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“Why would you leave everything to them in your will if you want them dead?” It doesn’t make sense to me.
“Appearances! You damn fool! Appearances are everything. The world needed to know how much I appeared to love my tragic, damaged little family.”
“How does it feel to know it’s all backfired? Those girls are going to get everything and we’ll make sure your name, your legacy, every lie you’ve ever told is exposed and trashed in the process.”
“I’m one small cog in a large machine. They won’t stop coming for them.”
“Why not just kill them decades ago? Why even have children with their grandfather? It makes no sense!”
She laughs, a deep rasp as she struggles to breathe. A sudden panic fills me that she might die too quickly, that I’m not going to get all the answers I need. Fuck!
“Ap-pear-anc-es. Aren’t you supposed to be bright?”
“Why did you have Michael rape and knock Lizzie up?”
Anger flashes across her face.
“That was not part of the plan!” she snaps. “But he was punished for his digression.”
“You mean you used Raven to clean up your mess? Of course. Michael was a loose cannon, a psychopath you couldn’t control, so you played on Raven’s grief at losing her sister and concocted an elaborate revenge plan, knowing she’d take him out for you.”
“Everyone always does my dirty work for me.”
“Even Tilly?”
“On my payroll.”
“Why?”
“Money. Wealth. Status. I may have promised her hand in marriage to one of the boys. A boost from a more obscure corner of the family tree to the main branch. That part of the family's pretty desperate to cling on to their status despite their dwindling wealth, don’t you know?”
“Michael...and Charlie. Charlie wasn’t acting out of some revenge plan for his family, was he? He was acting on yourorders, to kill Raven.”
“I should have known he was as unreliable and unstable as his damn cousin. The pair of them couldn’t keep it in their pants long enough to get the damn job finished properly. But it’s okay, there are others. That’s the thing you should have realised, you work for The Order so you should know…records, deaths, family trees...everything can be falsified.”
Fuck. How deep do the roots on her rotten tree go? And how the hell does she know this much about The Order? Has my grandfather double crossed us? No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. But someone has.
She laughs wickedly when my confused emotions play out across my face. I’m close to losing it. Think! I need to think, what questions do I still have? So many, and every answer she gives seems to throw up more. I don’t have much time. I need to prioritise.
“Who do you work for?”
“I am a Deighton! I don’t work!” Even as she’s dying, she manages to sound affronted and self-righteous.
“You said you were a small cog in a large machine. Who’s coming after my family?”
“Family.”
I shake my head. What does she mean? Family is coming after family? But whose, hers, mine, ours? Or does she mean Family like the way she said The Order?
“With you dead, are the girls safe?”
“Never.”
“You’re wrong. I will get to the bottom of this. I will protect them with my life.”
“There are some people even you cannot kill.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that if I were you.”
