“Still clever, even just minutes before I finally get rid of you once and for all. I have to say, Tristan, you are one tough foe to eliminate.”
Shaking my head, I wasn’t sure I wanted to have this be my last conversation of my life, but he left me with little choice. The guy was a homicidal madman but even more, a colossal asshole. “It didn’t have to be like this, Karl. You were my father’s friend.”
He blew cigar smoke in my direction and let out a deep laugh. “Friend? You don’t know much at all, son. I would have figured that by now you would have found out I was never your father’s friend.”
“Then you were my mother’s lover. One would think that would count for something. I can’t imagine she’d want her son killed by the man she loved.”
The smug expression slid from his face, replaced by a hint of sadness for only a moment. But then the nasty fuck was back again. “Oh, so you know about that?”
“I know she loved you and you seemed to love her.”
“I adored her. I may not have had the money your father had, but I could have made her happy.”
“It would have been nice if someone did,” I said quietly, unsure how I felt about agreeing with the man about to kill me.
“But she left me. For him! I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t,” he said with venom in his voice.
“She had no choice. Once Taylor and I came along, she had to stay. She’s been dead for five years. Maybe it’s time to forgive.”
Karl stood from his seat and walked over to the bar to pour himself a drink. When he turned around with the glass in his hand, I was struck at how much he reminded me of my father. The few times I’d watched Victor Stone conduct business, he’d had a glass of scotch in his hand each time. That’s what this was to Karl now. Business. But it had a lot of the personal involved too.
He walked back and took a seat in front of me again, the ice cubes in the amber liquid clanking against the side of the glass. “Sometimes there can be no forgiveness, son. Sometimes all you’re left with is hatred as pure as the blood that courses through your veins.”
“So you won’t forgive my father or mother and decided to kill me instead? Seems pretty fucked up. You have nothing left, Karl. Can you possibly hate me so much that you have to kill me? Does the fact that you loved my mother mean nothing now?”
He drank a gulp of scotch and took a deep breath before he exhaled slowly, as if some weight had been removed from him. “If only she’d met me first. You know, I used to wish that you and your brother were my sons. Twins ran in her family, so maybe we could have had twins. I never liked your brother, Tristan. Presumptuous fuck that he was, he thought he was too important to deal with the likes of me, even as a teenager. You were different, though. More like me. He was all books and studying, but not you. I could have liked you. I did like you. You’re a lot like her. I see her in your eyes, even now.”
“You mean the one that’s nearly swollen shut or the other one your men haven’t started on yet?”
“Your one flaw—do you know what that is?”
He took another drink of scotch while I shook my head, not interested in helping him in whatever the fuck this was. “Boyish charm?”
“Smart ass. Your one flaw is that you get attached to things, people. The drugs when you were younger. This girl now. She’s the reason I have to do all this.”
I chafed at his mention of Nina, tugging at the ropes that held my wrists behind me. “Don’t blame Nina for your being crazy, Karl. At least be truthful with yourself. You’re killing me because I found out about Cordovex and how Rider’s drugs were killing people. Nina had nothing to do with that.”
“But that’s not true, Tristan. If only you’d left things well enough alone. You couldn’t, though. That’s your mother in you. You found out about Joseph Edwards and then you saw his daughter. That getting attached thing, remember? Your weakness. All you had to do was throw some money at her. It wouldn’t have taken much. A middle class girl probably would have been happy if you paid off her fucking student loans. But no, you had to ride in on the white horse and save her. You did this.”
“My father had Joseph Edwards killed. Once I was CEO of Stone Worldwide, it was the least I could do to try to make up for that.” Why I felt the need to explain my actions to this psychotic madman was beyond me, but I did.
A laugh exploded from Karl’s face, startling me. “Your father never had a damn soul killed. He couldn’t be bothered. You think he was some kind of shark, but the truth was he was just a workaholic. Nothing more. Well, work and those goddamned secretaries he liked to sleep with. It was the work he loved more than the people around him, though. Hell, he loved work more than he loved Tressa. He made it easy for me to get to her.”
“The least you can do now is tell the truth, Karl. I know my father ordered Nina’s father to be killed. He’d gotten too close to exposing the story of Judge Cashen and his daughter’s deaths and Taylor’s part in that. I know all about the sexual harassment case and the Judge’s part in that.”
Slowly, Karl shook his head. “Right puzzle, wrong pieces, son. It’s true that Taylor got that girl pregnant. That smarmy fuck thought he could do a teenage girl, but he wasn’t smart enough to wear a fucking condom. That he didn’t want her was no surprise. She was a fucking child. A throwaway lay. But your father had nothing to do with her father’s death. That was me. I ordered his death and Edwards’.”
The realization that my family hadn’t directly ruined Nina’s family stunned me for a moment. All this time the guilt I’d shouldered had been wrong. My father hadn’t been a saint, but at least he hadn’t killed Nina’s father. “Why? Was it because Edwards was getting to close to the dirty laundry my father wanted hidden? Did he tell you to get rid of Cashen and Nina’s father?”
Chuckling, Karl lifted his glass and swallowed the last gulp of alcohol. “You have a misguided view of who Victor Stone was. A semi-talented businessman, his real skill was as a worker. He knew more about business than most men because he spent hours learning about it, but he would never have a threat eliminated. He preferred to fight it out. The competition is what he liked.”
As he stood to refill his glass, I asked, “Then why were they killed if my father wasn’t worried about losing the case or what Nina’s father had?”