“Hi, how are things?” she asked.
“Good, thanks. How about you?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I’m calling because I managed to find out who purchased the sculpture you told me about. The gallery kept the records.”
“It’s okay,” said Frankie. “I already know who it was.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. Cruz Stewart, right?”
There was a pause. “Um . . . no. Sweetie, the name I have here is . . . Well, the buyer was Brad Newman. Isn’t that your uncle?”
Frankie’s stomach plummeted, and her smile faded. “Yes. Yes, it is. I have to go, Abigail.”
“You call me later.”
“I will.” Ending the call, she asked, “Did you hear that?”
Trick nodded. “Brad bought the sculpture that you found at Iris’s cabin.” His brow furrowed. “That makes no fucking sense, baby. Iris wouldn’t have accepted anything from him.”
“No, she wouldn’t have. Yet, it somehow ended up in her hands. I suppose she could have received it from an anonymous sender, but that’s the kind of thing you tell people, isn’t it? Clara said nobody seems to know where Iris got it.”
“She wouldn’t have taken anything from Brad.” Trick was sure of that much. “Maybe he asked someone to give it to her as a gift from them, but I can’t think who—” He frowned at the odd look on her face. “What?”
“I need to speak to Lydia. I have to ask her something.”
“So call her.”
Frankie did so, drumming her fingers on Trick’s back. Her stomach fluttered and her heart pounded, because she was quite sure that she already knew what Lydia’s answer would be.
“Hello,” Lydia softly greeted her.
“Lydia, hi. How are you feeling?”
A long sigh. “Better, thanks. But I’m not the one who was shot. How are you?”
“I’m okay. Listen, remember I went exploring in your mom’s attic? Well, there was a box of my mother’s things there, but it was empty. Someone had ripped open the tape and took whatever was in it.”
“Really?” Lydia puffed out a breath. “Well, I remember your grandparents demanded all your mother’s belongings. Like they were trying to erase her from our lives. Mom was mad about it, but she cooperated because she was hoping they’d let us see you if we kept everything civil.”
“Do you know if there was anything that Iris held back?”
“She only kept two things, and that was because she was positive that your grandparents would destroy them. She kept the dress your mother wore for her mating ceremony, and a ring that Christopher gave her.”
Heart pounding even harder, Frankie asked, “Can you describe the ring?” But she already knew, because she could see it in her head; she remembered it from the photos she’d seen of her mother in Iris’s albums.
“It was white gold studded with diamonds, and it had a gorgeous gray pearl in the center.”
Frankie closed her eyes. “Thanks, Lydia. That was a great help.” When Trick put her phone back on the nightstand, she said, “I know what it was now.”
He frowned. “What?”
“I know what I overlooked. I saw pictures of my mother, but only my subconscious seemed to notice the ring. I get it now.” She bit her lip. “There’s someone I need to talk to.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who?”
A little while later, Frankie was sitting on the curb in a busy parking lot, near a very familiar car. A car she’d ridden in many times, completely unaware that its owner had betrayed her family in too many ways to count.
It wasn’t long before said owner came along. Even with the sounds of traffic, she’d heard his shoes ticking on the asphalt before she saw him. She knew what hours he worked, had known what time he’d leave his office.
Rising, she waited for him to stop fumbling with his car keys and look up. Finally he did. Her wolf snarled, flexing her unsheathed claws.
Brad stilled and blinked. “Frankie, hey.” His face split into a grin that quickly faded. “Is everything okay? You don’t look so good. You have shadows under your eyes.”
“I’m fine,” she lied. She inhaled deeply, searching for calm, and instead ended up with a lungful of the annoying scents of exhaust, motor oil, and hot pavement. “I wouldn’t be fine if it weren’t for Trick. He got to me in time.”
“In time?” Brad crossed to her, the picture of concern. “What does that mean? Honey, what happened?”
She kept her tone even. “I was held at gunpoint in the basement of my old home.”
His mouth fell open. “What? By who? And please tell me they’ve been arrested.”
“It was the person who killed my parents.”
He sighed, pinching his nose. “Frankie . . . it was Christopher who—”
“Who Cruz framed, I know,” she finished. “He made a full confession when he pointed that gun at my face. A full confession.”
Brad’s eyes flickered nervously.
“I remember when I was a kid, I was helping you pick cuff links to wear out of that big box you have. I found a ring. A ring with a gray pearl. I picked it up and asked if I could have it. You freaked out. Snatched it out of my hands, shoved it in a drawer, and told me to never ask about it again. Cruz got the ring and her dress for you, didn’t he?”
Brad glanced around. There was one other person in the lot, but he was chatting away on his cell phone, not paying them a lick of attention. “Okay, yes, he agreed to get me Caroline’s things,” Brad admitted in a low voice. “They didn’t deserve to have anything of hers, Frankie.”
“And he agreed to give Iris the sculpture too.”
That comment surprised him. “I liked the idea of her having one of your pieces without even knowing it.”
Frankie narrowed her eyes. “You sensed that Cruz was jealous of my parents’ mating. You saw an ally. You used him.”
“I encouraged him to push her to leave the pack, sure, but that’s all.”
Frankie shook her head. “You gave him the gun.”
“Frankie—”
“You gave it to him,” she insisted. “You’ve fed me enough lies over the years. No more.”
Brad closed his eyes for a moment. “He was only supposed to drive Caroline out of the pack. If anything, she became more determined to stay. I told Cruz to be patient, but he wouldn’t. He asked for a gun. Said if he couldn’t have Christopher, then no one would have him.”
Her wolf swiped out her claws. “And the idea of him shooting my father suited you just fine.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“Really?” Frankie shrugged one shoulder as she asked, “Why not? You hated him. He was a shifter. An animal. What would be so bad about putting him down?”
Brad let out a ragged sigh. “There are things you don’t know.”
“Explain them to me, then.”
“Christopher planned to take you and your mother to Canada!” he burst out.
She lifted a brow. “Canada?”
“Yes. He didn’t like that we were in her life. He wanted to switch packs, to take her and you far away.”
“Far away from you and your ‘You need to leave the pack’ bullshit, you mean? He was tired of you trying to make her leave him. Tired of seeing her so unhappy about the way you were acting.” Like Trick had been unhappy with how the Newmans treated Frankie. “He wanted to put distance between you.”
“I’d have rarely seen her, Frankie. I wouldn’t have been able to watch you grow up. I’d have been a damn stranger to you. I wasn’t going to allow that. I wasn’t going to allow him to take her away from me.”
A disturbing amount of possessiveness coated his latter words, and Frankie stilled as the truth hit her. “Did she know?”
“Know what?”
“That you loved her a little too much?” It explained why he’d never been in a relationship and didn’t have a family of his own. All he’d wanted was Caroline. It even explained why he thought of Frankie as a daughter. “I’ll bet my father sensed it. No w
onder he wanted her far away from you.”
Brad swallowed. “I was never going to allow him to keep her from me.”
“So you gave Cruz a gun, even knowing that if Christopher died, she’d die.”
He scoffed. “That’s what shifters say, but it’s not true. The bond isn’t some magical thing.” He paused at the beep of a remote car lock, but the owner of the car didn’t even look their way as they hopped into their vehicle. “She was convinced that the bond was unbreakable. Convinced that she couldn’t live without him. I knew that when he was dead, she’d see the truth. See that he’d fooled her, lied to her, manipulated her.” He swallowed. “If I’d known that Cruz really meant to kill Caroline, I would never have given him that gun. I would never have urged him on. You have to believe that, Frankie.”
“Do I?” She sneered. “You say you hate that pack because they stole Caroline from you. But you knew exactly who killed her. You knew . . . and you didn’t tell anyone. You protected his identity to save your own skin and because it suited you just fine that I was taken from the pack. And then you used him in other ways—maybe even threatened to expose his secret if he didn’t do things like steal her belongings, pass the sculpture to Iris, and God knows what else you asked him to do. By that point you’d truly convinced yourself that you played no part in my mother’s death.”
“If she hadn’t mated with him and joined that pack—”
“Oh, everyone else is to blame but you, aren’t they? The person who you should be angry at is yourself. You played Cruz. You armed him. You, you, you. If you’d have exposed Cruz for what he was, I wouldn’t have almost died yesterday. That’s right, I almost died. That’s on you.”
“And you deserve to be dead for that alone,” Trick rumbled.
Brad swerved to face him, eyes widening as he noted that both Ryan and Marcus were closing in on him. Brad turned to her. “You wouldn’t let them hurt me, Frankie. I’m your uncle. Hell, I’ve been a father to you all these years—”
“Because you helped Cruz murder mine,” she snapped. “And now you’re going to pay for it.”
Fear flashed across Brad’s face, but he jutted out his chin. “You can’t prove that I did anything. There’s no evidence. If you go to the police—”
“There would be no point in handing you over to the police, although I did record your confession on the cell phone in my pocket. See, the crimes occurred on pack territory, which is out of the police’s jurisdiction. Even if there was some way they could charge you for something like conspiracy to commit murder, a good lawyer would get you off—especially since recent events prove that Cruz wasn’t entirely stable. No, the human authorities wouldn’t make you pay for what you did. But someone has to.”
Sweat beaded on his forehead. “I’m not responsible for Cruz’s actions. He was the one who stabbed and strangled your mother. He was the one who fired the bullet that killed Christopher. If Cruz really wanted them dead so badly, he’d have done it regardless.”
“Maybe Cruz would still have killed my parents without you feeding his anger and giving him that gun—I guess we’ll never know. But you gave him that gun knowing he intended to kill my father. You say you loved Caroline, but it sure didn’t bother you that her killer wasn’t brought to justice. No, you protected his identity and let my father take the blame for something he never did. Heartbreakingly, both his parents died believing he was truly guilty of it.
“Because of you, I lost my parents and was taken from my mate, my paternal family, and my pack. Call me a bitch, but I can’t let any of that go. I don’t think either of my parents would want me to—not after all the pain you caused, not after I almost died. And I really can’t expect Trick to let it go. Not when we’ve been apart all these years because of what you did, and not when you betrayed me and my mother the way you did—he’s my mate, he’ll never be able to overlook that someone hurt me that way.” She cut her gaze to Trick. “I’m done.”
Brad’s eyes bulged as Trick grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. “Wait! What are you doing?”
“Like I said, you need to pay for what you did,” Frankie told him, astonished she could sound so very calm.
“They’ll kill me!”
“Maybe. To be honest, I don’t want to know what they’ll do to you. All I’ve asked is that they make you . . . disappear. They’ve assured me they can stage things so that it looks like you packed your shit and left. People will certainly believe that when they hear the recorded confession and I tell them how I assured you that I’d be sharing it.”
Fear blazed in his eyes. “This will destroy Marcia and Geoffrey.”
“You should have thought about that before you gave Cruz that gun,” said Frankie. “But I think it’s been a very long time since you’ve thought of anyone but yourself.” With that, she turned her back on Brad and strode over to the SUV.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Four months later
Frankie carefully swiped the fine paintbrush over the clay fang, making it a dull white to match the others. It was the last unpainted tooth within the ugly, prehistoric dire wolf’s mouth. She hadn’t yet decided whether to add drops of red paint to the jaws. She probably should, since she’d streaked it over his lower legs—as if he’d trampled through a river of blood during his travels. His claws were thick and long, but one was sharper and longer than the others; it looked more like a knife, and she’d painted it bloodred.
Yes, she was well aware that the creature symbolized Cruz in some way. He’d been metaphorically knee-deep in blood. He’d killed her mother with a knife. And if anyone were to look beneath the large paws of the sculpted wolf, they would see black spots resembling the gun residue that should have been on his hands. Christopher’s finger might have been on the trigger, but he never would have shot himself. His death was on Cruz.
After clearing the rubble and unearthing Cruz’s body, the Bjorn wolves had confirmed that he was in fact killed by the cabin’s collapse. His family was naturally devastated by everything. They were mourning him while also hating what he’d done and feeling ashamed for being blind to it all. Clara felt particularly guilty, knowing the pain her son had caused her best friend. So guilty, in fact, that she hadn’t felt she deserved to attend Frankie and Trick’s mating ceremony—nothing they’d said had managed to convince her otherwise.
Putting down the paintbrush, Frankie took a swig from her water bottle. The mating ceremony had gone exactly how Iris had told Frankie it would. The whole thing had still felt almost magical. Her wolf had loved every second of it.
The after-party had been a blast. Taryn had tried getting Greta rotten drunk, but she’d had no luck. The old woman apparently wasn’t going to take any chances that she’d pour out any more of her true feelings.
By unspoken mutual consent, Frankie and Greta had decided never to speak of the karaoke incident. Trick thought it occasionally amusing to hum “Greased Lightning” under his breath when she and Greta were in the same room, but Frankie didn’t find anything funny about it.
With the exception of Bracken, who was still deep in grief, the Mercury Pack had attended the ceremony. There had also been some other outsiders, such as Trick’s parents, Makenna’s coworkers, and even Abigail.
During the after-party, Frankie had asked Uma why she’d suddenly been able to push aside her anger with Trey. She’d said, “When Trick went into the basement to rescue you, I saw the same panic on Trey’s face that I knew was on mine. He shoved everyone out of the way, determined to be the one who pulled you, Trick, and Marcus out of there. How can I be angry with someone who would risk themselves for my son that way?”
Her change of behavior toward Trey hadn’t relaxed Trick. In fact, it seemed to Frankie that he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. But so far, so good.
Frankie hadn’t invited her grandparents to the ceremony, since she’d known it would be as hard for Trick as it would be for them. He was still tremendously pissed at them, and she suspected that he always would be,
purely for keeping him and Frankie apart for so long.
After Brad “disappeared,” she’d gone to her grandparents’ house and played the recording of his confession. At first they’d been outraged and insisted that the voice didn’t belong to Brad. She’d expected their reaction, though, so she’d simply left. A week later, Geoffrey called and told her they’d found her mother’s ring and dress among Brad’s possessions.
They still weren’t yet ready to come to terms with Brad’s involvement in the murders, but they were no longer accusing Frankie of lying. They were also struggling to accept Christopher’s innocence. They’d spent so long hating him that they couldn’t quite shake it off. Still, they were no longer insisting that she shouldn’t have any involvement with her pack. In fact, they occasionally asked how things were going with Trick.
Frankie doubted they would ever visit pack territory or be happy that she was part of a pack, but they seemed to have lost their bitterness about it. They’d even hinted that she and Trick could one day go to their house for lunch. None of them were ready for that yet, but it was enough that they were making progress.
Geoffrey had asked if she knew what had happened to Brad, and she’d replied, “No.” Whether he believed her or not, she couldn’t be sure. But she’d never asked what had been done to Brad; she didn’t want to know, and that seemed to suit Trick just fine.
A few weeks after the ceremony, Frankie visited Christopher’s grave with Trick, who didn’t release her hand even once—as if to remind her that she wasn’t alone. And as she’d stared down at her father’s grave, a lump had formed in her throat. Not just at what he’d been through and the years with him she’d lost, but at the fact that he hadn’t even been able to be buried alongside his mate. Such a thing seemed cruel, but she doubted she’d be able to convince her grandparents to relocate Caroline’s body. That just made the whole thing even sadder.
Her nightmares had stopped, which had relieved Trick. She’d forgiven herself for not speaking up as a kid. But Marcus hadn’t yet forgiven himself for being drawn away from her on Bjorn territory that night. Roni also felt sincerely bad about it. In addition, Ally was bummed that she hadn’t foreseen the hostage situation, and she’d needlessly apologized to Frankie and Trick for it numerous times.