The Golden Hour Read online

Finally, he says, “At the risk of sounding like a perv, I’ve wanted you in some capacity since I was eleven and saw you for the first time at Rafael’s sentencing. You looked so lost and out of place. I wanted to protect you and didn’t know how to handle that. I decided to be angry instead.”

  So he was in the courtroom that day. I try to imagine Finn at eleven, having recently lost his father, and my heart squeezes.

  He takes my hand again, threading our fingers together. “I’m so sorry for how I treated you in Solstice Bay. I was a complete ass. I guess in some ways I was eleven again—I couldn’t reconcile how I felt about you with how I thought I should feel. If that makes sense.”

  I nod, a delicate hope blooming inside me. “It does. But you forgot to apologize for blackmailing me.”

  He winces. “I was never going to blackmail you. It was a stupid, spur-of-the-moment idea because I wanted to pull your clothes off like a caveman in that fucking closet and I hated it. I hated that I was so affected by you, that I wanted you, that you’d been under my skin for years. And that you were braver than I’d ever been.”

  “And now?” I whisper.

  My pulse skitters wildly. I’m afraid of dropping my wine, but before the thought has fully formed, Finn takes my glass and sets both on a nearby table. He moves close, until our chests are a hairsbreadth apart. His body radiates heat and life and strength, a vital vibration that calms me as much as it arouses me.

  Cupping my face, his fingers sink into my hair and clench lightly. I almost moan.

  “I know who you are,” he murmurs, then kisses me softly. “And who you are has nothing to do with your name.” Another kiss, long enough to curl my toes. “You are brave. Stunning. Smart. Sexy. Kind. And I know you don’t see it, but you’re strong. So fucking strong, because despite your family and everything you’ve been through, you are good.”

  I don’t know I’m crying until he kisses my tears, then my mouth. I taste the salt and more—the truth. His faith in me. My forgiveness of myself. And desire, burning bright and pure, unclouded by the past and future.

  “Take me to bed, Finn McCowen,” I say against his lips.

  He lifts his head, distress in his face. “There’s something I need to tell you. About this place. I want to be honest with you. A few years ago, I was here with—”

  “I don’t care.”

  To punctuate, I shut him up with a kiss. My fingers find his hair and tug, pulling his mouth more firmly to mine. But it’s not enough. I want moremoremore. Releasing his hair, I fumble for the button on his pants.

  “We can slow down,” he whispers, strained.

  “No!”

  “Thank God.”

  I yank the button free and lower his zipper. My hand dives under the waistband of his boxers, finding hot, silky skin, thick and hard for me. He grunts, his head falling back as I wrap my fingers around him. My name comes from his lips as a whisper of supplication.

  Staring up at him, the tight brow and closed eyes, the strong, smooth column of his throat that swallows convulsively, I revel in my own power and the deeply feminine knowledge that I’m not just any woman. His surrender and pleasure at my inexperienced touch mean one thing.

  He’s mine.

  What we are or aren’t doesn’t have to be defined. This is enough. This is everything.

  His mouth finds mine again, breath sucking breath, our tongues entwined in lazy exploration. My body’s tight, needy hum reaches a painful pitch. I’m barely aware of my begging whispers, of him taking control, undressing me, stroking my newly bared skin like an unearthed treasure.

  We stumble into the bedroom. Fall naked to the sheets. My limbs receive him. My body and heart welcome him home. Each thrust of his hips drives past the limits of my body into the fabric of my being. Creates a permanent space for him. For us.

  His voice in my ear murmurs, “I need you,” but my heart knows what he can’t say and whispers it back.

  I love you, too.

  38

  I watch her sleep. Sometimes she twitches, or a small frown puckers her brow. I wonder what she’s dreaming about. If she’s having nightmares or if her mind is finally resting. But I know.

  Neither of us will rest peacefully until this is over.

  Her head is on my bicep, a leg thrown over my thigh. Soft, thick hair drapes over the pillow. She breathes low and deep, her lips slightly parted.

  And it hits me.

  I’m in love with the daughter of the man who killed my father. And there’s not a damn thing I want to do to change it.

  I’ve probably always been a little in love with her, a seed planted that day in the courtroom. We were both lost and alone. We were the same.

  My obsession was an angry, uncomfortable one through my teenage years. Via late-night Internet searches, I watched her grow up. Become beautiful in a way my hormone-soaked brain couldn’t handle. Unable to reconcile my shameful desire with my loathing, she became central to my plans to destroy her family. I told myself—believed—she was as evil as her father. I would use her, betray her, and be justified in doing so.

  The lies I told myself…

  When the news of her abduction broke, I drank for a straight week. Twenty-five years old and devastated for a reason I couldn’t confront. Couldn’t believe. How could I grieve a girl I’d never met, whose family had ruined mine?

  My father’s voice comes into my sleep-deprived mind. The last words he spoke to me before he left that night, before I snuck out of my room and into the back of his car, then witnessed the last minutes of his life.

  “I need you to do something for me, son.”

  “What?” I was curt. Annoyed with him for working crazy hours lately and forgetting he promised to take me to batting practice yesterday.

  His hand rested heavily on my back. I almost pulled away, but even with how mad I was, I liked how it made me feel. Like nothing could hurt me.

  “Always take care of your mom and sisters. But don’t tell them. Strong women don’t appreciate men thinking they need protection.”

  “Abby doesn’t need protection,” I scoff. I still had a bruise on my arm where my oldest sister had punched me for laughing at the big zit on her chin.

  Girls were dumb.

  “Maybe not,” my dad agreed with a smile in his voice. “But look out for her anyway. For all of them.”

  “Fine,” I groused.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise. Goodnight, Dad.”

  The heat of his hand faded as he stood. I wanted to ask him to stay but couldn’t.

  “I love you, bud. Sleep tight.”

  What a shit job I’ve done making good on that promise. I barely know my sisters as adults, and they barely know me. I send texts on birthdays and Mother’s Day, and presents to their kids at Christmas, but that’s been the extent of my involvement in their lives.

  After Dad’s death, there was a nonstop stream of police, lawyers, child therapists, and family counselors. Silent dinners eating mushy casseroles gifted by neighbors. Nights spent sleepless, listening to my mother sob in her bedroom. My sisters had each other—always close, they banded together even more tightly in their grief. And the promise I made to my father was forgotten.

  It’s not their fault—not anyone’s fault, really—that I was left alone. They didn’t understand what it was like to hear him die. They didn’t want to understand, not that I could blame them. I wasn’t Finn anymore. I was the Witness. An unlikely spear of justice to be thrown at Rafael Avellino. I embraced that identity with everything in me. It was all I had left of my father.

  Finally close to the end of my long journey toward retribution, I don’t feel anything I expected to. No triumph or vindication. No catharsis.

  Instead, I’m raw soul matter. A foal on newborn legs. Who I’ve been, what I’ve done, all the hatred I’ve nurtured so long… I see it now, the tragedy of it. My hatred kept me from love—the only necessary ingredient for living a life that matters.

  Family is everythi
ng.

  I turned my back on my family, and now all I want is to see them. Hold them and tell them I’m sorry. Meet my nieces and nephews. See their bright, excited faces on Christmas morning.

  With Callisto at my side.

  Buzz. Buzz.

  Sheets whisper. There’s a small sound, like a scrape, on the nightstand.

  Fighting the thick bands of sleep on my mind, I mutter, “What’s that?”

  A small pause. Her hand on my shoulder. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

  When I wake up, she’s gone.

  39

  I knew it couldn’t be that easy. Despite all the reassurances from Detective Wilson and her thick file on my family, she doesn’t know them. Not like I do.

  Where there’s one good cop, there are five more open to persuasion.

  My father’s words. And he was nothing if not a master of persuasion. He must have been truly flummoxed by Charles McCowen, a man who wouldn’t bend from what was right.

  I doubt the family’s views on having friends among the police have changed in Vivian’s reign. She probably received transcripts of my interview within hours of me leaving the station. But I expected it—I played my hand when I fired Hugo.

  “‘We live in service to the family.’ What does that mean, Uncle Ant?”

  I looked away from the dirty plaque I found on the ground, half buried by sawdust. It was heavy in my small hands and felt old and important.

  My uncle looked up from his whittling. “It means there’s only one way to leave the family, and that’s feet first.”

  Sometimes he said the weirdest things. Sometimes those things scared me. But he was still my favorite uncle. The only one who always had time for me, a funny story to tell, or a game to play. Lately, though, he’d been frowning more than smiling.

  “Bury it in the garden,” he instructed after a moment.

  His tone frightened me, so I hurried to gather my small shovel. Cradling it with the plaque, I headed toward the open doors of the stable.

  Behind me, my uncle muttered, “Let the worms come for it as surely as they’re coming for me.”

  Two days later, he was dead.

  The streets are empty, golden-orange under the glow of city lamps until I exit the freeway and the lights come fewer and farther between. The hills of Calabasas rise around me in the dark.

  I think of Finn waking to find me gone and hope one day he’ll understand.

  I always knew I’d be alone in the end.

  When I make the final turn onto our street, I see the gates standing open. The house beyond is dark; it’s the middle of the night, after all. But they’re waiting for me.

  You know what we want

  The text message from an unknown number came with an image attached of a woman. She’s gagged, her hands bound before her with nylon, and sits on the foot of a familiar bed, in a room that’s a time capsule of the past. Floral wallpaper. Pink and white gingham bedspread with ruffles and matching pillowcases.

  Vivian lied when she told me my childhood room had been repurposed, which I’d taken to mean gutted. From what I could see of the image’s background, nothing has changed. Even the row of creepy-as-fuck, oversized dolls remains on the window seat. I hated the dolls, their blank eyes and perfect curls. Vivian didn’t care—or more likely, enjoyed tormenting me—and gave me a new one every Christmas.

  My palms are clammy on the steering wheel as I pull to a stop before the front door. My heart, conversely, is preternaturally calm. No more self-doubt. No fear or anger. This isn’t about revenge anymore, but about wiping the slate clean. Cutting away the roots of obligation, ambition, and corruption that have held my family down for generations. Purging the poison that infected my little sister.

  That infects us all.

  As I exit the car and walk up the steps, a figure steps outside to greet me. Slim. Blond hair. Trembling shoulders.

  “They said I can’t kill you yet.” So much betrayal and rage in her young voice.

  My calm shivers but holds. I pause on the step beside her and look into her shadowed eyes. “You shouldn’t be the one to do it,” I say softly.

  “I want to,” she snarls.

  Tears glisten on her cheeks, touched by starlight. I don’t know if they’re real or not. Is she crazy? A sociopath? Or was she simply fed the milk of violence until it changed her?

  “I never meant to hurt you, Lizzie. I love you. I didn’t know—”

  “That’s enough,” rumbles Enzo, his bulky figure shifting into the doorway. “Let’s go. Traitors first.”

  Though I know my end isn’t imminent—Vivian still needs something from me—I don’t like having my back to them. My skin itches, anticipating pain, as I walk down the hall and up a flight of stairs. The door to my old room stands open, soft light spilling into the hallway, tinged pink from fabric lampshades.

  I pause on the threshold, absorbing changes I hadn’t been able to see in the photo’s narrow field. The decor is the same, yes, but there’s signs of occupation. An open closet filled with adult, feminine clothes. A dresser, new and white, with framed photos on top. Recent photos, including one from the garden party of the three of us—Lizzie beaming between me and Ellie.

  Vivian’s sigh brings my gaze to where she sits on the window seat. The dozen or so dolls are in a pile on the floor, lidless eyes staring, arms and legs bent at weird angles in a macabre display. Franco leans against a nearby wall, his smile vulpine, a toothpick bobbing between his teeth.

  “It’s rather odd, isn’t it?” asks Vivian. “I told her it was disturbing behavior, wanting to live in your room with your hideous things around her day in and day out. But you know Lizzie when she puts her mind to something.”

  I give the dolls a pointed glance. “You were the one who forced all these hideous things on me.”

  She smiles, slight and cruel. “I enjoyed the look on your face every time you unwrapped one.”

  “I imagine you did.”

  Finally, I glance at the woman on the floor. She stares up at me, her eyes wet and terrorized. “Please,” she slurs around the gag in her mouth, “Please help me.”

  “Enough games, Vivian. Let her go.”

  “I thought we’d have a chat first. You know who she is, don’t you?”

  I do. Her curly hair is dark, peppered lightly with gray, bedraggled and wild from a struggle. I recognize the shape of her nose and eyebrows. She’s younger than Molly, with a thinner face and brown eyes instead of blue. But there’s no mistaking the resemblance.

  They took Meredith McCowen.

  Finn’s mother.

  Since she lives in Solstice Bay, they must have taken her days ago, which means…

  “The ranch,” I deduce, focusing on Vivian.

  “Smart girl. Of course, when Franco showed me the video of your little adventure up there, I’ll admit I was surprised by your choice of guests and venue. Whatever made you want to visit stables?” She waves away the question. “No matter. By dawn the bodies will be gone, that decrepit place burned to the ground.”

  By dawn.

  Dread sneaks through the cracks in my composure. Grinding my molars, I stay the course. “So you knew all along who Finn was? Who his father was?”

  “Do I even need to answer that?”

  “No,” I acknowledge.

  She answers anyway, the invitation to hear herself talk too tempting. “He’s been sniffing around for years, but he wasn’t a nuisance until recently.”

  I think of the private investigators Finn hired, one of whom disappeared without a trace. “His PI found something,” I muse.

  Vivian sniffs. “Like I said, a nuisance. Does he really think we didn’t know he was the protected witness in Rafael’s case?”

  Margaret whimpers, her eyes squeezed closed.

  I make myself ask, “Why didn’t you kill him, then?”

  Her features rearrange into a wounded expression. “You really think I’m heartless, don’t you? I’d never touch a child.”

/>   More likely, she spared Finn because my father going to prison aligned with her plans to be head of the family.

  “Any more questions?” asks my stepmother.

  “Yes. Before today, did you know I staged my abduction just to get away from you?”

  Her answer is a startled laugh. She looks away, but not before I see the truth in her eyes. A glance at Franco and the toothpick hanging limply from his lower lip confirms it—they never suspected. They were merely relieved fate had stepped in on their behalf, taking me off the game board.

  All that time, I was safe and didn’t know it.

  “What happens now?” I ask, looking around the room at my family. Lizzie won’t meet my eyes, but Enzo and Franco spear me with a clear message of what they’d like to do to me.

  Turning back to Vivian, I muse, “When I wind up dead, you’ll have a pretty big mess on your hands. Especially with my detailed statement to the police today. Even if you manage to get rid of the evidence at the ranch, what do you think the public will say about the timing? About my eye-witness account of a human skull buried on your property? They might like you, Vivian, but they love me. Say goodbye to politics, your social calendar, and your famous friends. You’re done.”

  Fury flashes white-hot in her eyes. “I should have killed you when I killed your mother.”

  The room goes silent with shock.

  And not just mine.

  Lizzie gasps, “You killed her mom? That’s cold even for you!”

  “She was spineless, just like her daughter. Not worthy of the Avellino name.”

  I find my tongue. “She died of an aneurysm.”

  “Right,” Vivian scoffs, “just like your father died of a heart attack.”

  Lizzie jerks forward. “You killed Daddy?”

  “No. You can thank Enzo for that gift. And you should. Rafael wanted to have you committed.”

  “He did? Why?” she whispers.

  “Because he found your trophies, you imbecile! I told you to get rid of them!”