Unlawful Lies: A Balestra Family Prequel Novella by Melanie Kingsley

Author:Melanie Kingsley [Kingsley, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Nicola

Sorrow is a really strange thing when it's tempered by delight.

My dad is dead, and the thought of never having to navigate the halls to avoid his fists again…In Edward’s arms, I sleep well for the first time I can remember.

There’s only the dull ease of liberation. Even Mom doesn’t bat an eye when I deliver the news to her in the morning. The usual gray cast to her face doesn’t lift, and she hardly smiles, yet something in the air releases the longer we stand in the kitchen.

She doesn’t ask me if I’m sure or how I found out. She doesn’t insist on overseeing the funeral arrangements herself when I assure her it’s being taken care of. There’s only the habitual pat of her hand on the top of my head and a hastily muttered “good girl” before she zombie-walks to the fridge.

She stills only on her way to the stove to make the same breakfast she always does for Daddy, as if realizing she never has to slave over it again.

For the rest of the day, things are calm. Blissful. The rooms are silent even when Scott stumbles back from his party, his smile blossoming like sunshine after a week of rain.

Families shouldn’t be happy when a husband, a father, dies, especially not when it’s murder.

Yet we are.

Edward will handle things for me. For us. For the first time in my life, I feel like I can lean on someone without terrible effort. The blissful feeling lasts for a handful of hours. Until it pops.

Until the newspaper shadows my downfall and police slap handcuffs over my wrists, tightening them to the point of pain.

“You have the right to an attorney,” the young cop on the left drones.

The one on the right, hardened to the point he is way past his prime, only glares at me as though he is hoping to pin every unsolved murder of the last five decades on my shoulders.

“If you cannot afford an attorney, then one will be⁠—”

Mom is somewhere in the background screaming at them to stop, telling them they’ve made a huge mistake and our lawyers are going to fight them tooth and nail.

I hold the other cop's stare with one of my own, and say nothing about the cuffs. This isn’t the time to break. My father might have been a drunk, a liar, and a slave master when the occasion called for it, but he taught me well. Better than he would have thought, considering I was the girl and thus someone to shrug off.

These cops won’t break me.

The lawyers will have me out in a few hours because no matter what evidence they claim ties me to the scene, it’s bogus. A ploy to take us down while we’re weak.

Someone leaked the death to the media.

My mind spins in useless circles as my gut churns and their questions buzz in my ears like a swarm of angry bees. This kind of thing isn’t unusual. Witnesses can place my brother at his party, the young one tells me, while my mother is too frail to leave the house for too long.

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