“She has a sister.”
“Protect her for me, will you?” I hear Madison’s voice echo in my ear.
I rub at my temples, staving off the sudden headache that’s coming on from the overload of information. What the fuck did they want me to do with the sister? Did they expect me to kill her and keep her quiet? Jesus Christ.
“We just want to make sure she won’t ever be a problem. She’s caused too much of a stir already. We need her taken care of. She’s the reason we went to court. She’ll never forget, and as long as she’s alive, we’re all in danger. She thinks we had something to do with her sister’s death.”
“And why would she think that?” I ask dryly.
“Because Trent, the fucking idiot, invited her to the kissing rock that night. She thinks Trent did it.”
I scrub my hands over my face in frustration. After a long moment of silence, I pause, gathering my thoughts. Hating the words as soon as they leave my lips. “I’ll take care of it.”
The color slowly returns to his face, and the tension dissipates from his body, as if hearing this is a relief.
That memory is suddenly replaced with another one from our past.
A picture.
A fucking picture is all Vincent gave me to go off of. I didn’t even know Madison had a sister, let alone a twin sister. I didn’t know her well. She was popular, sure, but for the past year, she’d been gone, away in Italy, and even before that, my ex-girlfriend Summer hated her, so keeping my distance from Madison was always a given if I wanted to avoid hearing any of Summer’s shit.
Just like most towns and cities, Ferndale is broken into parts. My family, along with Vincent’s and a handful of our other friends, live in what we like to call the “Riches Circle.” The community is gated and only the higher class, the founding families, live here. Each house was built by our ancestors years ago, and it’s been passed down each generation.
And my house? My father had it built to fit in with the rest, so we wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb. But, of course, in perfect Benedict fashion, he had to outdo everyone by making our house the biggest structure in all Ferndale.
Then you have the middle class. That’s where everyone else lives, the regular families on the north side, near downtown, but the lower class, those are the hillbillies of the city. The outcast, thrown into poverty, who are all looked down upon.
I stand on the incline of the hill, on the north side of town, staring out at the house that belongs to a dead girl. It also belongs to the living sister who I’m supposed to make disappear. With my hands shoved into my coat pockets and my breath fogging the air before me, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Of course, my father has men who handle this sort of thing for him, but before I make that call, I need to see with my own eyes who I am dealing with. Is she this horrible troublemaker they are making her out to be? Out for vengeance?
When she finally steps out of the house, my brows tug down as I take her in. She isn’t Madison. Clearly. She isn’t a threat either. With reading glasses, an olive-green knit sweater, and jeans straining over thick thighs, this girl looks harmless. And sad.
So fucking sad.
I shouldn’t do it, but I follow her all the way to the graveyard. My chest pangs when she sits near a makeshift tombstone in the grass that is a lot fresher looking than the surrounding ones. I don’t know how long I stand there and watch as she sobs into the cool air. Plumes of fog escape her lips with each breath she releases. Her back wracks with her deep sobs. I can see it trembling, her entire body shaking from where I stand.
My lips thin into a grim line. She is still mourning the loss of her sister. Of course she is angry. But she isn’t a threat, and she sure as shit isn’t dangerous. It’s obvious Vincent knows that. He wants her gone for whatever reason. And maybe it’s best that I do get rid of her.
I make the decision, then and there, to leave her be. To protect her at any costs, because I refuse to be the one to hurt her. Not while she’s already down.
Once I get back home, I slip into my father’s office. There’s only one reason I go into his space while he’s here, and he knows it just as well as I do. It kills me to do so. To even come to this man for help, but I have no other choice. She’s not a threat, and this…this is the safest bet.
“What do you need, Sebastian?”
I square my shoulders. “I need you to find anything you can on Madison Wright’s family and her sister. I need the sister gone, far away from here. Get her a scholarship, anything that gets her far away from here. From this town, from us.”
My father pauses, a tightness stealing over his features. He leans back in his winged back chair, observing me. “Something you want to tell me?”
“No. I just need her gone. Safe, but gone.”
“You know this is going to cost you, right?”
My lips curl over my teeth in a sneer. “Didn’t expect anything less.”
Getting up, I shake away the memory. It was Mackenzie. It all makes sense now. I never asked for her name, never looked into her any more than I needed to. I had my father take care of it after I washed my hands of the mess of that summer. I didn’t read any of the papers because the part I played, what I did, I couldn’t stomach after Madison’s death. I left for college and never looked back at Ferndale. I didn’t go home and visit my parents. That was what our vacations were for.
After high school, Mackenzie disappeared, just like I promised she would, and she became someone else’s problem. I kept my word. I took care of it. My father got her a scholarship in Nebraska, but now I see that she never took that scholarship. She went to New York instead. But why? Why not take the full ride? What was I missing?
How did she stay under the radar for so many years? And most of all, why didn’t her name click in my mind? I might not have known her first name, but Wright… I should’ve recognized the last name and that story about her past, about her sister. She was giving me everything I needed, but I was blinded. I was blinded by her and how I felt about her, so I didn’t see it. I missed it all. Like a fucking fool.
She had me, too, with the fake name. Scarlett—anything to throw me off her scent. And I bet she was banking on me not remembering. On me being so caught up in her that I didn’t see what she was trying to do all along.
But what was she trying to do?
That I still haven’t quite figured out yet.
I make my way over to the bar, pour myself a glass of amber liquid, and pick up where I left off with a glass full of liquid courage.
If there’s anything you take away from this, let it be the names of the men who took a life, men who ruined my life and didn’t even see me coming. You’ll need to remember each of them and the significant roles they play.
Trent Ainsworth.
Vincent Hawthorne.
Zach Covington.
Marcus Whitehorn.
And the last one…he’s not really a part of this story. He’s a semi-innocent bystander dragged into this by lies and years of deceit.
I knock back the remaining liquid in my glass and hiss at the burn. It’s nothing compared to the burn in my chest. Everything feels tight, constricted, making it hard to breathe.
Because if she’s saying what I think she is, that changes everything.
Brushing away her journalistic piece, I toss open the file, and the frown I was wearing earlier deepens. At this rate, it’ll be permanently glued to my face.