Page 27 of The Best Wild Idea (Off-Limits #3)
Juliet
My words hit Silas like a nuclear missile, right on target.
He looks stunned.
“You think . . .” he repeats to himself then stops.
His eyes widen, like each side is a laser ready to burn a hole into the floor between us.
“You think that building had something to do with it?” He stands up to take a step toward me, a growl coming from somewhere deep in his throat. “Are you out of your damn mind?”
I instinctively step back, blinking. I’ve never seen Silas this mad, and I’m suddenly not sure if I want to, but it’s too late for that now. I’ve said what I’ve wanted to say to him for months and I can’t believe he has the gall to play dumb right now.
“Don’t be daft, Silas. You can snap your fingers and have the Rockettes high-kick at your next fucking birthday party if you feel like it.
Plus you’re ivy league educated, not to mention one of the smartest men in the world according to every one of those stupid articles singing your praises across the entire fucking globe.
Don’t tell me that it hasn’t crossed your mind, or God forbid, that you’ve already come to terms with it and you just don’t care.
” My voice is now near a yell. “It took me a while to figure it out, but that’s why you came to my house after his funeral to offer me money, isn’t it?
Because the guilt was already eating you alive? ”
He looks like I’ve just physically assaulted him.
My heart is pounding out of my ears.
“What the hell are you talking about? Grant died of complications from a lung condition.”
“From that fucking building, Silas. The one you gave him to work from.” He shakes his head like I’ve lost my mind, so I go on.
“How else would he have managed to die of a lung condition before the ripe ol’ age of thirty?
You gave it to him to use when he was starting up the Starlight Foundation.
Remember? That was your big, fancy contribution to get his nonprofit off the ground. ”
I cross my arms over my chest and dig both feet into the floor.
There’s no way I’m letting him walk away from this.
I’ve secretly harbored this hunch since the very last week of Grant’s time on this earth but by then it was too late.
I was too focused on giving him a few peaceful days without diving into this hunch, and then after he was gone, what was the point?
It’s still too late to change any of it, but I can’t take one more second in this room without telling him what I believe happened.
And how it very well might be his fault that Grant’s gone.
Silas paces the room, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck like he’s been shot from behind, before answering. This time more slowly and deliberately.
“I gave Grant that building to use because I believed in the work he was doing. Even when his parents wouldn’t support him on it, and our business professor thought he was out of his mind for wasting his privileged leg up in the world by starting it.
I wanted him to take his shot without having to worry about pooling the resources or taking a loan out for a building or lease.
His parents wouldn’t back him up on it so I .
. .” He pauses, running a hand through his hair like he’s confused, thinking back over every detail in his mind.
“You already know all this, Jules. It was exactly what Grant wanted.”
“That building was old and decrepit and full of all the toxic shit that I’m guessing killed him.
You know it as well as I do. How else would he have gone from being young and healthy to—” I can barely get the words out when I think of Grant’s final days.
My voice cracks when I try to finish. “To a wasted shell of who he was. And as fast as he did, too. There’s just no other explanation. What else could have caused it?”
Silas’ mouth hinges open and his eyes dart back and forth, searching mine. All the air in his lungs looks to be sucked out by what I’ve just accused him of.
He shakes his head.
“Let me get this straight. You’re convinced that the building I gave him is what caused him to die?”
That’s not exactly right. It’s just a theory and one I’m not even entirely convinced of myself given the gravity of it, but I nod my head and point my finger at him anyway. Needing to know if he’s ever thought about it too.
“And you know it, which is why you showed up at my house just hours after his funeral. Flashing your money around, promising to take care of me in his absence.” My veins burn like they’re filled with acid as I spit every word out across the room at him.
“The guilt was already eating you alive which is why you came over.” I stop, catching my breath.
I don’t know whether he looks closer to crying or tearing the walls down in here.
His shoulders are heaving like he can’t contain the anger ripping through him.
“That’s not why I came by that day,” he interrupts, pointing back at me. “And you know it. It was more than that.” He shifts his eyes at the floor, searching his memory. “I had that building tested before I gave it to him. I would have known if there were any issues.”
“You gave him a shithole you think you tested? What was wrong with his old office? Why did you have to give him that stupid building in the first place?”
“Grant’s business was going through a rough patch around the time my dad died. Growing pains, a slump. That building helped relieve some of the foundation’s overhead. I had offered to renovate it before he moved in, but he wouldn’t let me. I had to talk him into taking it in the first place.”
“Ah, you had to talk him into it so you could get the tax write-off that a building donation like that got you?”
“Jesus Christ, Jules. Not everything is about money. A deduction like that would have been a drop in the bucket to—”
My glare stops him mid-sentence.
“And you handled the testing? Personally?” I demand, wondering why I’d never heard about any environmental testing being done before Grant took everything over and moved in.
I didn’t hear the deep ongoing details of his everyday business, sure, but I feel like I might have heard something about testing a whole damn building if this testing had actually taken place.
“What did the report say then? I want to see it.”
“I-I don’t actually know,” he stammers. “My assistant Ryan handled it. All of it. The one who—”
“That fucking nineteen-year-old you had deliver suitcases to my house a few nights ago? He was the one who handled something so important?”
“He’s not nineteen,” Silas starts to say, before I give him a look that makes him stop talking.
His hands stretch toward me like he’s drowning under my accusation and I’m supposed to pull him out.
“Ryan did hire the company that tested Grant’s building for anything that might be harmful before I let him move in.
I knew it hadn’t been occupied since, God, I don’t know when my father last had someone in that building . . .”
“And you saw the results? Personally?”
I wait, watching the color drain from his face so quickly that he doesn’t need to answer.
“You never checked the report.” My voice cracks, confirming my worst fear. I cover my eyes and collapse down to the couch, unsure whether my legs can hold up under the weight of the news. “You stuck him in a decrepit building and then watched him die.”
“That whole time of my life is foggy,” he admits, looking bewildered, still shaking his head.
“It was the year my father died . . .” He trails off, looking absolutely tortured like he’s morbidly reliving the months he spent plastered across every tabloid as the little rich boy driven off the rails with his dead daddy’s money.
There wasn’t a soul in the world during that time who wasn’t aware of his mental state.
It was a tumultuous time for Grant — helping Silas get through that phase of his life as he found himself to be the most famous orphan in the world.
It’s also when I started to hate him. And that was long before I knew what he was capable of letting happen right under his nose out of sheer laziness.
“How many people have you told about this?” he asks, weakly.
“How many other people?” I repeat, nearly shouting back at him.
“Is that your greatest concern about what I’ve just said?
How your public image might be dragged through the mud again?
Whether or not your floozy groupies are going to catch wind of this and hate you for it?
Not whether or not you’re responsible for how he died? ”
“No,” he shoots back, looking like I’ve just slapped him across the face for a second time. “I want to know why you never asked to have the building tested yourself after he died.”
“After Grant passed, I sold the nonprofit to Velon Development who took the whole operation across town to their own building. I then sold the Smithfield for next to nothing and told the new developer that I felt like it was unsafe. I was in a fog at that point. A complete haze. I put it in writing, then just wanted it gone. All of it. There were so many loose ends to tie up, and given the location of the building, it was easy to hand over to someone else with the caveat that it may need further testing. Grant’s parents had no interest in knowing whether or not their son might have lived if that building was the issue.
They told me to just let it go after the sale, and I did at first. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I drove by and it was already demolished.
The new developer destroyed it soon after taking possession to build something else on the parcel. ”
“I remember,” he whispers. “I drove by and saw that it looked as if the building had never existed. Why didn’t you tell me that’s how you felt?”
“Everything happened so fast. It wasn’t until after he was gone and his parents stopped coming around that I finally had the energy to look into it more.
I was trying to find answers about how it happened so quickly.
I read that it may have been prevented if the cause was truly environmental, which there was no medical test to determine whether it was or not.
Just a hunch when you look at the history.
Which means he would be here with me right now instead of you if you hadn’t been so irresponsible with that stupid building.
He trusted you, and your lazy ass kill—”
My words hitch in my throat and I drop my eyes toward the floor. I’ve said nearly everything I’ve wanted to say for months, except that. But instead of feeling better like I hoped I might, I couldn’t feel any worse.