Devotion (3) ✔

9 - Santiago

"You found him?" She frowned, still not understanding the severity of my confession. "What do you mean you found him. I didn't know you were looking for him."

"I didn't want to tell you and then disappoint you if I didn't. But I'd spent the last two week focusing everything on that and I finally got it." I explained. She'd been disappointed all her life, I didn't want to add to her sorrows.

She looked at me, quizzically.

"So what now?" She asked as if not understanding the severity of my information. I reached out, placed my palm on her heart. She didn't even flinch. Her heart was racing like she just ran a marathon.

"Whatever you want to do?" I ran my hand down her arm, not wanting to break the skin to skin contact. She huffed out a nervous laugh, more like a self-deprecating one.

"You think after all these years, the detective is going to do anything? I mean who's going to care?" She stood up, paced the length of the kitchen. "I can't believe this. I thought... I thought that part of my life was done Tiago. I mean, I was doing my make today and watching videos and looking at blogs thinking, hmm, why don't I start my lifestyle blog or a makeup blog or something. I have all the time in the world now to do... whatever I wanted and not hide away my life." She looked at me. "Now you come and tell me you found the guy who killed my family. What do you want me to do?"

I stood up because she was panicking. I did this to her. I was supposed to take care of her in every way and even if it meant making decisions so life didn't overwhelm her.

"Listen." I grabbed her shoulder to steady her. "I'll give you two options." It grounded her, calming ever so slightly, she looked up at me. "We can sit down and eat." She shook her head. "No, you will eat. I'm not having you go hungry under my roof and while we do that I'll tell you about what I found. Then I'll give you two options, we can proceed with one or both or none. Okay?"

It took her a minute to process things but her heart rate decreased. I was getting fairly used to putting my hand on her heart to detect her emotions. Sometimes, I wrapped my hand around her neck to feel the pulse but that was usually around sex, this was much more serious.

We sat back down and I waited for her to start eating. After a couple of bites, I started.

"I have a couple of cops in my payroll. I asked one of them to check into the cold case of your parents. Turns out, there were no investigation done. None. No security cameras checked, no witness were found. Literally, nothing was done." I explained.

"So detective Khalelo Barnabas was lying." She was a quick study and knew exactly where I was going with this.

"He's living rather lavishly for someone who's a detective still." She nodded at my agreement.

"Do you know who paid him off?" She asked, she was holding her knife like she was about to stab someone. Hopefully not me.

"It was a Judge. Judge McCain. His son was the one who was driving. Scott McCain." I cut to the chase. She sucked in a sharp breath, finally hearing the name of the killer was a big blow but it had to be done. I needed to know how she wanted to proceed with this investigation.

"How do you know?"

"The cop I told you about, he's also a detective in a different precinct, he dug up where the money into Barnabas's account was coming from. It was through a shell company that's linked to Scott McCain. In a way if something happens and they find out, Judge McCain claim plausible deniability as he has no direct link to it. Therefore, he believes Scott was driving the car and Barnabas was paid to cover it up." I explained.