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FORTY-NINE

LENNON

The house I spent my childhood in looks perfect from the outside. A sprawling white, three-story Victorian that sits on the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Bordeaux Street, built during a time that no longer exists.

Despite the fact that it’s over a hundred years old, there’s not a single piece of peeling paint on the exterior.

The garden is flourishing, the grass perfectly manicured, the wraparound porch warm and inviting.

A place where you could imagine rocking in old wooden chairs, drinking sweet tea, watching the world breeze past.

Now, it feels cold and staged.

I just never realized how much until now. Until this contrived little bubble I had been living in for so long finally popped,, and the veil lifted from my eyes. Now, I’m seeing things for what they truly are.

This house might have been where I grew up, where I got my first pair of skates, where I broke my arm for the first time while rollerblading… but it’s not a home.

A home is filled with love, laughter, happiness. Memories of times that you never want to forget.

Not the place you never want to return to.

I’m hurt, disgusted… angry at my father, and I know that Saint wants to let it go, to move on, but he deserves to know the truth.

He doesn’t want me to get hurt or for me to get caught in the crosshairs because my family’s name is being dragged through the mud.

But I don’t even care anymore.I’m honestly not sure I ever really did.

All I know is that it feels like more is happening, something I can’t even explain except a gnawing sense of intuition in my gut that I can’t ignore.

So that’s the reason I’m here today. I saw online that my parents are in Baton Rouge, visiting my father’s best friend, who’s a coach at LSU, which gives me the perfect opportunity to see what I can find.

There has to be something, anything, that will implicate him enough so that we can use it to expose what he’s done.

I’m doing this for Saint.

I’m choosing him.

Over my own family… and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Without another thought.

After what happened over the weekend at the gala, I haven’t once heard from my parents.

They never called to check on me, to see if I was okay, to apologize for everything that happened.

Not even a text. I didn’t expect them to.

I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that they care about themselves and the Rousseau name more than they ever cared about me.

And that… hurts.

Because at the end of the day, they’re still my parents.

The inside of the house is quiet as I walk through the hallway, aside from the sound of the air-conditioning blowing at full blast, toward my father’s office.

A room that he’s kept locked since I was a kid.

I’ve always known where the spare key is, but until today, I never really had a reason to use it.

I stop at the large cabinet at the end of the hallway, where he keeps his scotch on display, and slide the antique door open gently, reaching to the very back, beneath the cheapest bottle.

I feel the cool metal of the key beneath my fingers, and a smile flits to my lips.

Obviously, some things never change.

After shutting the cabinet, I walk to the office door and blow out a breath.

I don’t even know what I’m hoping to find. I have no plan, no clue where to even start. I know there’s a chance that I might not even find anything at all. My dad might not have done anything illegal—maybe it’s just something shitty—but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

It’s been churning inside of me, and I just… had to see for myself.

I have to try.

My hand trembles as I slip the old, worn skeleton key into the lock and turn it. There’s a soft click, and then the heavy wooden door creaks open, pulling a relieved sigh with it.

His office hasn’t changed much since I was a kid. Dark, heavy oak furniture, walls lined with shelves of books that are accumulating dust from never being used. A large desk sits in the middle of the room, with my father’s desktop in the center, completely clean of any papers or clutter.

I round the desk in a hurry, starting with the drawers, wrenching one open at a time and sifting through the contents inside.

One is full of pens and office supplies.

Paper clips, stapler. A checkbook with Rousseau Enterprises stamped along the top.

The next, a stack of old-school ledgers, the pages worn with faded ink that I can hardly make out.

I scan the pages, but God, I don’t even really know what I’m looking for.

I drop the book back into the drawer and move on to the next, going through them all and coming up empty. There’s nothing here.

Jesus, Lennon, what did you expect? Him to leave some kind of bullet-point manifesto just lying around on his desk?

Get a grip.

My gaze flicks around to the computer and the black screen staring back at me.

Realization dawns on me as I toss the last stack of papers back into the drawer.

Why would he leave a paper trail? He wouldn’t just leave evidence of his wrongdoings lying around.

Duh. That would be stupid, reckless. And my father may be shady, but he’s certainly not stupid.

I yank the office chair out and drop down into it as I reach for the mouse, shaking it to wake the computer up.

Completely unsurprisingly, his screen saver is a photo of his most prized possession: his boat.

Rolling my eyes, I click on the password box, my fingers hovering over the keys.

I tap out my mom’s name.

Wrong.

Okay… I try Rousseau Enterprises .

Wrong.

Surely, it’s not…

The computer unlocks as soon as I type in Lagniappe Lady , and I can only shake my head.

His fucking boat name.

Of course.

There’s no way he made it that easy. Either there’s nothing on here that’s going to incriminate him, or maybe… he has the hubris to truly never think that anyone would ever dig into what he’s doing.

I start with the desktop, clicking through folders and random documents that I can’t even begin to wrap my head around. It’s a bunch of gibberish that runs together, but nothing about what happened with Saint’s father or anything really about his company.

God, there’s really nothing here. Or maybe my father just locked it up someplace safer than his desktop computer.

I’m searching through every single item on here, but there’s not much more on the desktop outside of the few documents that I’ve already gone through.

A frustrated sigh slips past my lips as I comb through some of the files that I’ve already gone through, once again coming up empty.

There has to be something.

I click on the computer’s storage system, and then I see that his cloud storage is almost full. Quickly, I click it open and scroll through the folder names.

And that’s when I see it.

My heart thrashes in my chest, a sinking feeling careening in my stomach.

DEVEREAUX

It could be nothing. He was an employee at Rousseau Enterprises for years—it could simply be his payment information, certifications. Legal records. It could be anything.

But the gnawing, heavy-as-lead feeling in my stomach has me hoping that it’s… something.

That once I click on this folder, everything is going to change.

Not just with my life but with Saint’s too.

My mother, his mother.

With everyone who’s involved with my father.

I’m terrified of what may be inside. My hands are shaking so hard that the mouse is clinking against the mousepad, and my pulse is thrumming so loudly I can hear it in my ears, drowning out everything around me.

Saint.

You’re doing this for Saint. He deserves closure. He deserves the truth. Even if the truth hurts.

Slowly, I click the folder, and at least a dozen documents are inside, popping up one by one. I click the first one, scanning the document, and at first, I’m not sure what I’m reading.

But then, the pieces begin to align, and suddenly, the chair beneath me sways, my hand flying to my mouth when I realize what I’m seeing.

Holy shit.