“I am.”

His brother made a scornful sound as he shook his head. “Why do you waste your time with that?”

“Why? You’re seriously asking why?”

Michael nodded as a guitar riff played through the speakers. Ryan rose, planted his palms on Michael’s desk, and stared at him, wondering if he was crazy. How did his brother not get it? “Because I want to know why the fuck the case is open. Don’t you?”

“She won’t tell you shit.”

Ryan stabbed his index finger against his sternum. “But I’m the only one she might tell something. That’s why I’m going. Because I’m the one who sees her, besides Shan. So if there is something to say, or someone else involved, I’m the one she’s going to talk to.”

Michael softened his tone but still held his ground. “Look, man. I get it. I understand she did some kind of number on you and convinced you she might not be guilty—but she’s so fucking guilty, Ryan. Day is day, and night is night, and our mother had our father killed. Maybe there was someone else involved, maybe Detective Winston is sniffing around for a middleman, or something between her and Stefano, but I guarantee that you’re not going to exonerate inmate number 347-921.”

Ryan gritted his teeth as frustration seared his nervous system, running a wild course through his body. “Here’s the bottom line. Someone knows something about our family that we don’t,” he said through tight lips. “I want to know what that something is, and I’m not going to stop until I find out.”

Michael stood up and clapped Ryan on the shoulder. “You’re a determined bastard. But you’re my determined bastard. So don’t speed like Sanders. We need you squeaky clean here at the company. No tickets, no record, nothing.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head. I’m never dirty,” he said with a wink.

Michael tugged him in for a quick hug. “Love you, bro.”

“Love you, too,” Ryan grumbled.

This. His brothers and sister. His grandmother. His dog. That was real love to him—the only kind he trusted.

Chapter Eighteen

An elderly woman with curly gray hair opened the faded red door of the ranch-style home and waved goodbye to the man inside. “See you at the recital.”

“You’re going to be great. Your ‘Für Elise’ is fantastic.”

The voice blasted Ryan back in time, like a slingshot to the end of junior high. Luke Carlton, older, grayer, and paunchier, turned to Ryan as the woman ambled down the steps on the way to her car.

“Ryan Sloan,” Luke said and extended a hand. He wasn’t surprised to see Ryan, nor should he be.

Ryan had made an appointment for a piano lesson. He hadn’t used the name he’d had growing up—Ryan Paige-Prince—but Luke clearly knew who he was. He suspected that was a result of the reopened investigation.

Even so, Ryan’s legs felt wobbly and his stomach plummeted. It was as if he was having an out-of-body experience and someone else was grasping the palm of this brown-eyed man in khaki slacks and a sky blue Tommy Bahama shirt.

His mother’s ex-lover.

“Come in,” Luke said, letting go and gesturing to the home he’d lived in for the last five years. Before this meeting, Ryan had run a security check on Luke Carlton. He was only a few years older than Dora Prince, and he’d bought this home with his wife. Ryan didn't know how long Luke had been married, though.

“My kids are at camp,” Luke said as they walked through the living room. Okay, he’d been with her long enough to procreate. “Wife’s out grocery shopping. I take it you’re not really interested in a piano lesson?”

Ryan shrugged a shoulder. “Sometimes I think about taking it up.”

“Lots of adults do. Half my business these days is from adults who decide they’ve always wanted to learn how to play.” He guided Ryan through the kitchen. The sink was stacked with plates. Eggs had been served for breakfast. A loaf of rye bread was on the counter, a twist tie keeping it closed. An odd sense of the surreal descended on him. Everything about Luke’s home was so…normal. From the blinds that hung on the living room windows, to the beige couch with an indentation on it in front of a large TV screen, to scattered pictures of his kids and his wife, many of them on a beach, playing in the sand and surf.

Luke led him to an office area, with a baby grand piano, a couch, a chair, and a writing table.

“We might as well chat here,” Luke said and claimed a spot on the piano bench. He gestured to a wooden chair.

Ryan hardly wanted to sit. He didn’t want to stand. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He stuffed them into the pockets of his pants. He was used to talking to clients, to pitching the need for security services, to giving orders to troops in Europe during his days in the army.

But talking to his mother’s former lover from eighteen years ago gave uncomfortable new meaning. His throat was parched, and his tongue barely worked. But somehow, he found the ability to speak. “My dad’s case was reopened. The detective asked me about you and your relationship with my mom.” Ryan jumped right in, hitting the key points without mincing words.

Luke nodded. “I am aware of that. I met him, too. Winston. Seems sharp.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, simply to say something. “What does he know? Did you tell him how you knew my mom?”

“I told him we were in love, yes. And that it had been a mistake, since she was married,” Luke said, clasping his hands together. “I still ask God every day for forgiveness for having fallen in love with a married woman.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Ryan said, because he wasn’t here to talk about contrition for cheating. “I’m talking about her drug problem. The cocaine. That she got it from Stefano. Do they know?”

This was the first time he’d said those words aloud in nearly twenty years—drugs. Cocaine. That Stefano was her dealer. When he was in seventh grade, a year before the shooting, Ryan came home early from school on a half-day that his mom had forgotten about. He found her cutting lines at her sewing table. With a rolled-up dollar bill, she’d leaned in and inhaled a line of white powder off her Singer machine.

He stood in the door, his jaw hanging open. “Mom?”

She raised her chin. Her green eyes were glassy, but the stunned look in them said she hadn’t expected him home.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” she said and started crying. She stood up and clasped her arms around him. “Please, this is my last time. I’m trying to stop. I swear I’m going to stop. I promise.”

At that age, you believed your parents. You believed your mom even if she had powder up her nose. What else was he supposed to think? He was barely thirteen then, and all he knew was that his parents had been fighting, they barely had any money, and they lived in a shitty neighborhood.

She’d clutched him as if her life depended on it and begged him to never breathe a word.

In the months that had followed, she’d seemed determined to prove herself to him. She’d told him she was getting help, that she was going to Narcotics Anonymous, and that she had a sponsor for counseling and guidance. “Please, Ry. I’m trying so hard, baby. I’m trying so hard to fight these demons,” she’d say to him at night as he got under the gray cover in his twin bed. “Don’t tell your daddy please. He’d just worry. And don’t tell your brothers and sister. I’m so ashamed, and I want to get well again. I’ve got a sponsor and I’m going to meetings, and I swear I’m going to kick this habit. I owe some money to the guy I used to buy from, and I’m working extra for the local gymnastics team to earn enough to pay him back. Once I do, I swear I’ll be free of this.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Ryan had said, battening down the hatches, locking up his brain, some sort of self-preservation kicking in. It was all he’d been able to do. Zip it up, keep it quiet, and never speak of what he saw.