Page 159 of Untouchable

It was a memo. She’d seen hundreds of them over the years. Several of them had been added up as evidence in her mother’s search for the truth and now hers.

Just a memo. Something people wrote all the time. This one was very short, and it was signed by Vinnie DiMauro with what looked like an expensive pen.

It was only two sentences long.

This is a potential problem, but C. Marshall is taking care of it. He has a plan.

She flipped over the next page to see a report from her father, outlining irregularities with the cargo they’d been importing for the previous year. He’d done more research and traced each shipment back to its source, revealing a clear pattern that indicated the smuggling of illegal arms. He believed Roman DiMauro was using Reliant’s infrastructure and legitimate reputation to hide and expand his criminal enterprises. He clearly trusted that the leadership at Reliant knew nothing about it.

He’d been wrong. They’d all been in on it from the beginning. And her father was about to uncover the shady connections between Reliant Industries and the DiMauro crime family.

She turned back to the original memo. It was written by Vinnie, but it was clear that the plan to “take care” of her father had been Caleb’s.

Both of them had been in on the murder. All three of them had been in on it.

And Caleb was just as guilty as the other two. It was his idea, so he was even guiltier.

She checked the date of the memo.

A couple of days later, her father had been shot dead in the woods in a professional hit.

Kelly made a strange choking sound and jerked away from the table. Stumbled a few steps toward the corner of the room and stared at the blank wall in front of her, trying to process everything.

Caleb had murdered her father. As coldly and surely as if he’d pulled the trigger. Despite the fact that he had a soft, tender side to his heart. Despite the way he sometimes seemed so naked and needy with her. Despite the way he was deeply human. Despite the fact that he loved her.

He had killed her father, and then he’d made her believe that he didn’t, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t do something so horrible.

It felt like everything was breaking inside her, shattering so completely it could never be put back together. He had done it after all. And she had fallen for him anyway. And even now, if she were to see him again, maybe a little part of her wouldn’t even care since she was so undeniably drawn to him, despite everything.

And that made her a weak, despicable person. Just as despicable as Caleb himself.

“Kelly?” Jack asked from behind her. She’d completely forgotten he was in the room. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she replied, her voice not cracking or wavering despite the broken agony of her heart. “I’m fine.”

Jack must have taken a step closer to her. She had her back toward him, but it sounded like he had moved nearer. “It doesn’t look like you’re fine.”

Kelly was still staring at the blank wall. Seeing Caleb’s face. His handsome, haunted, intelligent face.

And she hated it all over again.

She might hate herself for how foolish and spineless she’d been in falling for him, but nothing she’d done equaled his guilt. He’d come up with the plan for killing her father. He might as well have pulled the trigger. He was that ruthlessly ambitious, that heartless at the core, no matter how he was playing at relationships right now.

Kelly should have known it all along. She shouldn’t have let herself be deceived. But she wasn’t going to be weak anymore.

Fuck Caleb and all his lies. She would do what she’d come here to do from the very beginning, before everything had gotten so infinitely fucked up. She would make sure his sins came to light—everyone would know who he really was—and she would seek whatever kind of justice was still available.

She turned around on her heel, her heartbreak suddenly, unnaturally hardening into a cold kind of anger. “I’m fine,” she said again.

Jack’s face was twisted now with what looked like concern and confusion. “I’m really sorry. I know you were hoping for a different outcome. But this seems pretty clear. Vinnie was definitely involved, and so was Arthur. It looks like he kept this memo to protect himself in case one of the other two turned on him. But both Marshalls were definitely in on the murder. Plus Roman, of course. Your father was a risk to their illegal business dealings, and they’d all invested too much to let it go down the drain. So they silenced him.”

And that was it. The answer to everything. The whole mystery of her life, unraveled in a few simple sentences, sketched out in stark black and white.

“Yes,” she said, her voice so hard it was almost unrecognizable. “That’s what happened.”

Jack pushed his hand through his hair again with a kind of restless energy. He wasn’t cool and controlled like Calebwas. And he wasn’t calculating or brilliant or sophisticated or deceptive or ruthless or untouchable.

And suddenly Kelly knew what she was going to do. She wasn’t going to want a man like Caleb in any way. She wasn’t going to let herself have fallen for the man who’d murdered her father. She wasn’t going to let it be true.