The Damaged (The Insiders Trilogy #2) - Tijan by Tijan

He wasn’t referring to her. And I wanted him dead. Not now. Not in the future. I wanted him dead eighteen years ago.

Why the fuck had I been waiting so long?

I stopped, head bent, phone to my ear, and I was aware that my guards paused just beyond.

I grated out, “What did you do?”

“I left your girlfriend for you. I wanted you to feel what I felt, losing my little girl. She pulled away from me. It was slow at first, then she moved away, and then she completely stopped talking to me. That’s what your girl is going to do to you.”

God. What had he done?

“She’s going to blame you, you know. If she doesn’t at first, it’ll slowly come out. It’ll build. Day after day. A little more each day. She won’t reach for you. She won’t respond when you kiss her. She’ll flinch when you touch her. She’ll lie there, dead, like a corpse, when you fuck her. And then she’ll pack her bags one day and move out, and that’s the day she’ll tell you that she blames you because, grandson, it is your fault.”

“What did you do?” I roared, my hand gripping the phone so tight I was surprised I didn’t break it.

But he laughed.

He only laughed before he said, so fucking smug, “I broke her. That’s what I did.”

Then …

Dial tone.





FORTY-SIX



Bailey


Déjà vu.

I was experiencing it. Not shock. Not grief.

I didn’t know who they were. The two police detectives had introduced themselves after I’d been checked out of the hospital. Because of who my father was, because of who I shared my bed with, they decided the paramedics weren’t certified enough to clear my health, to let me go to the police to give a statement. The top doctor at the Aspen Medical Center had been called in. He looked over all of us, or most of all of us.

They cleared me and I was brought here. The detectives explained that they didn’t want to walk me through the events in a sterile environment, so here we were.

Another dark room. A single table. No windows except the two-way mirror. But I wasn’t at the Phoenix Tech headquarters; I was at the Aspen Police Department. And it wasn’t Bright and Wilson sitting across from me.

Like I said, déjà vu.

“Can you tell us what happened?”

No.

God.

I closed my eyes.

They had come in, set a recording device on the table, and pressed Record.

They would make me tell them, but everything was hurting me. Everything. Little knives had slipped under my skin and were burrowing into every organ, every vein, every ligament, every cell, and they were destroying me from the inside out.

“Miss Francis.” That was Detective 1.

“Hayes,” I rasped out.

“Excuse me?” Detective 2 leaned forward.

They would call me by my name.

“My name is Bailey Hayes.”

“Right.” They shared a look.

Detective 1 tugged at his collar, his pen tapping a nervous beat on the table, before he cleared his throat. He scooted his chair closer, and here we go again.

“Can you take us through the events that happened at the cabin your family was renting?”

I wanted to laugh.

He was framing it as a question, as if I had a choice. I had no choice. That was a lie. They would make me stay. They would make me tell them what happened, even though they knew, even though there were security cameras, even though I knew the others had all given their own accounts. But mine. They wanted my words. Me. Because this had happened because of me.

I was the target.

Those knives were in my throat. All of them surged through my body, attaching and piercing me. They didn’t want those words to come out.

I drew a breath, feeling the knives sink in even further, tighter. And as if I were tasting my own blood—or maybe it wasn’t mine—I started.

“We were in the hallway—”

Detective 2 mirrored his partner, putting his elbows on the table. His shoulders hunched forward. His head inclined, and he read from the paper. “It says here that you and your mother and your sister had been talking in your bedroom. Is that correct?”

I swallowed my own blood.

Those knives wouldn’t stop cutting at me.

I whispered the word, “Yes.”

“They’d only arrived thirty minutes before that?”

Another whisper, this one quieter. “Yes.”

“You and Matthew Francis, your brother, though you don’t have the same last name, had been at the house all day?”

“Yes.” Barely a sound from me.

“That you guys hadn’t noticed there were no security guards on duty that day?”

Three mistakes.

I could barely answer. “Yes.”

Detective 1 took over, his tone one of disbelief. “Why hadn’t you noticed? Seems you would’ve, you know, since according to everything the others have said, you travel with guards all the time.”

“I was distracted.”

“Right.” Detective 2 shuffled his papers, pulling out a different file. “Your brother mentioned that a Victoria had flown in and ‘went at you like a starving wolf.’ Those were his words.”

My breath was ragged.

“Yes. She said some things that got in my head.”