Dove Sport

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Blood of the Covenant

Dara felt as though her entire body had been plunged into a cold bath.

I think she might have killed Seth Lark.

Nick's words were still ringing in her ear an hour later. He'd told her how he'd accompanied Meredith to her parent's business party on Halloween and the conversation he'd overheard between Mr. and Mrs. Lark. Dara had literally just accepted that her father could be guilty and now she had to face the fact that this all could have been set up? And that Seth had been caught in the crossfire? It was just too much. Her hands itched to do something, anything. Realy, she wanted to storm downstairs and confront her mother- ask her if she'd killed that boy. At the same time, the very thought filled her with nausea.

She wondered if Blair knew yet, or Arsen. Dara told herself she'd tell them if they didn't. She laid in bed for an interminable amount of time. When her mother and grandmother's voices quieted downstairs and she heard the sounds of them readying for bed, Dara sat up. Slowly, so as not to alert them she was still up. Downstairs in her grandmother's old office, there were boxes from her father's attorney containing legal and financial records for her father's business.

Her eyes itched so she took out her contacts and dug her glasses out of her desk drawer. Pulling her hair up, Dara picked the box closest to her to start with. Highlighter at the ready, Dara leafed through packets upon packers of financial papers. When she finished going through that box she moved towards the next one, and then the one after that. Eyes tired from reading, Dara picked up a spreadsheet of monthly payments from the last two years and resolved to go to bed after looking it over. Her eyes caught on one word as they skimmed down the page: Lark Enterprises. Without hesitation, Dara highlighted it in pink. She followed the money with greedy eyes, skipping over everything else. Her father's company had been receiving monthly payments of $25,000 from Lark Enterprises for at least the past two years- she'd have to check the records that went back further, she realized- up until seven months ago. The same month her father was arrested.

Dara set the paper down and stood up. This wasn't proof by any means, but it was convenient. Pacing her room, she considered the implications. If the Larks had been in business with her father and had struck some sort of deal that had them paying large sums of money they'd rather keep, then it would be beneficial to get her father out of the picture. Then again, the Larks had to know there'd be some sort of retaliation. Dara stopped abruptly. If the Larks really had been the reason for her father's arrest, it wasn't out of the question to believe her parents may have retaliated. Her father was arrested in May, and Seth had been killed in June. Dara didn't know much about assassinations, but she figured if her parents were connected to people like Nick's family, it wasn't out of the picture to consider they could have arranged for Seth to be killed. Maybe her parents hadn't killed him directly, but they still could have had a hand in it.

Her head hurt just thinking about it.

Considering her mother could have killed Seth on her husband's orders, Dara thought it best not to tell Lucia what she knew. At least, not yet. If she ruled out her parents killing Seth, then she could point this out to the attorney. Dara set the papers back into their box and slumped onto her bed. She set her glasses on the floor and rubbed at her eyes. Eventually, she fell into a fitful sleep.

When she woke up the next morning, Dara couldn't bring herself to get out of bed. She heard her grandmother reading to go to church, and the low murmur of her mother's voice as she made coffee. Dara knew that she needed to get up, to get ready for school, to act as if everything was normal in her life, but she just couldn't. Her grandmother left and Dara's mother never came up to see what her daughter was up to: hours slipped by. She missed the first period, then the second, then the third. Her phone buzzed but she couldn't find the energy to read her messages. Around three she managed to rouse herself, peeling away from her sheets and kicking off her quilts. She crept downstairs, hoping to not speak to anyone. Luckily, her mother and grandmother seemed to be out. Dara slipped a bag of chips under her arm and retreated to her room, and life went on.