Sins, Lies & Spies (Black Brothers #2)(45)

My brows knitted together. “You never found out what happened to her?”

“No. My uncle filed a missing person’s report, or at least he said he did, but nothing ever came of it. I tried to find her using some of Miles’s resources, but every lead has been a dead end.”

She stuffed the music box into her oversized black tote bag. “I should probably throw it away. It’s kind of childish, and it holds more ugly than good memories.” She bowed her head, a sad smile on her face. “I had this silly dream that I’d grow up to be a prima ballerina. When my mom disappeared, so did my dreams. My uncle refused to enroll me in another ballet class. He didn’t continue my mom’s tradition of taking us to The Nutcracker every Christmas. Basically, my life was never the same.” She closed her eyes. “It’s like she left this giant gaping wound in my chest and it’s never gone away. Not completely. Sometimes it fades. Then something reminds me of her and the pain is fresh again, just like it happened yesterday instead of over a decade ago.”

“I know.” I brushed my fingers along her cheek. “Archer and I couldn’t run away from our mom fast enough. We lost touch with her for a while. I was in the military. Archer was busy taking over the world one investment at a time, and she was doing God knows what. I always thought I’d get a call that she drank herself to death, but it didn’t happen that way.”

She tilted her head to the side. “How did she die?”

I shifted on my feet. “A few months before she died, she called me to tell me she was sober and had a job. She wanted us to visit her. Archer went. I didn’t.”

She pursed her lips. “Why not?”

“I can’t really explain it. It was more of a gut reaction. I had mentally written her off from the time I graduated from high school. I considered her part of my past, and I wanted to keep her there.”

“Do you regret not seeing her?”

“Yeah.” I rolled my shoulders back. “More often than not, she was checked out and unable to see the horror of what she was doing to her kids. On occasion, I’ll have a good memory of her when she wasn’t drunk or stoned, but then I remember all the crap she put us through on a daily basis, and the hate takes over again.”

“I feel the same tug of war with my mom.”

I cleared my throat. “The police thought she had committed suicide.”

She frowned. “She didn’t?”

“No.” I swallowed. I hated talking about this. “Senator Wharton paid someone to kill her. I’m sure you heard about it in the news.”

Her eyebrows darted up her forehead. “Wow. And Archer and Langley…”

I shook my head. “What he did doesn’t have anything to do with them. Besides, he’s in jail. They’re satisfied with the way things turned out.”

“Are you?”

I shoved my hands deep into my pockets and tipped my head to the ceiling. “Yeah. I wished I would’ve made that trip with Archer to see my mom, but I wasn’t ready. She caused a lot of damage—” Trinity opened her mouth to interrupt and I held up my hand. “I’m not saying she deserved what he did. She didn’t, but she wasn’t a good person. Sure, she had demons. We all do, but she never faced them. Instead, she used them as an excuse to justify her bad behavior.”

I flexed my jaw. “She left us home alone for days without food or money. She’d come home drunk, and I’d hold her hair while she vomited.” My gut churned, the long-buried memories torturing me with razor-like claws. I closed my eyes briefly, forcing them away. “There’s more. Worse stuff. But I think you get the gist of it.”

She averted her eyes. “Yeah. My uncle drank too much sometimes and pretty much ignored my sister and me. He left us alone a lot, but I was already ten when my mom disappeared.”

I rubbed my hands together. “Did you find your sneakers?”

She pointed to the gray sneakers on the closet floor. “They’re right there, but I can’t go. I need to figure out what to do with this mess.”

“Nope.” I grabbed her sneakers. “We’re going to take that run we talked about. Then we’re going to stop by my office. After that, we’ll talk about what we’re going to do.”

Her gaze drifted over the mess. “You’re right.” She tugged the shoes out of my hand. “Let’s blow off some steam.”





CHAPTER





TWENTY-SIX


Trinity



After we had left my place, we jogged the pebbled pavement paths of the National Mall until I begged him to stop. We sat on a small black lacquered bench for an hour eating ridiculously fattening pastries, drinking coffee, watching the tourists and joggers, and swapping childhood stories. When we couldn’t ignore reality any longer, we made our way to his office. It didn’t escape my attention that Knox kept glancing over his shoulder the entire morning, most likely checking to see if we were being followed.

“Is your partner going to be here?” I asked as he punched a code into the keypad and pressed his index finger to the screen.

“Probably. He rarely goes home.”

“Why’s that?”

The lock clicked and Knox pushed open the door. “He and his wife don’t get along. He uses work to escape her. I think that’s the reason he pushed us to set up shop in an apartment rather than a traditional office.”