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Blake doesn’t hesitate. “Do you want me to be gentle or shoot straight?”
“Gentle doesn’t save me, Blake,” Alana says, flattening her hands on the coffee table, as if bracing herself for the answer that will inevitably hurt her. “Hiding from the truth doesn’t help me.”
“All right then,” Blake says. “I believe she set you up, but I’m not sure she knew what she was setting you up for.”
“I disagree,” I say, holding nothing back. Alana is right. The truth is what she both needs and deserves. “I confronted her. I saw how she reacted. She knew what was planned. I know she knew. But despite this, I offered her protection and I convinced her to accept.”
“How?” she presses.
“I’d prefer to have this conversation with you alone, Alana, but Blake needs to hear this.”
“Go ahead,” she encourages. “Say it. Tell us.” There’s a brave lift to her chin, and I hate how easily I’m about to create guilt in her.
“The only reason your mother accepted the idea of leaving the country is that my father wasn’t taking her calls and with that knowledge, I was able to create fear in her. I scared her.”
“How?” she asks.
“When you accused my father of killing your father, you put eyes on him.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “That was my intent.”
“My father doesn’t respond well to being cornered. He’ll find a way to push himself free. I know how he thinks, and he’ll look for somewhere to place the blame. Or rather, someone to take the blame, and he’ll make sure they can’t fight back.”
She sucks in a sharp breath as a thick, muddy river of understanding seeps into her stare. “My mother,” she supplies. “And the only way she can’t fight back is if she’s dead.”
“I know how my father thinks. In his eyes, that will mean she kills herself and leaves a suicide note, declaring herself too guilty to live with her crime.” I don’t give Alana the space to drown in those words, quickly moving on and adding, “I told your mother as much. I suspect that Blake is right. She has a way to communicate with my father that we don’t know about, and when she was in the bathroom, they connected, and he reassured her he’s madly in love with her. She then reassured herself he’d never hurt her.”
Alana doesn’t crumble or cry. “My mother as a victim at this point is about as rickety as a rotting, old stairwell. And to that point, I’ve been too wrapped up in grief to realize that I haven’t heard anything about a will. Was there life insurance? Did she inherit money?”
“I was going to bring it up after you had time to rest,” Blake replies. “The answer is yes, your father had life insurance. The policy is two million dollars, and your mother is the sole beneficiary, meaning you’re excluded.”
Her nostrils flare, her jaw clenching.
“That in itself hits me as odd,” Blake continues, “but as I see it, it’s a welcome shelter in what is likely to morph into a nasty investigation after Alana’s accusations.”
“Meaning what?” I prod.
“The policy hasn’t paid out,” Blake explains, “and I think you both should expect the insurance company’s investigators to come knocking on your door.”
“In that case,” Alana says, “I get what I wanted. Justice for my father and the end of West Senior, which is exactly why he’ll want my mother dead, by her own hand.” She pushes herself up to the couch cushion, and her gaze locks on the space before her. I wait for her to speak, but all that follows is silence, her thoughts indistinguishable at this point.
“Blake, I need you to keep her mother safe. We’ll talk in the morning about the plan going forward.”
“No,” Alana says, her voice as hollow as her expression. “She’s living in some fantasy novel she imagined and willed to life, over who knows how many years. And on that note, she has to reap the consequences of how that story ends. She’s on her own.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Damion
Alana follows her declaration of her mother being on her own by pushing to her feet and traveling resolutely toward the living room window, placing space between herself and the phone call with Blake. I hit the button to disconnect the speaker and place the cell to my ear. “Blake, it’s Damion.”
“You don’t even have to say it. We’re watching her mother,” he says. “I’ll be there in the morning. Let me know if you need us sooner.”
We exchange a few more words and disconnect. I slide my phone in my pocket, my attention lifting to Alana, where she watches the hellish day finally end, a collage of gold and yellow painted across the skyline as the sun sinks low, hugging the high-rises. It’s a day we both will always remember, and yet we will always want to forget. But maybe forgetting is overrated. We must remember how easily life can change in the blink of an eye, how easily we can lose everything we love to truly value our blessings.
And each day with Alana is a blessing—the only one that matters to me.
I close the space between us, and when I step behind her, the sweet scent of the floral body wash she favors teases my nostrils. I want to just wash this day off of me, she’d said to me and Savage. There had been a desperation rooted deep in those words, a need to escape all memories of the hell she’s lived these past few hours. I wonder how hard she’d scrubbed her body, and I fear what it is she needed to wash away.
