Page 9 of Sin (Salvation #1)

Sin

Mercer heads to his off-campus art class, and I attend the two classes I have on Mondays. A history class on successful warfare and a business stats class that most everybody else complains about, but I find a breeze. I must have inherited my maternal grandfather’s business instincts.

My phone vibrates and I check my messages. It’s Cassidy. He’s texted me his schedule. A surge of satisfaction goes through me at seeing his name on my screen and that he followed my order. I guess Cassidy brings out my dom side.

I send a thumbs up emoji, and then another text beeps.

At first, I think it’s from Cassidy, but once I see the name, I stand up, hit the call button on my phone, and walk out of class.

My stats professor can fuck off; this is too important to not take care of immediately.

Five minutes later, I’m on my way to a meeting that could change everything.

Oliver Decker meets me in the campus coffee shop. By the time he walks up to the table, I’m sitting in the back, and at least three customers flee at his approach. He looks like the ex-police detective that he is.

“It’s why I was never any good at undercover work,” he says as he sits down.

I push over his mocha latte. We’ve met enough over the years to know that the man has a sweet tooth. He regards me over his cup. “You trying to bribe me?”

I guess it has kinda become a habit of mine. I shrug, “I’m not above it.”

Oliver sets down his cup and settles down to business. “Like I said on the phone, I’ve got something new for you.”

I’m practically vibrating in my seat to hear his news.

Knowing how on edge I am, he gets right down to business. “I found two maids who worked for your parents who are willing to testify that they witnessed Gideon being abusive toward your mother.”

I nod. “That’s good, right. Outside corroboration is good.”

“It is,” he agrees. “Even better is that one of your mother’s sorority sisters provided a letter Amelia wrote her, confiding some of her fears about your father’s suspicious behavior.

In it, she mentioned a blood test she took because she suspected she had been drugged.

If we can get our hands on that blood test, I think I can go to my ex-partner and get him to officially open the case. ”

“We’re going to nail the bastard.”

“Sin,” Oliver sighs, “I’ve told you over and over again that?—”

“I know. I know. Don’t get my hopes up,” I repeat the advice he’s told me over and over again since I came to him with my mom’s journal and told him my father killed my mother.

“The best thing you could do for the sake of the case is to bring in your mother’s journal to me today. If I had the actual diary entries and not just the electronic copies of them, Hirsh might agree to open the case immediately.”

I shake my head. “Not until Cassidy turns eighteen and is out from under Gideon’s jurisdiction.

As soon as my father knows he’s under investigation, he’ll know that I’m behind it.

” I take a sip of my own coffee. “That’s okay.

I can handle him gunning for me, but when he’s attacked, my father lashes out.

If he can’t get to me, Cassidy will be his first target.

He already threatened to send him to a school that has some serious conversion camp vibes.

I don’t want to know what he’d try to do to him once he’s cornered. ”

“By waiting, you’re taking a chance, kid.”

“What does it matter if I wait another three months? There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

“It’s an election year. District Attorney Cisneros is running against a conservative.” Oliver takes a sip of his coffee. “If Carlyle wins, he’s definitely not going to want to prosecute a sixteen-year-old murder case against a local evangelical celebrity. It totally goes against his base.”

“Looks like I’m writing a huge-ass check to Cisneros’ campaign, then.”

“Even if Cisneros wins, it’s not a lock,” Oliver says, running his hand over his shaved head like he’d forgotten he lost a bet with his ex-partner and had to cut his wavy dark hair in forfeit.

“It’s going to be an uphill battle to bring this case to trial and then get a conviction.

I just want you to be prepared for that. ”

“Fuck being prepared,” I say, bringing my fist down at the table. I ignore the stares of the people sitting around us. “My father getting away with murder will never be an acceptable option for me.”

“Look, Sin, I want to see your father get what’s coming to him, too, but I need to be sure you don’t do anything stupid if things don’t go your way.”

I think of all the ways I’ve thought about administering my own personal justice to my father, and a smile of longing breaks across my face.

From Oliver’s reaction to it, I don’t think it’s reassuring him.

“Ollie,” I lean forward, truly curious about his answer, “are you worried that being a murderer might just be a family trait?”

Instead of meeting Cassidy at the Student Union, I go to his last class. It must be over because students are bolting out the door. Cassidy isn’t one of them, so I walk into the lab, immediately spotting him looking into a microscope as a handsome older man in a lab coat stares moonily at him.

I stroll over and both of them look up at me, startled. “Did Cassidy misbehave?” I ask, pointedly staring at the professor’s hand resting low on Cassidy’s back, just waiting to creep down farther. “Is that why he’s being held late after class?”

The professor lets out a too-loud laugh in response. “Nothing like that,” he says, finally stepping away, taking his offending hand with him. “I became excited at finally having a student who didn’t sleep through my class and wanted to show him some advanced material.”

Advanced material, my ass.

Clueless, Cassidy looks at me with excitement. “He was showing me how mRNA technology actually works at a microbiology level.”

I can’t help but grin at how excited Cassidy is. He’s definitely my sexy bio nerd. Obviously, his professor thinks so too. I give him a dirty glare that clearly states I know you have more than mentorship on your mind.

He gathers himself up to his full height and, with his most haughty tone, introduces himself. “Professor McNaught,” he says, extending his hand. “And you are?”

I ignore McNaught’s hand and instead place mine on Cassidy’s back. “The guy that’s gonna be picking up Cassidy here after every class.” I guide us out the door. “And the one taking him home.”

We walk outside of the science building, and Cassidy turns to me. “Are you going to scare all my professors?”

“Only the ones who are trying to fuck you.”

“He’s my professor,” Cassidy says, shock in his voice. “He wasn’t trying to do that.”

So damned innocent . I wonder how he fails to know how attractive he is, and how many guys and girls want him, i ncluding his stepbrother standing right next to him.

“Agree to disagree,” I tell him, just as our ride home pulls up.

He does a double take. “You got a limo to drive us home?”

“Think of it as my version of hitchhiking.”

He rolls his eyes, and we crawl into the spacious back seat. As Cassidy settles in, I grab a beer from the minifridge for me and a sparkling water for him.

“I need to talk to you.”

Cassidy side-eyes me. “You better not be about to offer me money to disappear again.”

“So you can donate it to another pet charity? I think I learned my lesson.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t mess with you. You’re tougher than you look.”

Obviously pleased, his lips turn up in a cute, dimpled smile. “What do you need to talk to me about?”

“Stay away from my father.”

Cassidy instantly loses his smile. “I’m not trying to take your place or get between the two of you.”

I laugh. “I know that, and even if you were, the state of Texas wouldn’t be far enough between us. I just don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire.”

Cassidy studies me for a long moment. “May I ask you a personal question?” he asks, biting his lip.

Only seventy-five percent distracted by the way he’s abusing his lip, and thinking of how I could excel at the task so much better, I respond, “Go for it.”

“If you hate Gideon so much, why do you still live in his house? Why do you keep attending his services when you clearly don’t want to be there?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“But it is,” he insists stubbornly. “You have your own money. You could get a place on campus, or anywhere, really, and live a completely separate life from him.” He pauses like he’s weighing his next words. “It doesn’t seem like the healthiest action on your part,” he says earnestly.

I let out a long laugh. “Healthy? Definitely not,” I agree. “Except calling me twisted might be a better way to put it.”

Cassidy’s eyes go big with distress. “I wasn’t?—”

“Relax,” I tell him. “No offence taken because you’re right. I hate those fucking Sundays, but for now, my father needs to think he has me on a leash. That I’m just a bad puppy who pulls and barks, and occasionally bites, but whom he ultimately owns and controls.”

“But why?”

I’m shocked at the urge I have to tell him everything.

To let him see all of me. Oliver and his ex-partner are the only ones whom I’ve told about my mother and the circumstances around her death.

They don’t know everything, though—the corrections and the mental warfare that eventually made me the blighted soul my father always told me I was.

I want him to see every bad part of me . Because on some primal level, I know he’d accept them.

He places his hand on mine. I can feel the warmth of his touch travel through me. “You can tell me anything.”

His touch acts as a release button, and I begin to speak. “Because I was born ba—” I stop myself. I won’t do that to him. Burden him with my story. Make him feel that he needs to heal my darkness.

I can tell by the frustrated line marring his usually smooth forehead that he can sense I’ve reinstalled and reinforced the wall between us. I move my hand out from under his. “That’s a story for another day.”

Predictably, my answer doesn’t satisfy him. He looks like he’s about to question me, so I answer his other question.

“I stay in the house because my mother left the house to me, and the land my father built his church on. Unlike my grandfather’s estate, which was run by an outside trust I received on my eighteenth birthday, the land and the house is controlled by a trust my father is in charge of until I turn twenty-one.

That’s how he’s been able to make so many god-awful changes to the property.

I refuse to leave the land my mother wanted to be mine. It’s my birthright.”

He takes in the information. “What will happen when you retain ownership?”

By then, my father should be loc—” Again, I stop myself from telling him too much and get back to the important part of the conversation. “I’ll tackle that when the time comes. For now, I just need you to avoid him as much as you possibly can.”

“We live in the same house.”

“It’s a big house, and you’re in school most of the time. Show up for the obligatory Sunday services and a couple of your mother’s church socials. Suffer through a few dinners where you pretend he runs the show, but make sure you stay under his radar.”

He mulls my words over for a minute. “I guess I can do that. It’s pretty much what I’ve been doing anyway for the last three years. Your father and I have never developed a close relationship.”

That’s Cassidy’s polite speak for “your father is a cold asshole.”

“Believe me. You haven’t been missing anything,” I tell him, and settle back in the seat. It’s been a long day, and I don’t want to spend any more of it talking about my father. Not when Cassidy is close to me and I have at least another thirty precious minutes of alone time with him.

I turn to him, hungry for more knowledge about him. “Tell me about being a doctor,” and then I listen as he talks about his intended profession with a passion and intensity that I fight the entire way home not to try to taste on his lips.