Chapter Twenty
I stood there frozen. My eyes glued to photo. All the color drained from my face.
"Who is he?" Alyssa asked in confusion as she peered up at me. I glanced at her briefly before I looked down at the photo. After a moment I responded in a low emotionless voice. "That was my father,"
She gave me a puzzled look. "He was? What happened to him?" She asked me with a tilt of her head. I could feel a low hum of anger bubble within me. She asking me too many questions.
"That's a good question that you won't get the answer to," My tone was cold and clipped. Her face dropped slightly, and her mouth clamped shut.
The photo displayed an image of our family portrait. My mother, father, siblings and I were smiling brightly. We was dressed formally in all white. The photo could've been a picture perfect all American family, had it not been for the fact that every face besides my father's was scratched out.
I flipped the photo over and there was a message scribbled neatly at the bottom.
Axton Family 1999
Recognize him now? xoxo
All this is beginning to make sense. The man I had killed in the first photo was my father. No wonder I couldn't find a file on him. This was long before I began to build my company. The second person I killed when I turned 18 years old. This was 6 years ago.
One of my family members or a family friend must be behind this. How they found out about me killing daddy dearest is beyond me. Last time I checked the only person that knew about me killing him, is my Uncle Mason and he died 4 years ago from a heart attack.
This really complicated everything. I had no problem killing a family friend or someone who cared about my father. But if any member of my family is behind this..
I will have to kill them and cover my tracks.
It's not something I'm particularly fond of doing, my family is annoying as hell. But I was against killing them in cold blood regardless but I can't allow anyone to sabotage my business, family or not. They probably have no issue killing me soon if I'm not careful.
"Alyssa do me a favor? Issue a lockdown," I ordered her and she nodded quickly before doing as I said. This is more serious than I thought. I will not lose anything else, I've already lost too much. I've decided that no one can come in or come out unless they have permission from me.
Until I catch whoever this is, everyone will stay put. I'm going to start looking into his file which means I'll have to take a trip to the police station. I'm going get a friend of mine to pull some strings so I don't have to kill any officers to get what I want. I know there is no way they're going to hand me anything to do with him since I was the one to kill him.
My immediate family may not know about me killing him, but the state of California does.
Even though it was a long time ago, I remember that day like it was yesterday. It still left a bitter taste in my mouth.
"Caine! Get down here," My father screamed from downstairs and I huffed in frustration. He's been screaming for me for the last 5 minutes. Why don't he understand that I'm coming? I can barely enjoy being a high school graduate with him constantly screaming at me all the goddamn time. It's June first and I just wanted to sleep in today.
