Page 96 of Malicious Marriage

Everyone nods and waves politely.

“What’s this about?” I ask, waving my phone at him. I’m not sure I can take more bad news.

“Yesterday, you wanted me to find out everything I could on Malcom, right?”

I nod.

“Well—shit, those stairs.” Don doubles over briefly and takes a few deep breaths, then straightens up. “You were right. I didn’t have to go back far to find his connections with the Kuznetsovs. They’ve been working together on the quiet for years. Basically, taking care of each other’s dirty work. So I went digging deeper into the soft abdominal flesh of one of the Russian general’s we snatched last week when they tried to raid our club. And he sang like a fucking canary.”

“About?” My tired heart starts to beat very fast.

“Twenty-five years ago. The fire that killed your brother and sister?” The room falls deathly silent. “It was Malcom.”

The ground suddenly falls away from my feet as the air thins. “What?”

“I don’t have all the details but it looks like Malcom was in love with your brother’s girlfriend. And she was pregnant. Malcom, in some insane jealous rage, followed them both to that party and ended up killing her. I don’t know why but his brother, Charles, Clover’s father, somehow believed he was the one who killed her. Judging by what we know of that party, he was probably too drunk to know any better.”

Acid floods my veins as a strange static sensation washes down my limbs.

“So Malcom set the fire to cover up Charles’s crime, a.k.a. his own murder. Maybe he hoped the murder would lead to Charles breaking down or something, I don’t know. A jealous rage or a play for power, no one fucking knows. But he started that fire. Your sister was at that party.” Don rubs a hand down his face. “She and your brother… they were just innocent bystanders to Malcom’s cover up. And he was even happier to let the rumor fly that the Savoys were the cause because it kept the heat off him.”

Malcom… killed my brother and my sister. He started the fire that scarred my body to cover up his own, twisted crime.

“Holy shit,” Frankie gasps. “That’s fucking insane.”

“Right?” Don flashes a tired smile. “It’s been the one thing the Kuznetsovs have kept on Malcom to make sure that he can’t rise without them. So I suspect that when he found out about our weapons deal with them, he fucked it for some reason. Why, I don’t know, but that man is a cold-blooded killer through and through.”

“No wonder Hailey ran,” I say quietly as I run through the small details she told me back in Greece. “That fucker has no moral compass to speak of. And Clover was left all alone with him.”

Desperatedoesn’t begin to describe the situation she’s in. I see how her pursuit of her sister led to the tangled web we find ourselves in. She was just looking for the one family member who wouldn’t treat her like shit and used me to get it. Not through any vindictive means, not like Trisha.

She just wanted help.

“Why didn’t Clover tell me?” I look at Bobby. “If she’d told me the truth, I would have helped her.”

Bobby looks pained. “She was convinced that any lie would be too much to tell you after Trisha. She feared the moment she told you, you’d cut her out of your life and she’d be at the mercy of the loan sharks or her uncle once he discovered what she was up to.”

I looked into this all wrong. I approached Clover with suspicion and wariness that she was lying for the same reasons Trisha did. But she wasn’t. She was just scared.

“Holy shit.” Bobby pales as he looks down at his tablet. “I got into Clover’s phone.”

“And?” I surge forward while Don sags down onto the couch for some rest. “What is it?”

“Look.” He turns the tablet around and displays a picture of Hailey, beaten and bloody with her mouth open in a scream. Just underneath is a text asking if I’m dead yet.

“What the fuck?” Frankie gasps.

“No wonder Clover changed up so quickly.” My pounding heart seems to fall into my gut. “She… she sent me away to save me.”

“Maybe,” Bobby says, groaning softly. “The number the text came from is one of Malcolm’s. If he has Hailey… fuck, I can’t imagine how she’s feeling right now, but since she sent you away, then she clearly has no intention of killing you to save Hailey. Which means…”

My heart stops. “Which means she’s probably on her way to confront Malcom right now, exchanging her life for Hailey’s. We need to find out where she’s going!”

41

CLOVER

After Dean left, I tore the kitchen apart looking for the camera while fearing that the next message from Malcom would be Hailey dead because he watched me kick Dean out instead of killing him.