“She wanted you to know you were a shitty father who screwed up your kids. Caro played nice and made the best of it, but underneath it all, guess what?” My voice had gotten louder with each breath. I was shouting now. “She hated you as much as I do.”

I stormed out of the room and slammed the front door behind me. What Caro had written in her letter was true—she had always avoided any confrontation. I thrived on it. But at that moment, I had to get away from him. I’d hoped to get a clue about what was going on with the Thraxtons. Instead, I’d seen Caro’s unvarnished truths about our family. Nothing could have prepared me for that.

CHAPTER 30 THEO

CHAPTER 30

THEO

“What are you doing?” I asked, staring down the barrel of the handgun. I wasn’t afraid so much as bewildered. I had hunted Mehmet Badem down to answer questions about the night Mirelle died, only to learn he’d rather shoot me than talk.

Badem stared at me, his hand quivering slightly. “I know all about you,” he said. “I never went to the police. I never talked. Why would you come here? I will not let you kill me.”

“All I want are answers,” I said, trying to sound confident and blasé, as if a gun weren’t pointed at my chest. “About the night Mirelle Beaulieu died.”

“I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I swear to you I didn’t.”

His words hit me like a tidal wave. I was there to ask him what he’d witnessed; it had never occurred to me that he might be Mirelle’s killer.

“I’m not accusing you of that,” I said. “But I remember your face. I saw you the night Mirelle died. You . . . I think you carried me. You put me on a plane. My sister, Juliet, was there.”

He nodded. “I remember her. She was angry. She said, ‘Drop him.’ She wanted me to throw you on the floor of the plane, I think. I put you in a seat and buckled you up.”

“It sounds like I should be thanking you. Please put the gun down. I’m not here to hurt you. All I want are answers.”

Badem stared into my eyes for what felt like a month before lowering his gun. He rolled up the lower half of his shirt, revealing a thin torso with two bullet holes in it. They were old and healed, but the flesh around them had settled in jagged mounds, like miniature volcanoes.

“That’s what happened the last time I took an assignment from Harris,” he said.

It jolted me, hearing the name of my father’s trusted lieutenant. My father had grown the business with shady side ventures, and Harris and Klaus were his partners in those crimes. “I would’ve jumped off a cliff rather than work with Harris on anything.”