Julia
My eyes fixated on a chip in the wood of the wet bar as I sat on the couch, listening to Lachlan and Ethan tell Nikko, Lachlan’s cousin and best friend, everything he’d shared with me.
Hell, even more than he’d shared with me.
This wasn’t how I imagined meeting Lachlan’s family. Not that I’d actually expected to meet them to begin with. It was never supposed to be part of the deal. I wasn’t supposed to know anything about him.
But that was before.
Before I learned who he was.
Before I realized how intertwined our lives were.
Before the truth slammed into me, stealing every bit of oxygen from my lungs.
It wasn’t over. Nick’s influence still pervaded every part of my life, chaining me to him.
I was foolish to think I’d ever be free. He’d warned me I never would.
He was right.
“And you claim you received the first suspicious package approximately five-and-a-half years ago?” somebody asked, but the voice sounded distant. Like a question being asked on a police procedural we were watching. Like it wasn’t real.
God, how I wished this weren’t real.
“Ms. Prescott?” the voice pressed again when I didn’t respond.
“Hey.” A hand landed on my thigh, comforting and soothing. I snapped my head to my right, meeting Lachlan’s concerned gaze. “Are you okay?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. Was I okay? Had I ever been okay? I doubted it. So I did what I’d done my entire life.
“Sorry.” I shook off the emotions trying to leak through the cracks in the wall I’d erected years ago. Straightening my spine, I plastered on a smile. “I’m fine. Just lost in my thoughts for a second.”
“You don’t have to pretend, Julia,” Lachlan said in a low voice. “Not with me. If you’re not okay, just say it and we’ll stop. I know how difficult bringing up all this has been for me. I can’t even begin to fathom what it’s like for you.”
“All the more reason we need to figure this out.” I squared my shoulders and looked at Nikko, his imposing stature dwarfing the tiny chair where he currently sat. And I thought Lachlan was a big guy. He was small compared to Nikko. “What was your question again?”
He stole a glance at Lachlan, as if asking if it was okay to proceed. I wasn’t sure what Nikko saw in his gaze, but he eventually looked back at me, cautiously continuing.
“The first suspicious package…,” Nikko began, his soothing voice at odds with his commanding presence. “When did you receive it?”
“Five years ago this past March.”
“Autumn Quinn,” Ethan announced, pushing the rolled-up sleeves of his button-down shirt up his forearms. He leaned toward the coffee table, grabbing a stack of files containing what I now knew to be all the research he and Claire had done. Not only on my husband and his victims, but all the recent suicides they believed to be the work of a copycat.
Or “acolyte”, as I’d overheard Ethan refer to him.
I would have rather this guy simply be a copycat. Acolyte indicated some sort of cult-like follower.
Meaning this could still very well have been Nick’s doing. That Nick was the one giving the orders.
A shiver rippled up my spine at the thought.
Finally finding what he was looking for, Ethan placed a photo of a woman onto the coffee table for every to see. She was just like every other woman in his files.
Young.
Beautiful.