Page 12 of Untouchable

Today had proven that, if nothing else did.

“What good would it do to dredge it up now? And what does Caleb Marshall have to do with it?”

It was strange to associate a name with the man she’d fucked a little while ago. He didn’t feel like a Caleb to her, although she wasn’t sure what name would suit him better.

Her mother’s face was ice-cold as she bit out the next words. “Caleb Marshall is a DiMauro.”

If she’d been slapped across the face, Kelly couldn’t have been more stunned. She saw white for just a moment as her brain tried to process what she’d just been told.

The DiMauros had killed her father.

Her father had worked in the finance department of a shipping company. He’d been a careful, hardworking man who had never broken the law in his life, but his company was owned and operated by Reliant Industries. The head of Reliant was Arthur Marshall, who had married a daughter of the DiMauro crime family in Baltimore, but there was supposed to have been no overlap between Arthur’s well-respected, legitimate businesses and the DiMauros’ shady operations. Even when other DiMauros took positions in the Reliant companies, it was supposed to have been because they wanted to go straight.

Kelly had been far too young to know anything about it back then, but her parents had both believed the cover story. The DiMauros were criminal, but Arthur and Reliant were not.

Until her father had questions about the contents of certain imported shipping containers. He’d been worried by what he found. He’d looked into it further.

They killed him for it.

“Yes,” her mother went on. “Arthur Marshall was Caleb’s father, and his mom was Marie DiMauro. He runs all his dad’s businesses. CEO, they call him now.”

“He’s too young,” Kelly gasped, clinging to the threads of reason. “He’s too young. Seventeen years ago, he’d have been—he’d have been in his twenties. Way too young to be in charge back then.”

“He took the reins after Arthur died.”

This piece of information allowed Kelly to take a full breath. “Then it wasn’t him. It wasn’t him who killed Dad.” She was leaning over in her chair with her arms hugging her stomach.

If she’d just fucked the man who gave the order for her father to be killed, then she might have to submerge herself in her bathtub and never come out.

“Are you really so naive? You think only one man was responsible? Marshall wasn’t the CEO then, but he was working for the business. He was one of your father’s bosses.”

Kelly lost her breath again and leaned over farther. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying he was the one running the operation that got your father killed. The order must have come from him.”

Kelly thought about Caleb, the man who had just fucked her hard and rough against a tree. That man was powerful. Ambitious. Frighteningly intelligent. Used to getting anything he wanted.

He wasn’t what she would have expected from the DiMauros. As a child, listening to her mother’s hate, she’d imagined them as stereotypical mobsters from movies. Caleb wasn’t like that at all, but appearances always lied.

She could fully believe Caleb would be ruthless if something stood in his way.

Her father.

She raised her hand to her mouth.

“You see it now too,” her mother said. “It’s in his nature.”

“Do you have… proof?” Kelly had trouble speaking since her throat was closing up.

Her mother handed her a sheet of paper.

It took Kelly a few moments to focus on the words, but then she read what was evidently a memo.

It came back to her then. She’d seen this memo before. It was the piece of evidence that her mother had used to try to get the police to make a case against the DiMauros.

An interoffice email written by her father, questioning the contents of a shipment of industrial crates.

Kelly stared and stared and stared at the name on the To line:Caleb Marshall.