“If she finds out that someone is trying to exhume Dad’s body for a paternity suit, that’ll really put her over the edge.”
I stop short on the threshold. “How did you find out about that?”
Harrison smirks. “I know everything. Now ... it’ll be interesting to see if you find out what it’s like to not have a claim to everything you think you deserve, big brother.”
26
Whitney
I don’t knowwhere to go. I don’t want to bring the destruction that comes with me back to Aunt Jackie’s yet.
Jesus, what if Mrs. Riscoff dies? Aunt Jackie will lose her job for sure.
Not that a job is life and death, but if Jackie were to get fired from The Gables, she’d probably have to move. Like she told me before, the Riscoffs own nearly everything and control the majority of the jobs in this town.
I never should have come home.
And why did I let him kiss me?
The last thing I need in my life is to complicate it by adding Lincoln Riscoff to the fray. I’ve only been home for a couple of days, and everything is already falling apart.
I don’t want to go through this again. The whispers. People talking about me wherever I go. I left Gable to make it stop, and that’s the same reason I escaped LA.
It doesn’t matter where I go—I’m cursed.
I point the car in the only direction that feels like a viable option. There’s only one person I know who would probably hand me an award if Sylvia Riscoff were to die just from seeing me.
My great-uncle Magnus.
* * *
His cabin is moreof a shack precariously held up on the side of the gorge that leads down to the river. I have no idea how he’s able to maneuver the rickety stairs that wind to the water since he doesn’t have a fancy hydraulic chair on a rail like the house next door, but the fishing pole on the platform below tells me he’s been out there recently.
I knock on the cracked wooden door and am met with the sound of a cocking shotgun.
“Who is it?”
Magnus always was a crotchety old man, and that hasn’t changed.
“It’s Whitney. Your grand-niece.”
After a few thumps, he pulls open the door. “I know who the hell you are. ’Bout damn time you came around to show some respect to your elders.”
“I think I might’ve killed Sylvia Riscoff.”
His rheumy blue eyes widen. “’Bout damn time someone did that too.” He jerks his bald head toward the inside of the house. “Come on in. I’ve got some moonshine that’ll go nice with this story.”
I step inside the cabin and pick my way across the uneven boards. For a man older than dirt, he moves with more pep in his step than I would have expected. In fact, he seems just as nimble as he was ten years ago.
He snags a mason jar off the counter and walks out the slider onto the deck. “Hear your daughter-in-law almost kicked it today, Commodore!”
Good Lord.Commodore Riscoff lives next door?
I don’t know when that happened, but that’s the worst thing I could imagine for these two. Commodore still lived at the Riscoff estate when I left Gable, but neither he nor Magnus ever miss a chance to rile the other and keep the feud alive.
Like that lit rag Magnus shoved in the gas tank of Commodore’s fancy Mercedes right before I left town. The car blew up just like in the movies, according to everyone who saw it. Of course, though, no oneactuallysaw Magnus do it, or at least no one would admit it. Regardless, there was no doubt in my mind that it was my great-uncle.
“The fuck you say, Gable?”