Dixon.
“You expect me to believe that Erik Marquez, who was subdued by a trained interrogator and legit creep, gave you a confession that completely exonerates you, while at the same time implicating my last remaining family member and my childhood best friend, and then broke out of his bonds, attacked you, and forced you to kill him?”
Even as it spills out of my mouth, the story sounds as messed up as the scene in front of me. It can’t be real. Dixon is lying to me to save his ass.
But why would he pick a story so insulting?
Why would he target some of the few remaining loved ones that I have left?
That infuriates me. My vision tunnels, the pure rage igniting my blood like gas on a bonfire. Dixon meets my eyes, and I see it there: the flicker of doubt that he’s played his hand too far.
Or maybe it's fear because he knows exactly what I'm capable of. Like killing him. The thing I should have done weeks ago when I had the chance.
“Alex, you have to believe me.”
“Believe you?” My voice is a low growl. “You want me to believe that my father, the man who taught me to ride a bike, who held my hand when I got stitches, would orchestrate my brother’s death? That he’d kill his own fucking son? And Mateo? The boy I’ve known as a friend for my entire fucking life would kill my brother and his best friend? You’re asking me to accept that load of bullshit? How fucking dare you?”
Dixon opens his mouth to speak, but I don’t give him the chance.
“No. I don’t believe you.” My hands are shaking, not from fear or sorrow now, but from the violence that courses within them. Violence that aches to break out and finish what I started weeks ago. “You know what I believe? That you were terrified Erik would spill the truth about you. So you killed him. And now you’re trying to feed me this story that paints everyone but yourself as the traitor because you think it’ll throw me off your scent.”
He steps back then, and in his eyes — those eyes I thought I knew — I see it: the truth.
“You’ve got nothing to say now?” My voice is cold steel, demanding answers.
“Alex, you need to listen to reason. You know I want the truth as much as anyone, that I’d kill, and I’d die for it, and what I’m telling you is…”
