Chapter Twenty-Eight
SEBASTIAN
“Are you ready to go?” I ask Grace as I enter the bedroom.
Grace startles, but I only glance up in time to see her wide eyes. “Is everything okay?” I frown.
“Sorry, you scared me,” she says, letting out a breath.
“Mason’s ready to go. You should probably leave now if you don’t want to be late.”
“I’m ready,” she says, jumping up from the bed and grabbing her camera. I love seeing her excited. Before she can walk past me, I hook my arm around her and swing her into me.
“Sebastian, what are you doing?” She laughs.
“Saying goodbye,” I answer before leaning down and taking her lips. She’s breathless when I pull away. “Have fun,” I say, planting another kiss on her lips before I let her go.
When she’s gone, I sit on the edge of the bed and let my head fall into my hands. I asked Mason to take Grace to her photography lesson tonight, so I could try to get some more work done. It’s been three weeks since we moved here and since Vincent called that board meeting. I don’t know if it’s the extra commute or the shit going on with Easton or how crazy busy the office is, but I’m wrecked.
Not to mention Deveigne. This is different from when we were looking for Ian Ross. We don’t have to find Deveigne. We know exactly where he is. It’s just fucking getting to him. Every day I regret not killing him when I had the chance. Now, it seems like I might never get another one.
Whilst we’ve found little else about him, Easton was able to get an address, except the place is locked up tight. There’s no way we could simply walk in like we did Ian’s. I’m not exactly sure where East got the information, but with all the time he’s been spending at Obsidian, I hope to hell he hasn’t got himself tangled up with Hale.
Falling back on the bed, I close my eyes. As my mind races with a million things, I feel the exhaustion take over.
Still lying sideways on the bed, I wake with a start, and I blink my eyes against the light overhead. Groaning, I sit up and rub a hand over my face. I stand from the bed with a sigh, but as the mattress shifts, something catches my eye. Something is peeking out from under Grace’s pillow. Curious, I lift the pillow, but what I find has my brows creasing.A journal?
Lifting the black journal from the bed, I turn it over in my hands. I’ve never seen Grace with a journal before. Is this why she was startled when I walked in? Because she didn’t want me to see it?
Put the book down.
Why would she hide it? My mind wars with itself, the book feeling heavy in my hands despite not weighing much. It’s wrong. Fuck, I know it is, but it’s like I can’t stop myself.
I sit back on the bed with a sigh, trying to talk myself out of it again to no avail. Unbinding the leather straps, I open the journal’s cover—her journal—and find a photograph sitting in the crease. A man and woman stand together, their arms wrapped around each other as they face each other. The man smiles, looking at his woman while she laughs, but the woman’s resemblance to Grace steals my breath.
Grace’s parents
Wanting a better look, I pick up the photo, but before I have a chance to, what I find underneath, has me freezing. Another photograph sits underneath the one of her parents. A photograph of me. Unlike the pictures of hers I’ve already seen, this one is different. This one is older. Years old.Did she take this one too?As far as I knew, Grace had only been following me for a few months before I discovered her. Before that, she was still trapped with her monster of an uncle. So how the hell did she get this? And why did she have it?
If there was any chance of me doing the right thing and putting this journal back where I found it, it was just shattered. Dread settles over me at what else I might find in here, but I find myself turning the first page anyway. The first entry is marked as being about seven years ago. As I read the words of a heartbroken little girl who just lost her only surviving parent, my heart breaks along with hers, tearing open the wound of losing my own parents. Flipping the pages, I skim the words every now and then, searching for something that might explain the photograph.
When I turn the next page, I find the paper warped like it had been wet, causing me to pause.Oh fuck.I have to swallow down the bile that climbs up my throat as I read the words written in shaky writing by a terrified girl. Confused.Hurt.She was just a child. Thirteen. How the fuck could a grown-ass man do that to his own fucking niece, or any child for that matter.I slam the journal shut.
Fucking hell.
Taking a moment to compose myself, I open the journal again, skipping right over the page I just read and the ones following it, only looking at the date of entries for something close to when the photo could have been taken.
With sickness still rolling in my stomach, I decide this is taking too long. So instead of flipping through the whole book, I open it to a page closer to the back in the hopes it might put me closer to what I want.
The date listed is the first thing to catch my eye. Being too recent, I’m about to go back when it actually registers.A few days before my parents were killed. The wave of grief that hits me has me nearly dropping the journal, but the first sentence has my stomach dropping.
They were going to die.
My heart starts to pound, and blood rushes through my ears.
She knew?
“What are you doing?”