The punch was unexpected. Cole's fist slammed into Lance's face and his friend fell to the ground with a grunt.
"How could you?" Cole hissed.
Mina's eyes darted between the two men. She'd walked in on them, arguing after she'd called the hospital to check on her father.
Lance rubbed his jaw. He squinted up at Cole. "We were drunk! It only happened once."
"When?" Cole gritted.
"The night you and your family went to Boston for that political party. I saw her working at a restaurant as a server. A woman was yelling at her for serving her a cold steak. I felt bad for her."
"So, to make her feel better, you slept with her?"
Lance looked down and shook his head. "It wasn't like that."
"No, it's never like that with you, is it?" Cole spat.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Lance pushed himself up from the ground.
"You know what it means."
Mina wished someone would explain since she didn't know what it meant.
"No, I really don't," Lance argued.
Cole's hands tightened into fists. "Every person I get close to makes a mistake. Is it me? Or is it them?"
Lance's eyes darted to Mina.
Cole gave a bitter laugh. "Am I an idiot to you? Do you think I didn't know you tried to steal every single one of my girlfriends? Even Vivi. Did you honestly believe I wouldn't know you hit on my assistant, Geoffrey? You're not even attracted to men, Lance!"
"Or maybe he is?" Mina muttered.
Cole's eyes pierced hers, demanding she explain herself. She cleared her throat. "Maybe Lance likes men, and that's why he goes after the people close to you? No, not men. Just one man. You."
Lance's head fell back in laughter. "I am not attracted to men. There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm not. If it seems like I'm too close to your loved ones, maybe I am. It's only to keep you safe, Cole. We're best friends. Practically brothers. I would never purposely hurt you."
Cole shook his head in disgust.
"How do you know you were the father of Lisa's baby?" Mina asked, wanting to change the subject.
"She told me," he answered, straightening the tie he wore. "It was a onetime thing. We both knew it was a mistake."
"This is why you never mentioned the baby to me, isn't it?" Cole asked. "Because it was yours."
Lance couldn't meet his eyes.
Mina clapped her hands together, breaking the tension in the room. "Fine. Whatever. If Lance is saying he's the father and Mina never blackmailed him, we're back at square one."
Cole's eyes narrowed on his friend. "If you can believe him. I'm not sure I do." He pulled out his phone to text someone.
"I'm not lying. I know what I did was wrong, but I genuinely liked Lisa. If you want me to be honest, I didn't regret sleeping with her. I only regretted that she was your girlfriend."
Cole lunge forward, but Mina grabbed his arm. "Cut it out. This isn't helping. You can punch his lights out later."
"If it's true someone put a hit on Lisa, I want to help," Lance said. "That baby was mine."
Cole growled.
"I have a few boxes of my cousin's things. I've looked through them before, but maybe I missed something. We should go through them again."
Cole placed a hand on the small of her back. "We can see your father in the hospital on the way."
"Your father is in the hospital?" Lance asked, as if he and Cole hadn't been arguing about his betrayal moments before.
An hour later, they were at the hospital. Cole and Lance were in the waiting area while Mina sat near her father's hospital bed.
They bandaged Hector Cruz from head to toe. Blood seeped through the bandage on his forehead.
"I'm glad you're okay," Mina whispered.
"I'm sorry," Hector choked out. "I'm sorry you've had to suffer all your life. It's all my fault."
"I didn't suffer," Mina denied, but the words felt hollow.
A teardrop slid down his cheek. "You did. I'm a drunk. Your mother left me, so you had to grow up without her."
"That was her choice. That's not your fault."
Hector shook his head. "She left because I drank too much."
"She could've taken me with her. She didn't. Still her fault I grew up without a mother."
"There've been so many times I let you down and I regret them all. I know you worked a few jobs to earn money to help pay bills. It's why I took that job—the one that killed Lisa. If I had known... I wouldn't have done it. I figured someone wanted some sort of insurance payout."
Mina bit the inside of her cheek. His explanation made sense, but Salvatore had already admitted it had to do with Lisa. Someone who knew what would happen that day.
"You never fell in love," her father continued. "You always hold people at a distance. Don't think I didn't know you dated men based on their bank accounts."
Mina smirked. "That was a long time ago."
"Dating someone for money isn't okay. It's bad karma," her father admonished. "It's why you lost—"
"Neither is walking into oncoming traffic, but you did that yesterday. I almost lost you," she said, her voice cracking.
"I'm sorry."
"Stop saying that."
"What else can I say?" the man she always thought was strong and funny asked. He was nothing like the larger-than-life character she remembered. Now, he's broken—not even a former shell of himself.
"You can say you'll stop drinking. You can say you'll take better care of yourself. Then you can follow through and go to an AA meeting."
Hector's lips quirked up. "Okay, I can do that. For you."
"No, not for me. For you."
"For us."
After leaving the hospital, Cole made his way to the neighborhood Mina lived in. Lance stared out the backseat window in fascination. "People actually live here?"
Mina rolled her eyes. "Not everyone can live in mansions."
Cole parked the car and passed money to the same group of boys who had watched his car the last two times he visited Mina.
"I have a few boxes of things that belonged to my cousin. You two can look through them. Maybe you'll recognize something I missed." She unlocked her door, and they followed her to the room, holding the baby's items.
Lance looked around the room, his hands gliding over a crib. "I'm surprised she bought all these things. The baby wasn't that far along."
Mina shrugged. "Some women love to plan."
Lance gave her a skeptical look before shaking his head and asking, "Where are the boxes? Maybe she had a diary that will give us a clue."
"No, she didn't own any diaries," Mina told him. "She wasn't the type to share her feelings... even on paper."
Cole cocked his head to one side. "I thought she was."
"Me too," Lance mumbled.
She moved past him to open the closet and pull out two more boxes. One of them had pictures of her extended family, school trophies she won as a teenager, and knickknacks.
"This second box has more baby stuff," Cole said, frowning. There were baby photo albums waiting to be filled and maternity clothing.
Lance picked up one knickknack from the first box. It was a jewelry box with a merry-go-round placed on top. Cole's sharp intake of breath caught their attention.
"Do you recognize it?" Mina asked, taking it from Lance's hands. "Do you think it means anything?"
"She never told you?" Cole asked.
Mina gave him a blank expression.
"The first time I told Lisa I loved her, we were at the park, spinning on a merry-go-round. We were too old to be on it, but we didn't care. I jumped off and started pushing it to go faster. She laughed and then screamed at me to make it stop. I was too busy laughing that I didn't notice her jump off. She fell and a jagged rock cut up her knee. She needed stitches. I kept apologizing for being an idiot. I swore I never meant to hurt her. How could I when I loved her so much?"
Mina's eyes widened. "That's why you asked to see my knee that day. I remember now."
"I took her to a local clinic, and they stitched her up. She laughed it off, even though I thought she would be angry with me. I don't think I'd ever seen Lisa upset. She reminded me I confessed my love to her."
Lance coughed; breaking Cole free from his memories. "There's a code to open the jewelry box. Does anyone know what the code might be?"
Mina gave him Lisa's birthdate, but it didn't work.
"Try ten-ten," Cole suggested. "That was the day we spent in the park."
Mina took the jewelry box and entered the code. It opened with a click. Sitting inside were some cheap pieces of costume jewelry. Tucked in the back was a piece of paper with a lion printed on the letterhead and folded into a small square. Mina plucked the paper out and unfolded it.
"Did you write Lisa love letters?" Lance asked Cole.
Mina read the note aloud. "Try to ruin my life and I will make you regret it. You were never special to me. Stop. Now."
"That's very much to the point," Lance said. "Why would someone send Lisa a note like that?"
"It's not signed?" Cole asked.
"No," Mina answered before Lance came over and pulled the paper from her hands. He wheezed when he saw the letter.
"What is it?" Cole asked. His phone dinged. He pulled it out to read the message before cursing under his breath.
"What is it?" Mina asked. "You two are being weird. Share what you know."
"I had Geoffrey, my assistant, investigate my family's bank accounts to see if anyone transferred the fifty thousand dollars to Salvatore. I know who sent the money."
"And I know who owned this stationary," Lance said, still staring at the threatening note.