The next thing I was aware of was someone shaking my shoulder. Opening my eyes again, I saw Lena holding out a large glass with some kind of icy-looking brownish liquid and a straw poking out of the top. “Drink this.” She handed the glass to me, and I took a tentative taste.
Iced coffee. Strong. Suddenly, I was really thirsty. “Thanks.”
She gave me a brief smile, then disappeared.
The coffee worked its magic. Half an hour later, I was definitely still drunk, but I wasn’t seeing double. I guessed I’d been out of it for longer than I thought, because the house was noticeably emptier than it had been, and the music was playing at a volume that meant I didn’t have to shout to be heard. Making my way into the kitchen, I poured myself a pint of water, then knocked it back, noticing Cassius heading towards me, for once without a girl all over him.
“Lost your touch, Cass? Not getting any tonight?”
He raised a brow at me. “I could say the same about you.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, well.” My voice turned serious without me meaning it to. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
He gave me that same look of concern he’d given me at the beginning of the night, so I added, “Fuck it. Let’s find…Laura, was it? And her friend?”
“Yeah.” A grin spread across his face, and he tapped his bottle against my empty pint glass. “Last I saw, they were outside.”
A flash of pink hair appeared in my peripheral vision, and I paused. “You go on out. I just wanna check something.”
“Alright.” He sauntered out of the sliding doors onto the deck, and I heard his “Hi, ladies” and a high-pitched squeal. I doubted he’d even notice if I was there or not.
Instead of following him out, I trailed behind the girl with the pink hair like the stalker that I was, all the way through the house and out of the front door.
What the fuck I was doing, I didn’t know.
Call it temporary insanity. Something was pulling me towards her, and I didn’t know why. All I knew was, I needed to be near her.
She paused next to the driver’s-side door of her car, turning around to face me. Her expression was impossible to read. “You can stop following me now.”
“Where are you going, Lena?” I came to a stop right in front of her, our bodies almost touching.
“H-home.” Her voice came out all breathy.
“Why?” I planted one hand against the door of her car, next to her shoulder, and the other…fuck, I guess I was still drunk because it had a mind of its own, trailing up her arm. “Why?” I asked again, lowering my voice and dipping my head to run my nose down her cheek.
Her breath hitched, and her lips parted. “You’re drunk,” she managed.
“Not that drunk.”
“Drunk enough.” With a sudden surge of energy, she straightened up, giving me a shove backwards. I stumbled on the gravel, caught off guard. Before I could recover, she slipped inside her car, locking the doors.
She sped away without a backwards look, and I went back inside, suddenly feeling way too sober and no longer in the mood to party.
Instead, I went to bed. Alone.
EIGHT
My fingers moved swiftly across the keys, navigating to the dark web chat room. After traversing the outer levels of security, I input the final password, and I was in.
I bypassed Xenon’s blinking message alert; he could wait. Instead, I clicked on Nitro’s name to open a new chat. I hesitated for a moment. Was I doing the right thing?
No. He had the right to know. As soon as I’d hacked into the footage from Alstone Docks and processed the video until the audio was clear, I knew I couldn’t sit on this.
There was the small chance that he might work out who I was, but I’d been careful to cover my tracks. Here in the hidden depths of the dark web, we remained completely anonymous, communicating on a regular basis but never revealing anything that could identify us in the outside world.
Not that Weston Cavendish would suspect who I was.
No one would.
I typed out a message, short and to the point.
Mercury: Thought you deserved to see this.
I attached the file, then hit Send and sat back.
Waiting for the fallout.
NINE
After a night of very little sleep, I stumbled downstairs, my eyes gritty and my stomach churning. After making a coffee, I made my way to the computer room to see if Xenon’s program had come up with anything useful. Nothing new, but there was a message waiting for me.
Mercury: Thought you deserved to see this.
There was a video file attached, and I clicked to open it.
And my whole world came crashing down.
I replayed the video, over and over again, attempting to make sense of it all. Footage from the docks where my brother had been shot by our crazy as fuck stepmother, Christine, earlier in the year. He’d survived, but she hadn’t, and that was the only good thing to come out of that fucking nightmare.
Despite the image being grainy and fuzzy, thanks to the darkness and the stormy conditions, the audio was clear. Christine’s voice played on repeat in my head, over and over again.
“One Cavendish down, three to go. I was originally going to let the boys live, but after tonight…no. I’m afraid I can’t risk keeping them alive.”
“One Cavendish down?” Winter had replied, her voice full of horror.
“Arlo’s wife was easy. The right words whispered in her ear, the open bottle of pills…I barely had to do anything.”
I’d always been told that my mum had died from a brain haemorrhage, but Christine’s words seemed to imply that something else had happened. Why hadn’t Winter or Caiden mentioned this to me? Both of them had clearly heard. It wasn’t like they hadn’t had time to bring it up, either. Months had passed since that whole thing went down.
I made another coffee on autopilot, glad that no one else was around yet. What was I supposed to say? Just come out and ask my brother if he’d been lying to me all this time? Or was it Christine’s sick way of trying to cause yet more rifts between us?
First up, I needed to do some digging. Get into the death records and find out just what the fuck was going on. The other thought running through my mind was the mystery of Mercury’s identity. He’d never given any indication that he knew me, but his actions were completely out of character. For him to send me that particular bit of footage had to mean that he knew me personally.
That meant he had an advantage over me. And until I found out who he was, I couldn’t trust him.
I sent him a message, which I doubted he’d reply to, but I had to try.
Me: Who are you?
Surprisingly, he actually responded. To say I was shocked was a fucking understatement. Until I read his reply, which told me nothing.
Mercury: Someone who thinks you deserve the truth
Me: Do I know you?
He went offline then and didn’t reappear again.
Leaving Mercury to one side, because I had enough shit to deal with as it was, I turned my attention to the more important issue of hacking into the records. Two hours later, and I had my answer. The coroner’s report had been sealed, and my mum’s official death record simply stated the cause of death as a brain haemorrhage caused by an accidental overdose.