Almost Innocent by Carina Adams

Author:Carina Adams [Adams, Carina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-06-06T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Declan

It had never crossed my mind.

Once, not so very long ago, I knew that I couldn’t mention Mark’s name. Not around my parents, not around Fi, and never, ever around Gabby. They hated him, blamed him for things that weren’t his fault.

He was my best friend, my blood, and I refused to turn my back on him even though everyone else was quick to cast the first stone.

That didn’t mean that I talked about him though. I would never downplay what had happened to Gabby or condemn her for projecting her fear of my brother onto Mark. It made sense—I’d told her he would protect her while I was gone and he hadn’t been there to do it. The human mind was funny—when the person who hurt us died, we either forgave them for their sins, sainting them and pretending that they weren’t as bad as they were, or we placed their guilt onto someone else, because it’s really hard to hate the deceased.

My parents didn’t get a free ride though. I’d never let them forget just how angry I was about their treatment of their nephew. They claimed that he was responsible for what had happened to Dusty.

My mom, in the dark about what had really happened that night, felt that Mark’s drug problem had led Dustin down a path from which he couldn’t return. In her mind, Dusty would have never been dealing if it hadn’t been for Mark.

My father, on the other hand, had been completely aware of what kind of monster his eldest son was. Yet he held Mark responsible for not being there to protect Gabby and his grandchild. He didn’t seem bothered by the fact Dustin was dead, yet he was extremely angry that Gabby had suffered the way she had.

I thought they were each as guilty as Mark. Hell, I was just as guilty.

Fi had hated Mark for years before Dustin’s death, though she’d never told me why. Whenever I brought him up, she turned cold and told me that he deserved whatever he got. When I pushed for details, she informed me that sometimes I didn’t need to know everything, or that I had bigger things to worry about with Gabby. I couldn’t argue with either point, but that didn’t make me any less determined to get to the bottom of her feelings toward him.

My parents thought that Mark had disappeared the day after Dusty died, before the police could even question him. In reality, he and his mother had hidden so my father couldn’t retaliate. Not that I would have let him. There wasn’t much Dad and I had disagreed on, but that was a point I wouldn’t back down from. I had bloodlust over what had happened to Gabs, even more than my old man, but there was no one left to punish.

So since Dustin’s death, I’d been careful not to mention Mark’s name, not to acknowledge that I knew where he was, and I’d learned to ignore the hate spewed toward him when someone did bring him up.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.