Page 58 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Thirty-Eight

ROS

I woke, and the pain settled in slowly, like the aftershocks of a storm.

Not the sharp, brutal kind he’d wrung from my body the night before, no. That had come and gone in waves, in punishment and release, in confession and consequence. This was different. Softer. Deeper. Like my soul had been stripped raw and left trembling in his hands.

My body ached everywhere. My nipples throbbed from the clamps, my thighs still trembled with phantom overstimulation, and my voice was hoarse, half from screaming, half from sobbing.

But I wasn’t crying anymore. I was still. Quiet. Hollowed out in the best and worst way.

Wrapped in his arms. Tangled in our ruined sheets. His chest pressed to my back, one hand splayed low over my stomach like he needed to feel me breathing.

“I’m not letting you go,” he’d whispered last night. “Not after this. Not ever.”

And I believed him.

I should’ve been afraid of that. Of how much he wanted me. Of how completely I had surrendered to it. But I wasn’t.

I was terrified of something else. Of what would happen once he read what I’d written. The book I’d set up to go live today, to coincide with the police press release that Alyssa had warned me about.

The light through the curtains was pale and gray… storm-colored. I could hear the soft rush of traffic from the main road. He hadn’t moved. Not once. Like he was afraid if he let go, I’d disappear again.

I shifted carefully, every muscle stiff. The soreness was everywhere. A burn beneath my skin. A reminder of what we’d done, of how close I’d come to unraveling completely in his arms, and how hard he’d made me beg before he gave me what I needed.

And he had given it to me. Every brutal inch of him. Every vicious word. Every unspoken truth. He’d wrecked me. Worshipped me. Forgiven me.

But he hadn’t read the book yet. He didn’t know how much I’d told the world. He didn’t know how I’d told his family’s story, the truth about Thayer, and what Thayer did to me.

I gently moved his arm and slid out from under the blanket, keeping my movements slow, careful.

The floor was cold against my feet. I slid open his dresser and pulled on one of his old Stonewood University tees.

Then I slipped across the hall to my room and grabbed my softest, stretchiest pair of shorts and pulled them on.

It was release day. The final manuscript had uploaded yesterday before I left the river house. The ebook version was queued to launch at 9 a.m. sharp.

I padded to the kitchen and grabbed a glass of water with trembling hands. I pulled my laptop out of its bag, still lying where I’d left it when I’d come into the house last night, and plugged it in.

I looked at the time – 8.30 am. If the police press release had gone out today, as Alyssa had said it would, then the result of that would likely be live on the Stonewood Times website about now.

I took a deep breath, and opened the site.

There it was, the article I’d been looking for, ever since it all happened.

The Stonewood Times

Tuesday Edition - December 8

Cold Case Closed: Williams Family Implicated in Stonewood Slaughter

Stonewood — Baldwin County authorities announced today that the notorious Stonewood Slaughter case has officially been solved and the case closed, more than four years after the brutal murders of Henry, Victoria, and Ava Knox shocked the community.

In a press release dated 8 December, Sheriff Alan Rourke announced that brothers Eli, Caleb, and Chad Williams, along with their first cousin Thayer Williams, were responsible for the murders of Henry, Victoria, and Ava Knox inside Stonewood Manor four years ago.

Investigators credited a covert operation, led by civilian informant and writer Rosalind Cooper, with breaking the case wide open.

Acting in coordination with Detective Alyssa Allen, Cooper entered the apartment of her former boyfriend, Thayer Williams, wearing a wire.

During the recorded conversation, Thayer confessed to shooting Henry Knox and detailed the involvement of his three cousins.

Eli Williams fatally shot Victoria Knox.

Chad Williams fatally shot Ava Knox. Caleb Williams broke into the mansion with them, and also acted as a getaway driver for his brothers and cousin.

According to the confession, the cousins meticulously collected all shell casings at the scene, leaving behind almost no trace. For four years, the killings remained an open wound and a cold case. For four years, they evaded justice.

The operation was initiated after Philip Knox, the surviving son of Henry and Victoria, provided Ms. Cooper with a piece of security footage he had recovered independently from the mostly destroyed security cameras at his family property.

Ms. Cooper recognized her former boyfriend, Thayer, on the tape, despite the demonic clown mask obscuring his identity, and worked with Detective Alyssa Allen to confront him undercover.

When he realized Ms. Cooper was wearing a wire, he brutally attacked her with a large kitchen knife, and might have succeeded in killing her as well, if not for Detective Allen’s intervention.

As Williams was preparing to stab Ms. Cooper for a third time, Detective Allen kicked in his door and opened fire.

Williams died at the scene of the attack on Ms. Cooper.

Before indictments could be issued, Eli, Chad, and Caleb Williams vanished on November 18 th , during an overnight boating trip from Chad’s private dock near Perdido Pass.

Chad's 40-foot sportfisher was later found, destroyed by fire.

Only burned debris washed ashore; the vessel itself sank.

The Williams brothers are presumed dead, though no physical remains have been found.

“The evidence we now have — both the confession and the physical record — allows us to close this case,” Sheriff Rourke said. “The perpetrators have been identified and, in Thayer's instance at least, accounted for.”

The announcement closes one of Baldwin County’s darkest chapters, but the revelations of betrayal within two of the county’s most powerful families will likely haunt Stonewood for years to come.

For Philip Knox and for the town of Stonewood, the announcement marks the end of four years of speculation — but leaves behind scars, grief, and trauma for all involved.

I stared at it, taking the words in slowly, not quite sure how I felt in that moment.

Then I frantically went and edited my release announcement, which was already scheduled to go out at the same time as the book’s listing was set to go live, desperate to get the reference to the police press notice into it before it all went out, automatically.

Then I looked at the time again. Nearly nine – I’d made it by less than a minute.

I connected to my author account.

I stared at it, waiting for the moment.

The truth is never clean. It’s bloody, brutal, and unforgiving. But it matters. I lived. And I told it.

What We Buried in Stonewood is available now.

—Rosalind Cooper

I wanted to throw up.

There was no undoing it. No way to pull it back now. The police press release had just handed us the biggest publicity boost we could ever have asked for. The timer ticked past 9:00, and just like that, the announcement posted to my socials. The link went live, and the story wasn’t mine anymore.

It belonged to everyone.

To Knox. To his family. To the people who still visited the graves without knowing the whole truth.

My inbox started pinging immediately. Mentions, messages, press notifications. The dashboard on the publishing site began tallying real-time sales.

Six hundred copies sold in ten minutes. Twelve hundred by the twenty minute mark.

The comments were already rolling in, too — some kind, some cruel, all loud. But I couldn’t look at them. Not yet. Not when all I could hear was the echo of Knox’s voice in my head:

You let yourself get stabbed to protect me.

And I had.

I’d gone behind his back. Risked everything. Pressed until Thayer confessed — because I needed someone to tell the truth. Because I needed him to have justice. Because I’d read the cold case file, cover to cover, long ago. And the silence around it felt like suffocation.

They didn’t deserve to be forgotten.

His mother. His father. His nineteen-year-old little sister.

Three bodies. One house. A trip to Atlanta canceled at the last second for a fucking work meeting. And Knox, away in Gulf Shores, trying to prove Thayer was cheating on me. Alive because he was obsessed with me, and alone ever since.

We’d been friends and neighbors for three years when it happened.

I hadn’t known his family all that well, not really.

They tended to keep to Stonewood Manor on the other side of town, for the most part, but I’d always seen the warmth in his eyes when he talked about them.

Then I had to see the frigid grief in his eyes when he stood over their graves, and I’d promised myself that one day, I’d find the truth, even if it killed me.

Now I had. And the truth was on sale.

I didn’t hear him at first, just the quiet scuff of bare feet on hardwood. Then the soft creak of a floorboard. Then I felt the shift in the air.

When I turned, he was standing in the doorway, shirtless, jaw tight, hair mussed, gaze locked on my laptop.

The announcement was still up.

The title blazed across the screen: What We Buried in Stonewood.

“I didn’t hear you get up,” he said, voice low and raspy.

I shook my head.

“Didn’t sleep much.”

He didn’t move closer. Just looked at me. Then the screen. Then back again.

“It released today?”

“Yeah. And so did the police press release about the case being solved and closed. That’s all over the front page of the Stonewood Times.”

He stepped into the kitchen, slow, deliberate. Reached for the half-empty glass of orange juice on the counter and took a sip. His eyes never left mine. He’d paled a little at my words about the police press release.