Sketch
"Yo, asshole, have you ever heard of picking up the damn phone when it rings?" Quinton Presley's voice trickled through my mind, dragging me from the first decent night of sleep I'd had in months.
The sheets draped over my body were ripped away. Moments later, a shocking blast of daylight poured in through the window and blinded me.
"The fuck are you doing in my room?" I growled, wincing and slapping a hand over my face to protect my eyes. "Goddamn, Pres, close the curtains."
"No can do," Presley replied. "Now, rise and shine, sunshine. You need to get your hungover ass out of bed and help me fix the shit-pile you helped make. And last time I checked, this was Chris's room, not yours."
And just like that, the depression I'd been drowning in for the last ten months resumed, pain and loss settling heavily on my chest.
Fuck, I hated waking up. Those couple of minutes between waking up and finding full awareness was bliss, but then my life came into focus, my reality caught up with me, and it hurt worse than the morning before.
"You need to lay off the booze, Capaldi," Presley continued. "You've missed two practices, your friends are worried, the guys on the team are frantic, and your coach is losing his mind. You're going to shit, man."
"What are you talking about?" I growled, taking in the sight of his fading black eye as he towered over me. Whatever. I wasn’t sorry for hitting him. He needed to stop getting involved in my business. "Damn, it's bright in here."
"You," he shot back. "I'm talking about you, Holden! It's Monday." He reached for the pillow under my head and yanked it away, clearly attempting to make me feel as uncomfortable as possible. "Did you know that?" he demanded, tossing my pillow away. "Do you even know where you are right now? Or what day it is?"
"Monday?" I repeated, confused as hell.
The last thing I remembered was drinking myself into a stupor on Friday night to both distract myself while I waited for Romi and to numb the pain.
Clearly, I achieved both goals.
Wincing, I slowly dragged myself into a sitting position. "Shit."
"Yeah, I'd say shit's an accurate word to describe your current predicament," Presley replied as he rummaged through my brother's possessions like it was his God-given right. "Looks like you had one hell of weekend locked in here by yourself, though. Congrats. I hope it was worth it." He pointed to the mountain of empty beer bottles piling up on the floor. "You know what, man? You're so deep in self-destructive mode, I'm impressed that you're coherent enough to speak to me." Narrowing his eyes, he hissed, "You do realize that alcohol poisoning is an actual medical emergency, right? Your organs shut down and you can die. As in death. As in never to be seen again." He shook his head. "Keep on binging on your daddy's whiskey and you'll be joining Chris sooner than you think."
"Why are you here?" I asked, ignoring the jibes. "What are you doing touching my brother's stuff?"
"I am here because you got the one person who can help us sent away," Presley replied in a condescending tone. Kicking a stack of empty bottles out of his way, he dropped to his knees and started pulling on the huge-ass rug draped over the polished hardwood flooring. "You fucking idiot."
I tensed. "What are you talking about?"
"Romi," he snapped, shoving the rug out of his way. "Ask me where she is right now?" he added, tracing his fingers over the floorboards of my brother's bedroom floor. "Come on, oh-wise-one. Ask me."
"Pres –"
"Ask me!"
"Fine." I blew out a frustrated breath. "Where is she right now?"
"Funny you ask that," he replied, tone laced with sarcasm. "Because Romi, my best friend's girlfriend and the former love of your life, is currently being checked into a treatment center in Houston."
"As in Houston, Texas?" I sprang off the bed, heart thundering violently against my ribcage. "What the actual fuck?"
"Ah, so you are alive in there after all," he mused, still on his knees feeling the floor for something I couldn’t see. "Good. For a while there, I thought we buried you with your brother –" His words broke off when he found what he was looking for. "Bingo," he whispered, carefully lifting a small slate of loose timber from the floorboard. "Thank you, Chris Capaldi, you absolute mastermind" He reached into the small hole and retrieved a box – from inside my brother's goddamn floor.
"What the hell is that?" I demanded; quite frankly, stunned by what I was seeing.
"What do you think it is?" Presley replied, setting the box on the floor beside him before re-covering the hole with the slate of timber. "It's a box, genius."
"Clearly," I spluttered. "But how did you know it was there?" I shook my head in utter fucking confusion. "Why does Chris have a hole in his fucking floor?" My gaze drifted to the small, varnish-stained box and awareness smacked me straight in the face. "I made that for him."
"Yes, you did," Presley agreed, dragging the rug back into place, concealing Chris's apparent hiding place. "For his tenth birthday. He got you a football and you gave him this." Shrugging, he added, "Personally, I thought it looked like shit, but Chris loved it."
"I didn’t have any money to buy him a present," I shot back, defensive. "Whatever. It doesn’t matter –" I shook my head, concentrating on the here and now. "What the hell is my brother doing with a secret hiding place in his floor, and why do you know where it is?"
"Your brother had secrets," Presley replied, blowing the dust from the lid of the box. "Some of them, you know. Some of them, I know. Some of them, Romi knows. Together, we make up a triangle, with each of us containing a crucial piece of the puzzle." Opening the lid of the box, Presley dug around inside, scattering notes and papers all over the floor before retrieving one specific, folded-up piece of paper. "It was the only way Chris could tell us what was happening without telling us," he added. "It was the only way he could protect us."
"We're a triangle?" I gaped at him. "And tell us what? Protect us from what?"
"And here's the best part; we don’t even know what we know," he continued to ramble, not bothering to explain a damn thing to me. "Not consciously, at least. The clever bastard leaked his secrets into us. Spoon-fed us like babies for months – directly into our subconscious. He saw it coming, you know? Like Cassandra of Troy, Chris predicted his outcome – his fate. He knew that once he stepped on the land mine, there was no coming back. Your brother was the smartest person I've ever known, Sketch, and he couldn’t get himself out of this, which doesn’t say much for our chances of surviving this. But Chris didn’t leave us defenseless. We just have to put our heads together. If we work as a team, we just might be able to figure this out and get out in one piece."
"Okay, you need to shut the fuck up with all that brainiac talk and start speaking human," I warned. "I know you and my brother are supposed to be a freaky breed of genius, but I'm telling you now, in my humble, regular-sized brain opinion, that you are batshit crazy. Hell, my parents think I'm unstable, but you are on a whole other level entirely, Quinton. Seriously."
"You really don’t get it, do you?" he mused, not taking offence. "All of this time and you have no idea what's going on around you? Right under your nose."
"No, I don’t know what's going on," I choked out. "All I know is that I woke up with the hangover from hell and now you're here, ranting and raving about triangles and digging up the fucking floor!"
"Jesus." He choked out a humorless laugh. "Chris was right. You're a complete innocent. Typical football jock, built like a brick shit-house, but you're like a defenseless lion cub alone in the wilderness." He sighed heavily. "Chris was right to try to keep you out of this. You're a walking liability. And Romi? She's even more innocent than you are. She's like a baby bird without wings." He groaned loudly. "Christ, I'm doomed."
"Pres," I warned, bristling. "Quit the riddles and start explaining, man."
"Your brother was murdered," he stated. "You know that much, right?"
I stiffened. "Never doubted it for a minute."
"And Romi?" he pressed, tearing his attention away from the box to glare at me. "Have you finally come to terms with the fact that she didn’t do it?"
Pain sliced through me, but I forced myself to nod. "Yes."
"Good," he bit out. "Took you long enough."
"She was with him that night," I growled, hearing myself explain. "She was driving. She kept lying and avoiding me. What else was I supposed to think?"
"Outside the box, Holden," Presley replied with a disappointed sigh. "You were supposed to use your imagination and think outside the box – or better again, your instincts. The ones you buried deep down inside. You know – the part of you that told you to stop being a bastard to the girl you love."
"I don’t have an imagination," I grumbled.
"Yeah, well, you sure had a big one when it came to thinking the worst of Romi," he reminded me.
I flinched. "Yeah, I know what I did, Pres." I knew I'd screwed up beyond repair. "I don’t need a lecture from you."
"Fine," he conceded. "Consider the lecture put on ice for the time being. Tell me what she told you."
"She said four men followed Chris that night." I didn’t feel bad telling Presley this. Romi said it herself that Chris told her we could trust him. "She said that Chris stumbled on something he shouldn’t have, and he's dead because of it. He told her that the three of us could only trust each other, and nothing in Pocketful is as it seems – oh, and she seems shit-scared of our parents and authority." I shrugged. "I couldn’t get much more out of her. She's fucking terrified, Pres. She can barely get three words out without having a panic attack."
"Smart girl," he said proudly. "She's been protecting herself without knowing it. Catatonia has a level of security to it, don't you think?"
"Cata-what-ia?"
"Muscular rigidity and mental stupor," he explained. "Obviously, Romi hasn't been in a true catatonic state, but think about her behavior these past ten months since Chris died. She's been a glorified zombie, Sketch. Mute, body rigid, head constantly bowed, inability to make and keep eye contact, lack of interest in the world around her." He shrugged. "If you can't think, then you can't talk, and if you can't talk, then you're not a threat, and if you're not a threat…then you're still here."
"But what does it all mean?" I demanded.
"Everything she told you is the truth," he replied. "Nothing in Pocketful is as it seems, and Chris was being stalked, but by more than just the four men that found him that night, and it was happening for months. At school. At swim practice. He couldn't walk down the street without being tailed. He was good at losing them, too. Good at evading them until…well, you know."
"Jesus Christ," I choked out, growing frantic. "Why didn’t he tell anyone?"
"He did," Presley replied. "He told me."
"And you did nothing?" I accused, furious.
He held up a finger. "I have a question before you start blaming and shaming."
"Go on," I bit out, hands balled into fists.
"Are you genuinely this obtuse or is it an act?"
I glowered at him. "I am not obtuse."
"Okay, not an act." He nodded to himself, seemingly satisfied with his own answer. "And definitely a baby lion all alone in the wilderness." He nodded again and the movement caused his glasses to slip from his nose. "Gotcha."
"I am not a baby lion, either, asshole."
"Of course you're not," he said in a patronizing tone, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "Now, listen very carefully to what I'm about to say."
Jaw ticking, I folded my arms across my chest and nodded stiffly.
Presley inhaled a deep breath and then blew my world apart with his truth.
"I don’t know the ins and outs of what happened to Chris, you aren't the only one he was trying to protect, but I do know that he was looking for dirt on Victoria Quatello when he stumbled upon something else."
"Cal's fiancée?" My brows shot up. "Vic-whore-ia?"
"Yeah." Presley nodded. "She's fucking your father, by the way. Has been for years." He cringed. "Sorry about that. But on the bright side, Chris and I managed to snap some pics of them getting down with their nasty selves if you ever need the leverage."
I shrugged, not one bit surprised to hear this. Victoria was a whore and my father was a bigger one. She even tried to come onto me a few times – when I was fourteen.
"Does Romi know?" I asked, rubbing my jaw.
"Considering telling her would have involved having to explain why your fathers like to swap naked girls like Pokémon cards, Chris decided she didn’t need to know."
I blew out a sharp breath. "Sick fucks."
"Agreed." He grimaced. "Some of the photos we managed to snag were ugly, man. I'm talking some real kinky, whips and chains shit." A shudder rolled through him. "And they don’t just share their side-pieces, dude. They wife share, too. Your Mama and Cal, and probably Chris Sr. and Loretta when she was alive –"
"Don’t tell me anything else," I warned, stomach churning, already far too familiar with their fucked-up arrangement. "Christ."
Men with money were all the same.
They thought they were invincible.
They thought they owned the world and everyone in it.
Hell, both Cal and my father had been having extramarital affairs for years now and I had no doubt in my mind that they had side-girls tucked away in every city they traveled to.
For Christ's sake, I had walked in on Dad banging Miss Cherry once. He didn’t even stop fucking her when I walked into the kitchen. Pants around the ankles and dick fully inserted in the staff, he didn’t bat an eyelid at my presence. He just told me to grab what I needed from the fridge and go.
I'd been so worried about Mama finding out and being heartbroken that I could hardly eat.
For weeks, I walked around in a trance-like state, panicking and brooding, until I walked outside to the pool house one night and found Mama screaming and panting beneath Serge, our teenage pool boy, while both my father and Cal watched.
I knew some people were into adventurous sex, which was fine by me. I didn’t give a damn what anyone else did as long as they weren't harming anyone and left me out of it. But at the time, I felt like I was a fucking magnet for perverts, and at thirteen years old, all I could think was: I hope these assholes are using condoms.
I never told Chris or Romi because I didn’t want them to suffer the same mental trauma that I had, but honestly, nothing surprised me anymore.
Hypocrites and liars.
I was surrounded by all of them.
"Fine by me," Presley replied. "I don’t want the visual of Cal Dillon's wrinkly ball sac in my mind any more than you do."
"Goddamn, Presley!" I groaned, sinking down on the bed. "Did you have to say that?"
"Back to Chris?" he suggested, gagging.
"Yes," I agreed with a shudder. "Back to Chris."
Inhaling several calming breaths, Presley composed himself and continued to terrorize me in a completely different way. "I've been finding notes from Chris."
"Notes?"
Presley nodded. "Little one-word hints and clues scribbled down on scraps of paper."
"Clues to what?"
"To what he wasn't supposed to know," he explained. "I don’t know why I didn’t think to check here before now." He shook his head, tone laced with disappointment. "I've literally combed trash cans and every textbook and notepad he's ever owned when I should have been looking in here."
"And that?" I demanded, pointing to the folded-up paper in his hands. "Another clue?"
"That, with a little luck, is the last will and testament of Chris Capaldi Jr." Unfolding the note, Presley stared down at the page and frowned. "Nope. My bad. Just another dead end."
Expelling a frustrated breath, he tossed the note aside and rummaged frantically in the box. "There has to be more than a name," he grumbled, quickly scanning other notes and pieces of paper. "I need more than a name, dammit!"
"Dead end?" Furious, I stalked towards him and snatched the note off the floor.
"Jacob Toretto?"
I stared down at my brother's handwriting and the two words etched across the page before looking at Presley.
"Who the fuck is Jacob Toretto?"
"I don’t know," Presley replied, unfolding every sheet of paper until the floor was littered with scraps of torn out pages, all marked with Chris's handwriting. "But if I was to make an educated guess, I'd say that your brother knew his killer."
"What?" My hands shook violently. "This guy?" I stared at the name, imprinting it in my memory forevermore. "You think this Jacob Toretto guy killed Chris?"
"Or ordered the hit," he muttered, head bent, brows furrowed in concentration.
I stiffened. "Like a criminal gang?"
"Clearly," he drawled. "Who else would strike down a teenage boy?"
"I don’t know."
"Well, neither do I."
"Then how is a name gonna help us?"
"It's a name," Presley said with a shrug. "One more than we had yesterday. It's better than nothing, and with three heads working together instead of one, maybe we have a shot at solving this." Grabbing fists full of notes, he shoved them into his pockets before rising to his feet. "Now, put some pants on and let's go get Romi."
I balked. "Romi?"
"Yes, Romi." Presley rolled his eyes in exasperation. "She's the third piece of Chris's jigsaw, and believe me when I tell you that whatever we don’t know, Chris made damn sure that she knows."
"So, what are you proposing we do here, Pres?" I demanded, feeling my heart thud wildly in my chest. "You just told me that Cal checked her into a rehab in Texas."
"I'm proposing that we check her out," he replied. "By any means necessary. Now, let's go."
