Page 16 of Clayton (Bourbon & Blood #2)

Eight

ANNALEE

I ’ve put Emma Grace to bed in Mia’s room. She’s got some clothes at Patricia’s so it won’t be too much of an issue to get her ready for school in the morning. Luckily, I’d had the foresight to bring her backpack with me so she wouldn’t have to go to school sans homework in the morning.

I glance at the clock. It’s pushing ten and I’ve still had no word from Clayton.

I’m worried. The only thing predictable about Emmitt Hayes when it comes to a Darcy is hatred.

And that’s in public. For a Darcy to show up on his property, even in the company of his brother, is no guarantee.

If Clayton comes in a bloodied mess, I’m going to have to raise fifteen kinds of hell.

I check on Patricia again. She’s on a regular schedule with feedings, meds, turning and repositioning her. Everything has been done. I’m doing it more for my own peace of mind and to distract me from other worries than because she actually needs it.

I hear the back door open and I go to the kitchen to see Clayton walking in. He’s carrying a heavy file box which he sets on the counter.

“You wanted my secrets,” he says. “There they are. That’s what I’ve been accumulating for the last year on Samuel.

I’ve lied. Cheated. Bribed. I’ve had his apartment and office wired.

That’s all the dirt I uncovered. And tonight, Emmitt Hayes handed over a folder that makes this look like child’s play. ”

I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Half afraid, I pull the lid off the box and look inside.

Photos of Samuel with women other than Erica are on top.

There are copies of receipts and credit card statements attached to them.

He’s been using his company credit card to pay for hotel suites for trysts with women that are younger than his own daughter.

I feel a little sick just looking at it.

“Why?” I ask him. “I don’t understand. Why now?”

Clayton sits down at the kitchen island. There are dark circles under his eye. He looks tired and beaten down in a way I haven’t seen before. I realize in that moment just how heavy a burden he’s been carrying.

“In two months, Mama will receive the last payment from the trust her parents left. It was ten million dollars. There’s another trust that’ll mature in about five months and that has enough money to ensure that she has all the care she needs for the rest of her life…

because we’re broke, Annalee. All of us.

Me, Quentin, Mia…we’ve sunk everything into Fire Creek, and he’s bleeding it dry. ”

I didn’t know any of this. He never hinted at money problems. Every month, like clockwork, he’s put the same amount of money in the account I use for the household bills and he’s done it without complaint.

“Clayton, why didn’t you say something? I could have cut back…I could have gotten a job.”

That pissed him off. I can see it instantly. I can see that muscle ticking in his jaw where he’s clenched them so tight.

“That’s not what I promised you,” he says sharply. “I told you when you agreed to marry me that you’d never have to worry again, never have to scrimp and save and do without…not ever a-fucking-gain.”

I’m shaking my head at him. Yes, he promised me that.

And when Emma Grace was born, he said that it made him happy to know that I could stay home with her, that I could take care of our daughter and be the kind of mom I wanted to be.

I never considered for a moment that he might be pushing himself too hard to make those things happen, that the cost to him might be greater than he’d ever realized.

I thought Clayton was being selfish and keeping his secrets.

But the truth of the matter is, I’ve been selfish, too.

I never asked. I never questioned. I never once stopped to think about what he might be giving up to give me what I wanted.

From the moment I met him, Clayton has always been this upstanding guy.

I never understood just what a feat that was until I met his father.

His whole life has been spent trying to be what his father never could or would…

a good man. And because of my own issues, because of my own fear that he might be hiding something worse than the fa ct that he had to bend a few rules to do right by all of us, I pushed him away.

But he let me, and for some reason, that’s harder to forgive than anything else.

“I’d rather scrimp and save and do without, I’d rather go back to working a crappy job, than to see you doing this to yourself…Clayton, you’re killing yourself with all this. Do you not see that?”

“I was,” he agrees. “But I’m done now. I’ve got what I need, Annalee. Without Samuel draining every penny of profit we earn, we can make it work. The distillery is earning. Fire Creek is solid. It’s just him.”

I look back at the box and all the assorted papers.

As I begin sifting through it, I see things that could not possibly have been obtained legally.

Tapes, financial records, background checks.

There are reports from private investigators.

At the bottom of the box is a photo of Erica, Samuel’s mistress who works at the distillery, and another woman, along with newspaper clippings about that woman drowning in the Kentucky River.

It was never investigated as murder. The assumption, according to the newspaper, is that she’d fallen from an unidentified boat.

“Do you think Samuel was involved in this?”

“I know he was. I can’t prove it, but I know it.

” His answer is firm, matter of fact. “That was Katherine…the older, perfect sister of the woman who Mia inadvertently hired to care for Mama but was snooping through the house instead. That picture of her and Erica together is circumstantial at best, but it’s a link between Samuel and the dead woman, when we’ve never been able to make one before. ”

He stops for a minute, drawing in a deep breath.

It’s like the magnitude of what’s just fallen into his lap is finally sinking in.

He continued, “The Shelbys are all mixed up in this. Barbara, and Katherine’s death, then Elizabeth turning up and nearly killing Mia.

There’s the letter Barbara Shelby wrote that Mia found, detailing her affair with Samuel…

all laid out in a gloating confession that sent Mama running from the house in tears…

the one that apparently led to Mama driving away and wrapping her car around a tree. ”

He says it dispassionately, but I know it bothers him. He was the one who cleaned out the car afterward, he picked up the scattered contents of her purse from the floorboard while staring at the bloodstained seat where she’d been cut from the car. I know that will haunt him forever.

“Do you think Samuel killed her?”

“I can’t say. I think it was his boat she was on before she wound up in the water…but if she went in to the river by accident or not, he still left her there. He didn’t alert anyone for help. He might not have killed her, but he didn’t lift a hand to save her.”

Something else catches my eye. It’s a letter from an attorney addressed to Samuel. It’s about the trust that was established by Patricia’s parents and the final payment from it. It’s only a couple of months away.

“So he wants the rest of Patricia’s money,” I surmise.

“Yes.”

“When did you find out?” I demand.

“It was before Japan. The day I left,” he admits.

“That’s what was on my mind while I was there…

and when I came back. Trying to figure out what I needed to do about it, how to make it work.

I on ly knew that I had to find some way to get him out of the picture, to keep Mama safe and make sure she didn’t wind up in the kind of home he wanted to put her in from the beginning. ”

There is one thing that he said there that sticks out in my mind.

Get him out of the picture. “How exactly were you going to get him out of the picture? What were you planning to do, Clayton?” I’m afraid of his answer.

I’m afraid of just how far he would go if he thought it meant saving the rest of us.

“It’s not what I wanted to do…but I was prepared, Annalee, to end him if I had to. That’s why—” He just stops, like he can’t bring himself to say anymore.

“That’s why what?” I demand. “You need to explain all of this, Clay, and you need to do it now.” It’s too much to take in. Looking at everything he’s amassed, at all the planning and scheming, the digging and searching that he’s done, I can’t even fathom when he slept.

“That’s why,” he says softly, “when you asked for a divorce, I gave it to you. If I had to go down for killing the son of a bitch, I wasn’t going to take you down with me.”

I hit him. I can’t help it. I punch him in the shoulder because it’s the only part of him I can reach.

It feels so good, I do it again. “You stupid , selfish, asshole! How dare you! How dare you make those kinds of decisions about my life, about our daughter’s life, without even bothering to talk to me! ”

He catches my hand when I swing at him again, not hurting me, but holding me so tightly I can’t do anything but fume.

“I had to,” he says, and his voice is the merest whisper against my ear.

“I had to keep you all safe, and I had to keep my promises to you…and to Emma Grace. I promised her when she was born that she would not grow up the way you did, that she would never feel forgotten, never feel like her mother wasn’t there for her.

Telling you anything about my plan would have made you an accessory…

I was prepared to go to prison, Annalee, but I wasn’t going to do it and leave our baby girl alone. ”