She sucks in a breath.

“Ella,” Steve pleads from the fireplace. “They don’t need to know.”

She takes another breath.

“Damn it,” Steve curses, then glances wildly at Detective Cousins. “Get me out of here, will you? It was a flesh wound—I don’t need any medical attention. Just haul me off to jail. You’ve already read me my rights, goddammit.”

And I know then what Steve is afraid to admit. What Ella must’ve discovered.

“This is about Mom, isn’t it?” I say in a hoarse voice. I don’t know if I’m asking Ella or Steve or Dad or the cosmic universe. All I know is that the second I mention my mother, Steve’s entire face goes ashen.

Ella clutches my hand, but she’s still not looking me in the eye. “Steve and your mom had an affair,” she whispers.

Silence crashes over the room. Even Detective Cousins looks startled, and he didn’t even fucking know my mother.

“Ella,” Steve begs. “Please…”

She ignores him, turning her distraught gaze to my father. “Maria wrote him a letter saying that she couldn’t live with the guilt anymore. I found it in the room where Brooke was staying. She tried to hide it.” Her sad eyes shift back to me, then toward my brothers. “It wasn’t your fault.” Her voice catches on the last word.

Dad stumbles backward, catching himself against the edge of a table.

The words Ella just said aren’t registering in my brain. They’re just hard consonants, soft vowels. They aren’t understandable. Sawyer and Seb are rooted to the tiled floor. I’m frozen, too, caught up in the horror of what I’m learning.

Only Easton can move. “You asshole! You asshole!” he screams and rushes at Steve.

Detective Cousins throws himself between the two of them. The twins rush over and drag East backward. Dad rights himself and stalks forward.

Every part of me wants to hurl myself at Steve again. Beat the shit out of him for what he did to me, to my mom, to my family. But Ella’s slim hand rests lightly my shoulder, keeping me in check.

I once joked that she held my leash—and it’s true. I’m a better person when she’s around. More controlled. More worthy. And after all she’s gone through tonight, I don’t want to add to her pain by pummeling her father.

“How long did this go on?” Dad demands, his angry gaze fixed on his best friend.

Steve swipes a shaky hand across his mouth. “She came on to me.”

“How long?” Dad roars.

Cousins radios for help. “I need some backup in here, stat. I’ve got five Royals and they’re out for blood.”

Steve’s eyes never leave my father. “It was only once. She took advantage of me.”

With a choked noise, Dad turns to Ella. “How long?”

“I don’t know. There was just this letter.” She holds out a crumpled piece of stationary with the lower left corner torn off.

I immediately recognize it. Mom had a set of personalized paper and envelopes. She said every true lady sent a handwritten thank-you note rather than make a telephone call. And never a text or an email.

Dad snatches the paper from Ella’s hand and scans the contents. Then, with what looks like enormous effort, he carefully folds it in half and gives it back to Ella. I nudge her arm and she drops the letter in my hand.

“You deserve to rot in hell,” Dad hisses at Steve, his whole body vibrating with suppressed rage. “I stood by you for so long. Stuck up for you whenever anyone questioned your honor, your loyalty.” He takes a deep, heaving breath. “I can’t stand to look at you.”

I only allow myself a quick glance at the letter, and just the sight of my mom’s handwriting makes my heart ache. All this time, I thought I’d driven Mom to her death. Easton blamed himself, too. The twins were torn up for months. We fell apart as a family. We hated Dad, hated ourselves. When Ella arrived unannounced, we hated her, too. We treated her like dirt.

East and I left her on the side of the road one night and forced her to walk home. We followed her at a distance, because we’re not total assholes, but we’d made her believe she was alone.

I don’t know, or understand, how she forgave me, how she came to love me.

As I’m lost in my head, Dad shoves past East, sidesteps Cousins, and punches Steve in the jaw so hard that the sound of the impact echoes from one side of the large living room to the other. This time when Steve wipes a hand across his mouth, blood smears across his face.

“Enough. He’s in police custody,” Detective Cousins snaps.

Dad doesn’t look away from Steve. “You bastard. You sleep with my wife, kill a woman, and try to pin it on my son?”

“Dad,” I say hoarsely. “He’s not worth it.”

And he’s not. Steve doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is I’m alive. Everyone I care about is alive and unhurt. I’m not going to prison. Ella’s coming home with us, where she belongs. We’re going to survive this, just like we survived our mother’s suicide, our broken family, and our own demons.

I tuck Ella’s hand securely in mine and say, “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“Home.”

She’s silent for a moment. “That’s good.”

“Yeah,” Easton says, coming up on Ella’s other side. “Your room’s a mess.”

“Because you keep watching football in there,” she mutters as we lead her away. “I expect you to clean it the moment we get back.”

Easton stops at the penthouse door and looks at her incredulously. “I’m Easton Royal. I don’t clean shit.”

Dad sighs. The twins snicker. Even the cops look like they’re trying not to laugh.

I clasp Ella’s hand more firmly in mine and walk out with each of my brothers falling in line. Behind us is the tormented and terrible past. In front of us is our unblemished future.

I’m not looking back again.

36

Reed

It takes all of forty-eight hours for Halston Grier to get another hearing for me. This time, I’m not even annoyed that Judge Delacorte is assigned to the case. There’s something awesomely ironic about the fact that he’s going to have to rule on the motion to dismiss all the charges against me after he tried to bribe my father.