Chapter 7: Rebel Revenge: Chapter 7

I stood outside the courthouse with my busted, bleeding lip. Police tape had been put up to create a barrier between the swarm of police officers, medical personnel, and the rapidly growing crowd. Rumors spread and rippled around me, and minute by minute, more onlookers and press arrived.

“I heard it was a murder-suicide,” a woman beside me said in hushed whispers. “Imagine that? He kills her then takes his own life because he can’t bear to be without her. Like some sort of Romeo and Juliet.”

Rage filled me, hot and fast at the gall these women had, to stand right there in the middle of the street and make assumptions like they had any idea who my father was. “Who told you that?” I snapped. “My father wouldn’t hurt a fly, so shut your gossiping mouths.”

The two women spun around, their eyes going wide at the blood dripping down onto my shirt. One clutched her friend’s arm, and they hurried away.

It was just another reason I hated this fucking town and would never have come back here if I’d had a say in it. It had been a decade since I’d last set foot in Providence, and nothing had changed. It was still full of judgmental old gossips and police officers on a power trip. I’d already had the displeasure of giving them a statement and been warned not to leave town.

That had really pissed me off. I’d planned on getting out of here the minute the wedding reception had been over. Not that I had anywhere to go, but hanging around in Providence wasn’t an option either.

Though apparently, for now at least, I had no choice.

The doors to the courthouse opened, and two gurneys were slowly wheeled out.

On top of them, two black body bags.

Around me, the click of camera shutters and flashes exploded, and gasps rang in my ears.

My father was in one of those bags.

Dead.

I hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye.

Hurt stabbed through me, hot and sharp as I remembered his last words to me the night before. He’d called to tell me he couldn’t make it to dinner, but could I still go and have a meal with my new stepsister. He’d wanted her to have a good night and told me to charge our meals and drinks to his room.

I’d tried to weasel my way out of it, not interested in babysitting some teenage brat, but then he’d gone into a big, long speech about how much he loved Miranda and how he desperately wanted her daughter and I to get along so that maybe I’d consider coming home more. He rambled about Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up and how he really wanted me home for them. How he desperately missed having a family.

I hadn’t had the heart to say no. When he’d sent me a photo of my new stepsister, and she’d been a hot-as-fuck woman around my age and not a thirteen-year-old with braces, it had seemed like a fun way to kill an evening.

Now I wished I spent the night with my dad. That I could have just had one nice night with him and left on that memory. Instead of all the ones that had come before, where he’d tried and tried, and I’d held him at arm’s length.

I ducked beneath the police tape and ran toward the waiting ambulance. “Stop! Wait!” I didn’t know what I was going to do or say, but I couldn’t just let them wheel my father’s body away and take him to some morgue. It wasn’t right. He was one of the good guys. He was supposed to live ’til he was ninety and be surrounded by family and grandkids. Though how he was going to get those grandkids when I was his only child was beyond me. Maybe that’s part of why he’d wanted to marry Miranda. Rebel could have given him the grandbabies he’d always hinted about.

Two police officers stopped me before I could get to the ambulances.

“My father is in one of those bags,” I begged them.

“I know, but you can’t be over there right now. You need to let them do their job.”

The fight went out of me. “Can I at least go inside and see my mother? She hasn’t come out yet.”

The officers looked at each other, and one shrugged.

“We’ll have to take you, though.”

I stepped back with a nod, and they let me go. I trailed behind them back inside the courthouse. It was still a hive of activity, and the officers pointed to my mother and stepfather who were deep in conversation with a plainclothes detective.

“You’ll have to wait until they’re done being interviewed.”

“Of course. I’ll just wait here if that’s okay.”

One of their radios spit out a babble of static-laced instructions that were indecipherable to me but clearly made sense to them.

He reluctantly eyed me. “We have to go, but I’ll leave you here if you promise not to get in the way, and to leave once your mother and stepfather are finished.”

I put my hand over my heart. “Scout’s honor.”

With a curt nod, the officer stepped away. He was only a few steps down the hall though, when he glanced back. “I’m really sorry for your loss. He seemed like a kindhearted man.”

I swallowed thickly and turned away before the officer could see the tears welling in my eyes. Fucking hell. Even a complete stranger could see just how kind and generous my father had been.

I’d taken it for granted. Assumed I’d always have more time with him. Made him come to me, because I was always too busy to come to him.

And he had. He’d run a multi-million-dollar business that he would leave for weeks at a time to visit me across the other side of the country. I’d never bothered to do the same for him, despite the fact my job was not nearly as demanding nor important.

I glanced around the room, focusing on anything but the officer’s words. I couldn’t fall apart. Not here. Nothing appeared terribly out of place, until my gaze snagged on a gold purse, tucked beneath one of the seats on the bride’s side of the room.

I prodded my bottom lip with my tongue, playing with the cut while I debated whether I really wanted to retrieve Rebel’s bag for her after her asshole of a boyfriend had socked me one just for trying to help her.

My father wouldn’t have thought twice.

My mother had cheated on him and left him for another man, and my father had still been the bigger person. He’d let her go and made sure things were good between them, for my sake. As a result, I’d grown up with parents who were best friends, even though they weren’t together.

I waited until the cops were all distracted, photographing blood speckles on the floor, and then strode forward, scooped the purse up, and tucked it beneath my jacket. No doubt her wallet and phone were inside, and she’d want them back. I’d be pissed if my phone was held hostage in police evidence, so I would spare her the hassle and drop it off to her.

“Oh, Vaughn. You’re here.” Mom’s voice was laced with tears, and her eyes were red-rimmed. “I’m so glad you came back. We were so worried, but the police wouldn’t let us go until we gave them statements.” Her high heels clicked across the tiled floor, and she stopped in front of me, grasping both sides of my face and tilting my head down so she could see my expression. “Oh, baby.”

I pressed my lips together, not wanting her sympathy because it would only make me cry. I flicked my head toward the cops. “Do they think you did it? Being the ex and all, you’re probably the prime suspect, right?”

She chuckled. “No. Well, I hope not. They didn’t say anything like that.” The smile fell off her face. “I heard the paramedics say it was an overdose…”

I shook my head. “Do you believe that? Dad didn’t do drugs…”

My mom went quiet.

I looked at her sharply. “What? He didn’t!”

“No, not in the time that you knew him. He’s been clean for a very long time.”

I frowned. “Are you joking?”

“We all used to party in our early twenties, Vaughn.” My stepdad, Karmichael put an arm around my shoulders. “It’s easy to fall back into that lifestyle if the person you’re with never gave it up.”

I couldn’t in my wildest imagination picture my parents or Karmichael partying it up, high on drugs. Not now. Not even in their twenties. But maybe it explained why my rebellious teenage stage hadn’t ended until I was twenty-five and married.

My mom’s teeth dug into her bottom lip, and she grimaced. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have said that. You didn’t need to know. Now that’s going to be the last memory you have of your father…”

I clutched Rebel’s purse tighter. “No, it’s fine. It’s good I know. At least I’m not going to be worried about them accusing you of anything now. Though the press outside is spreading the rumor that it was a murder-suicide, so I guess you’re in the clear anyway.”

Mom’s jaw dropped open in shock, but it was temporary. In the next instant, her features turned fierce. “I loved your father with every ounce of my heart. We’ve been friends for decades, and I won’t have anyone questioning that or his integrity. Murder-suicide is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You let them try saying that to me.”

Karmichael put his arm around my mom’s shoulder’s and kissed a tear from her cheek. “You know your mom. She won’t have anyone saying a bad word about Bart.”

“Damn straight I won’t. He doesn’t deserve that.”

In spite of the situation, I smiled. Because this was the thing I loved most about her. She had spent her entire life defending the people she loved. Me, my dad, and Karmichael being the main three. But I’d seen her go to bat for her friends, work colleagues, and even random strangers. If there was an injustice, she addressed it. Her soapbox didn’t stop at her Facebook profile. She’d been front-row center at Black Lives Matter protests. She’d fought for gay marriage to be legalized. And she’d spent two hours one night, barking down the phone to me about the unjust way a trans woman was being treated on the internet and how she wasn’t going to stand for it.

I kissed her cheek. “If anyone says anything to me, I’ll be sure to send them to my mommy.”

She chuckled and hugged me back. “You do that. What are you going to do now? Are you going home to Elizabeth?”

I stiffened at the mention of my wife’s name but tried to hide it by stretching. “I can’t. The police want me to hang around for a while, in case they have any more questions.”

Karmichael hummed his agreement. “Mmm. They said the same thing to us. You can come and stay with us until they conclude their investigations. No need to stay in that hotel.”

Mom looked at me hopefully, and so I felt like even more of an asshole when I told her no. “I think I just want to be alone.”

“We can pay for your hotel.”

My face burned with embarrassment. “No. Mom, please.”

She hadn’t come right out and said, “Hey, I know your company went bankrupt and you’re flat broke,” but she might as well have. The mortification was all the same.

“I think I’m going to go stay at Dad’s place. I’m sure there’s probably things there that need taking care of.”

My mom slid her hand into mine and squeezed it. “You’re right. That’s a great idea. That big old house has plenty of room just waiting to be utilized.”

I walked them to their car and accepted their offer of a lift to the hotel so I could pick up my bag and my bike. I’d left it in the hotel parking lot because I’d wanted to have a few drinks with my old man to celebrate his wedding.

Now I’d never get to do that again.

It was a shit feeling. One that had me considering stopping in the hotel bar and writing myself off. But that was better done at my father’s house where I wouldn’t have to drive anywhere afterward. His place had a bed waiting that I wouldn’t have to pay for with an already overdrawn credit card. And the bonus of a bar full of expensive whiskeys and vodkas I could drown my sorrows in for free.

I retrieved my bag from my room and checked out, grateful when the woman said my father had prepaid. On the way out to the parking lot, I shoved Rebel’s glittery gold purse into my duffel bag and stowed the entire thing in the bike’s large saddlebag.

Nothing much had changed in Providence in the decade I’d been gone. The streets were the same, houses familiar because I’d been to parties at dozens of them in high school. They grew bigger and bigger the deeper in I got, with my father’s house being right in the center. “Guess who’s back,” I mumbled as I steered my bike into the driveway.

I tapped the code into the pad by the door, not surprised when it opened. My father had always been a creature of habit. The code hadn’t changed since I was a kid. I stuck my head through the doorway. “Hello?”

Not a sound echoed back.

I didn’t know why I was still hoping my father would appear at the top of the stairs, take them two at a time to get to the bottom, and engulf me in a hug. I’d seen them take away his body.

I dumped my helmet and my bag in the entrance and closed the door quietly behind me. A wave of exhaustion swamped me, my emotions raw and sharp. I headed straight for the den, which was the last place I’d seen my father’s alcohol stash before I’d moved out at twenty-one.

A scraping noise stopped me in my tracks, and I swiveled on my heel, trying to source it. When nothing happened, I shook my head, assuming I was hearing things.

The second squeak was definitely not in my imagination. It screeched down my spine like nails on a chalkboard. “Who’s there?” I called. “O’Malley? That you?”

O’Malley was my father’s right-hand man, his driver, gardener, butler, and maintenance guy all rolled into one. But I’d assumed he’d be at the wedding reception. Which I guess now was more of a pre-funeral party. That was if anyone had even told the people who had congregated there, waiting for a happy, newly married couple to arrive. How fucking depressing.

The elderly man didn’t call out, but the scraping, scratching noise didn’t quit. It could be an animal, trapped somewhere in the house, but what the hell kind of animal made that noise?

Footsteps echoed back, and I froze. Fuck. There seriously was someone in the house. My father didn’t believe in gun ownership. Neither did I, but now I was cursing us both. On instinct, I opened the nearest closet and grabbed the closest thing that could resemble a weapon.

A stick vacuum cleaner.

I had no idea what I was going to do with the awkwardly shaped thing, but it made me feel better than having nothing in my hands at all. I was reasonably strong, and hopefully adrenaline would help me out there too. I could swing the thing like a giant baseball bat if I had to.

“Who’s there?” I called again.

Still no answer.

A chill raced down my spine. “Please don’t be armed with anything more deadly than my Hoover.” I crept along the hall toward the sounds, wishing my phone was in my pocket instead of back at the doorway. Fuck. I should stop and go back for it. Just call the cops.

The utility room door flung open, and a man stepped out.

I swung the vacuum.

“Jesus, fuck!” the man bellowed, ducking to avoid the flying floor cleaner.

The cleaner hit the wall and kept going. Right through the plaster.

Vibrations shot painfully through my arms at the impact, and I let go on instinct, jumping back from the gaping hole I’d just put in my father’s wall.

“Vaughn?” the other man questioned.

I snapped my head around at his familiar voice and did a double take at the face of the man beneath a Saint View Scorers baseball cap. There was only one person I knew who’d ever played baseball for Saint View, and sure enough, his familiar green eyes stared back at me. “Kian?”

Instantly, his expression hardened. “Fuck. It is you. What the hell are you doing here?”

I raised an eyebrow at his hostile tone. “Excuse me? This is my father’s house. What the hell are you doing here?”

Kian folded his arms over his broad chest.

My gaze dropped to the thickly muscled biceps, which I did not remember from back when he’d been the son of our housekeeper, and my best friend.

Kian narrowed green eyes at me. “It may be your father’s house, but forgive me for being surprised. It’s not like you’ve seen the inside of it in the last…what? Eight years? Nine?”

“Ten,” I corrected stiffly, guilt washing over me again.

Kian shook his head. “Ten. Of course. Only you would walk out of someone’s life a decade ago and then think you can just waltz back like nothing happened.” He jerked his head toward the damaged wall and vacuum cleaner. “What the hell were you doing with that?”

“I thought you were an intruder.”

Kian choked on his laughter. “So what? You thought you’d suck me with it?”

My jaw clenched, and I shoved past him, hating that it suddenly felt like I was eighteen again. “Fuck off, Kian. I’m not in the mood for your shit.”

Apparently, nothing changed with him either, except for the fact he’d bulked up and a had a few extra freckles across the bridge of his nose. His hair was shorter than he’d worn it before I’d gone to college. But he clearly still lived to give me a hard time. I stormed farther down the hall, leaving the mess I’d made with the vacuum cleaner. I’d worry about that later.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?”

“To get drunk.” I rounded the corner of the den and went straight to a cabinet in the corner. “Does Dad still keep the alcohol in here?” I yanked the cupboard door open, and angels sang in my head. A full bottle of bourbon sat right in the middle, just begging for me to take a swig. I didn’t even bother standing or reaching for a glass. I pulled out the cork and took a swig straight from the bottle.

It scalded all the way down my throat, but it was the good kind of burn. Much better than the one in my chest that ached every time I thought of my dad.

Kian leaned on the wall to my left and made a show of checking the cheap watch strapped to his wrist. “Not even three in the afternoon. Bit early, isn’t it?” His brow furrowed. “Shouldn’t you be at your old man’s wedding right now?”

I took another slug from the bottle and rocked back on my heels. “Can’t. He’s dead.”

Kian’s shocked silence was so loud it was almost deafening. “Are you joking?”

“Would I be here getting drunk with you, of all people, if I were?”

He stiffly pushed off the wall and walked over to me. He held a hand out.

I stared at it blankly. “What?”

“Give me the bottle.”

I passed it over, and he took several long gulps before slumping down beside me on the floor. “Fuck.”

He passed the bottle back, and I took it, drinking down as much as he had then abandoning it to the space between us.

“I don’t understand.” Kian’s head thunked back against the cabinet. “Are you sure?”

I squinted at him. “Am I sure? Well, he’s in a body bag at the morgue as we speak, so I really hope they weren’t just messing around when they called time of death. Wouldn’t be a particularly funny prank.”

“What the hell happened?”

I shrugged. “Word on the street? Drug overdose.”

“No, that didn’t happen.”

I really wanted the alcohol to kick in faster. “It did.”

“Your dad doesn’t do drugs.”

“Yeah. well, that’s what I thought. But apparently, the old man, as straight and narrow as he is…was…these days, once had a wild side.”

“Didn’t we all?” His voice was laden with unsaid meaning.

I wasn’t going there with him. Rehashing the past. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were off playing baseball in California?”

He peered over at me. “I haven’t been there in years, Vaughn. You didn’t know? Came back when my dad died.”

I gaped at him. “O’Malley died?”

“Surely your dad told you? I’ve been working here ever since.”

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “No. He would have told me.”

“Yeah, he probably did.”

The meaning behind his words was accusatory. I bristled. “What does that mean? He told me and I just didn’t care?”

Kian shrugged. “Self-centered is your middle name.”

“Fuck you.”

“Tried that once. It sent you running across the other side of the country.”

Heat crept up the back of my neck at the reminder of that night. “I left to start my own company, away from the shadow of my father.” My cheeks blazed with awkward embarrassment. “And I’m married.”

Kian shook his head with a laugh. “Why are you telling me that? In case I get an idea and try to sneak into your bedroom?” He leaned in slowly, inch by inch, until his mouth was barely hovering above mine.

Something in his eyes changed.

Or maybe I just wanted it to.

His gaze flickered to my mouth. “We could pick up right where we left off…”

It was all too fucking familiar. A lifetime ago, but still so fresh in my head because it was something I’d played over and over again for a lifetime. I put two hands on his chest and shoved him out of my way. “I’m not doing this with you. Go home.”

And just like that, whatever had been in his eyes disappeared. He leaned back against the wall and took another swallow from the bottle, like he hadn’t just brought up the elephant in the room. “I am home, dickhead. Room and board came with the job. Got the same room I had as a kid.”

Oh, hell no. I couldn’t stay here with him. But I couldn’t go home either. There was nothing left for me there, even if I had been allowed to leave the state. “You have a week to look for a new job.”

He sat up sharply, the liquid in the bottle sloshing around inside the glass. “What? You’re joking.”

“Wasn’t joking before, not joking now.” I grabbed the bottle from him and staggered to my feet. The room spun around me in dizzying circles. I’d had no idea how drunk I was until I stood up. I staggered toward the stairs that led up to my old room.

The one next door to Kian’s.

Fuck.

I changed direction. I’d sleep on the kitchen table if I had to. As long as I was nowhere near Kian O’Malley.