Page 90 of Behind These Four Walls

There wasn’t far for Jackson to go. Which left Brooke and Bennett. Bennett had nothing to say. He was a shell of the usually flamboyant and boisterous jerk he usually was. His mother had plenty to say, and she wanted everyone to hear it.

Brooke cried, “I didn’t know what Jackson was up to, Victor. I swear I didn’t!”

“You knew enough,” Victor said, his voice so full of grief it clawed at Isla. There was no more pretending. No more maybes to hide behind. There was the cold, hard, hateful fact that Eden was truly gone. She was down there. Not in Bora Bora or the Maldives. She hadn’t thrown her family away, or Isla. She had gone. She had been taken. And it shouldn’t have been, except for greed and power.

Victor said, “Get them out of my sight. Get them out of my house.”

Bennett and his mother were led away, their pleas to Victor trailing after them. Eventually, only Isla and Victor remained by the grave, standing vigil while the crew worked diligently. Both of those who loved her the most, broken to know what she had gone through and that they hadn’t been there to help.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

The moment one of the workers called out they’d found something was surreal. Isla’s heart plummeted to her stomach. This was the moment she’d waited ten years for and the moment she’d also dreaded. The many overhead lights were so bright, they chased away the cool of night and made it look like it was daylight.

A silent hush went over the crowd as the people on top helped the workers in the hole climb out without disturbing anything inside. They stepped back, keeping a respectful distance. Seeing that they’d stopped, Victor rushed to the edge, Isla by his side, with Myles and Dixon returning. Sometime during the digging Holland had appeared, her clothes changed from the reception. She’d looked horrible, having gotten the news about everything that had transpired at the site, of her mother and Bennett being detained by the police and about Jackson and the search for him. She didn’t approach the hole, standing back to watch anxiously.

Victor took halting steps toward the edge. He took a breath. And then another, steadying himself. If he felt anything similar to what Isla was feeling as they got closer and closer, each step forward harder to take, Victor was praying the hole was empty, that the dream he’d had for the past ten years of his daughter living her life happily as she wanted it was true.

He leaned forward, inhaling particles of dirt, and looked in.

Even in the dark, the glint of gold and the locket attached to it shone brilliantly like a beacon. It was as if it hadn’t spent the last ten years beneath the dirt. He crumpled to the ground, but Isla’s feet were rooted, the image of the tattered clothing and brittle remains of Victor’s cherished daughter and Isla’s best friend searing themselves in her mind.

“That’s her mother’s necklace,” he sobbed. He couldn’t look away. He didn’t deserve to see anything but what had become of Eden. “Elise, what have I done to our girl?”

“Eden started wearing it when her mom died,” Isla explained as verification that the body in the hole was indeed Eden Corrigan. Isla was unable to see well through the tears falling. She barely got her words out. “Eden was wearing the locket chain and her own bracelet with the key together when I saw her last, getting into Roger’s Jeep.”

Victor was inconsolable, suddenly screaming, “Get my daughter out of there! Get her out. She can’t be there. She can’t have been there in the cold all this time. How could they have done this to her? How could they have done this to my little girl?”

The realization was too much for Victor, and he clutched his chest, teetering precariously over the edge. Myles got to him in time, grabbing his father before he could fall. Isla got there next. Then Dixon. The three of them holding the strongest man they’d ever known in his weakest moment.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

The last thing Isla had expected was to be back in the Corrigan house, trying once again to sleep as she had the first night she’d been there. It was déjà vu, and Isla hated it. Sleep eluded her. Again, the large size of the room, the darkness, and feeling very small in this very big space were too much for her to settle down. And there was all that had transpired tonight, and the gnawing feeling that not everything was done. Not everyone was safe.

Worse than the large oaks outside the window once again casting long, clawed shadows across the room was the deep-set unease from earlier that lingered in the back of her mind. She kicked at the white plush five-star-hotel-level duvet as she flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Her mind was one of those old movie reels with the two spinning wheels of recorded tape, replaying the night’s chaos in her mind: Jackson’s fury at the recording, his lies and murderousness laid bare; Bennett’s smugness and the callousness with which he’d treated his sister and lied about what he knew of what had happened to her all this time, despite knowing her absence was eating away at their father; Brooke’s venom, maliciousness, and manipulation and the way she still, even in the end, tried to play victim, acting like everything Jackson had done had been on his own and not because she’d made him think he’d ever have a chance to be in Victor’s position.

But most of all, seeing Eden in that grave. Seeing how the chain glimmered like a beacon in the dark, letting everyone know that she was there, had been there all this time, and no one knew. Out of everything they’d discovered that night, knowing what Eden had endured—betrayals on every level, even by Isla, who’d left her behind when she should have spoken up and fought for someone to listen to her—was the hardest to swallow. Isla didn’t know how she could live with the guilt, which was exponentially worse than it had been these past years, when imagination and willful ignorance had allowed her to pretend that maybe, just maybe, Eden was okay. Very much like Victor.

Isla couldn’t begin to imagine how he was feeling. She hated how he’d had to find out. In front of his family like that, hearing his daughter at the worst moments of her life. But it had been the only way to open his eyes. The only way for Victor to confront the rotten truth about the family he held in such high regard. It had been the only way for him to see clearly how he had caused it all by pitting child against child, wife against lover, company against family. His willful ignorance had been the linchpin to the downfall of the Corrigans as he, and the world, knew them. If he let the world know. That would be his true test. Owning up to his mistakes and the mistakes of his family and letting the chips fall where they may.

They’d all come to the field, their lies exposed, their guilt and need for survival driving Brooke, Bennett, and especially Jackson to the extreme, to their attempt to rid the world of Eden’s body for good. What a fucked-up family they were. But the thing that ate at Isla the most was that Jackson had escaped. Even after being shot, in the commotion of the field being flooded with police and security guards and staff, and with their immediate response to see if Eden was really buried there, Jackson had once again used that opportunity to disappear.

Isla didn’t believe Jackson would let this be his end. He’d played the long game. He’d done all this simpering behind Brooke and kowtowing to Victor to get his son in the perfect alignment for succession as Victor’s heir. There was no way Jackson, who’d done so much they did knowand likely much more they didn’t, would give up on Bennett or on taking the company from the man he hated the most. The hatred he had in his eyes every time he thought no one was looking was burned into her memory. She shuddered. If anyone ever looked at her like that, she would ... wait. Brooke had looked at her like that, so scratch that.

Isla tossed and turned. She considered sneaking to Myles’s room, wondering if that would make her look pitiful in that she didn’t want to be alone. But his room was all the way on the other side of the mansion, and she couldn’t bring herself to.

Isla dressed in jeans and the UCLA sweatshirt she’d had with her when she arrived, not knowing where the night’s events would take her. She was about to walk out when she stubbed her toe hard on something on the floor. The rock from the hunting party. It had fallen out of the backpack she’d carried with her when she’d arrived at the house earlier, and now the backpack had been kicked over and the rock spilled out to inflict bodily harm on her. Toe stubs in the dark—the worst kind.

After breathing through the pain, she shoved her feet in her sneakers. She picked up the rock and weighed it in her hand, and though it had attacked her, the chunk of granite and stone brought a sense of relief she couldn’t explain. It had somehow become her safety blanket. She shoved it in the front pocket of her sweatshirt, not caring that it made the sweatshirt hang low from its weight.

Absent all the chaos of earlier that night, the serenity and quiet in the darkened mansion made Isla instantly feel better. She shoved her hands inside the front of her sweatshirt, holding the rock between her hands as she walked toward the back stairs, heading to the first level.

“Wonder what he’d say if I just showed up,” she mused, her steps slowing as she rounded a corner and considered banking left to the hall Myles stayed in when he was sleeping at the house as he was that night, like she was. The wall sconces were turned low, enhancing the ambience that the mansion was down for the night. After all it was past 2 a.m.

“Yeah.” She grinned to herself, wild thoughts swirling in her head. It had been that kind of night. “I’m gonna do that.” Her lips curledup at the thought. But first, she couldn’t show up with this thing. She contemplated jogging back to her room to leave the rock—didn’t want to scare the man, after all; she had other things in mind—but that meant extra time, so scratch that. She was about to pull the rock out and place it, temporarily, on a table she knew had to be worth several grand. If Brooke had been here to see, she’d have burst a blood vessel at the thought of Isla possibly scratching one of her overpriced tables.

She heard the faint sounds of heavy, hurried footsteps on carpet and a door opening. She stilled. The house stilled with her. A dead silence before a massive storm. The familiar dread that had kept her awake in bed came back in a rush as she strained her ears to hear where in this massive building the noise had come from.

Another noise—a muffled thump and another sound. Her body tingled, on alert. It was coming from the direction of Victor’s study. She reached for her phone because something was wrong. But she found two things wrong. One, her phone was back in her room. She’d left the phone but taken a rock. Dumb move. Second, what if she was overreacting—extra jumpy after that whole scene in the woods and at the grave? Victor probably decided to work late as he usually did in his study. Maybe he was feeling sentimental and looking once again at that wooden box where he’d kept his most precious treasure. Yes, that was understandable, and it made sense after what he’d learned tonight.