TEASE ( A Stepbrother Romance ) By Caitlin Daire

24

Chapter Twenty-Four

Cade

That fucking snake.

He'd done it. He'd actually fucking done it.

Charlotte had been right all along. Her last few sentences had left me with no doubt; there was just too much going on for it all to be a big coincidence. My father and his political consultant had set up the wedding shooting together, all for attention, and I felt sick to my stomach at the thought. They'd obviously paid off Adamson to shoot my little brother and take the fall for the whole thing, and my stomach roiled with revulsion as I pictured Evan lying in the hospital. He was the sweetest kid in the world, and he'd been left physically and emotionally scarred by what had happened to him. Who the fuck could actually do that to their own child just to further their own agenda?

A total psychopath, that's who. That's exactly what my father was.

He'd engineered this whole situation to make himself look like a hero in order to boost his profile in the eyes of the general public, and he'd even manipulated me and my brother into respecting himmore after it happened. I'd fallen for all his bullshit about wanting to spend more time with the family, and I'd even started to think that I'd been too harsh on him all these years that I'd thought he was a control freak asshole. Hell, I'd even been the one to finally go to him and tell him he needed to run for president...when of course, he was already planning to do it all along, and only pretending he wasn't going to so as to not draw any suspicion to himself. It was all a set-up, and I'd played right into his hands like a fool, giving him exactly what he needed to look innocent in all of this.

The thing that bothered me the most was that he'd chosen to hurt Evan. Why not me? I was bigger and stronger. I could've handled it better. But I guess having a younger, smaller child being injured seemed more sympathetic to certain members of the public, and that was why he'd chosen Evan to be the target.

I stared out the window in Charlotte's room, still mulling it all over in shock.

Now we knew why Adamson had aimed so badly. He'd been told to. No doubt my father and Greg had told him exactly where to aim-close enough to graze Evan so that he was hurt enough to get media attention, but not enough to maim or kill him. And of course Adamson could do exactly that-he was an expert marksman, as we all knew. He was already heading for jail anyway, as he'd had several arrest warrants out for him before it all happened, and he had a history of mental illness which would vilify him in the eyes of the media, making him look guilty before the dust had even settled.

He was basically the perfect man to hire for the job; no doubt he'd wanted the money for someone else in his life, seeing as he couldn't exactly use it himself in prison. A sick relative or pregnant girlfriend, perhaps. I also didn't doubt that Greg and my father-and whoever else was in on this whole disgusting scheme-had coached him on how to present himself during and after the attack in order to convince people that he'd truly had a psychotic break, when he was actually stable and coherent.

It was sick. Too sick to even imagine. And yet they'd all dreamed this plan up together, like the fucking pieces of shit they were.

"What are we going to do?" Charlotte asked, her eyes wide.

I squeezed my hands into such tight fists that my knuckles cracked, and I stared at the floor. "I don't know. But I want to fucking kill my father."

"I know. But you'd only be dragging yourself down to his level if you did that. And besides, we need to know for sure that it's true."

I jerked my head up to look at her. "What do you mean? Of course it's true. You're the one who realized in the first place and brought all of it up...please don't tell me you're going to play devil's advocate now."