When I didn’t do that, he pretended to be a supportive friend and acted like he wanted me to stay. All the while, he was figuring out his nextmove.
Not long after that, he set up the incident in the abandoned building at RFA. He must’ve slipped something into Trina’s lunch that day to make sure she got sick and didn’t show up to our little afternoon adventure as planned. Then he purposefully scratched his arm, waited until I was close, let out a few fake screams, lied about being attacked, and waited for me to read the threatening notes he’d left around the room. He even tried to pin the whole thing on Trina or some other girl by claiming he was attacked by a woman, and he also tried to plant the idea of the notes being about Lindsay in my mind rightaway.
After Hunter showed up, and we assumed that the Network-Medusa ring was responsible for the attack, we also started to think that they might’ve been responsible for Lindsay’s murder. That bought Adam some more time without any suspicion aimed his way, but he must’ve known it wouldn’t last forever. With Charles and the other Network men vehemently denying any involvement in Lindsay’s death, he knew we’d eventually start lookingagain.
Bullying tactics and threats obviously hadn’t worked on me before, so he moved onto something much more drastic to ensure my silence. He planted a bomb under my car, assuming I would die in the blast and thus never have the chance to work out thetruth.
I really should’ve known it was him when the car exploded. He was a genius when it came to most tech or engineering-related stuff, so he was more than capable of figuring out how to rig up an explosive device. I knew he was no stranger to building things from scratch at home,either.
As a kid, he made fireworks to amuse himself and hissiblings.
As a young adult… he made bombs to save his ownskin.
I haltingly went over all of this with Hunter. When I was done, he took a deep breath and put his head in his hands. “It doesn’t make sense,” hemuttered.
“I know it’s hard to hear, but it all adds up,” I saidsoftly.
“I get that. I just mean it doesn’t make sense in terms of the big picture.” He sat up straight and looked at me, forehead creased in a baffled frown. “Why the hell would Adam ever hurtLindsay?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured. I’d been wondering the exact samething.
“He adored her. You could just tell by the way he looked at her—he cared about her more than anything. When we were kids I was actually kinda jealous that they were so close.” He paused and shook his head. “There’s no way he could’ve faked loving her thatmuch.”
“Love can turn to hate pretty quickly,” I said softly. “I know that better thananyone.”
“But what could’ve made him suddenly turn on his own sister like that?” Hunter’s voice sounded slightly hoarse now. “They were so fuckingclose.”
“I have no idea,” I said, slowly shaking my head. “It could’ve beenanything.”
“Like what?” He threw his hands up. “I can’t think of a single thing she could’ve done to make him throw her off the fuckingroof.”
I hesitated for a moment. “People can do terrible things when they get really heated. Things they’d normally never even dream of doing,” I finally said. “Maybe Adam was seeing a guy Lindsay didn’t approve of, and she told him he had to choose between him or her. Then they got in a huge fight over that, and he pushed her. Or maybe she’d started hanging out with people thathedidn’t approve of, with the same end result. It really could be anything likethat.”
“Huh?”
I started repeating myself, but I only got halfway before Hunter lifted a hand and cut meoff.
“Why do you keep saying Adam might’ve been seeing a guy?” heasked.
“Because he’sgay.”
“No he isn’t. Is that what he toldyou?”
“Yes, I—” I cut myself off abruptly. “Wait, no… he didn’t. I guess I justassumed.”
“Why would you assumethat?”
My brows dipped in a frown as I pondered it. “I just got that impression from him when we first met,” I said. “I asked him why he didn’t hang out with you and the other Princes, and he made some comments about you guys always talking about girls and sex, and other stuff like that. I can’t remember his exact wording, but he said something about how he didn’t have the same tastes or have anything in common with any of you. I know it sounds like a huge leap to assume he’s not into girls based off something as small as that, but while he was saying all of that stuff, he was staring atKairo.”
“KairoBelmont?”
“Yes. He was looking at him with this weird expression on his face. It was like…longing.”
“Like he wantedhim?”
“Yeah, exactly. So I figured he might’ve had some sort of unrequited crush on him. After that, I just assumed he was gay or bi,” I said, cheeks flushing hot. I’d never felt so stupid and ignorant in my entire life. “But now that I’m thinking about it, he’s never actually said anything about his sexuality either way. I’ve seen him hanging out with guys before, but I guess they could just be friends orclassmates.”
“Yeah, they would be. Adam’s definitely notgay.”