Bloodline [h.s.]

eleven.

"My dad killed someone." Bridget confessed still breathless.

Her voice and breath were shaking. I was not even one hundred percent sure I heard her correctly. As I held her hands, I could feel her pulse racing in her wrists. She was panicking. It reminded me of my first panic attack. I was alone in a juvenile detention center. Dr. Davenport had just informed me that I would never see my family again. The only thing I could to to bring myself down was count my own heartbeats. I placed her fingers over my wrist. She looked up at me confused.

"Bee, take a long, deep breath. Do you feel my pulse?" I asked. She nodded her head, "Focus on that. Count my heartbeats."

She was quiet for a few minutes trying to calm herself enough to tell me everything. One thing she always did is a crisis was pace. When she calmed down, she let go of my hand. She began walking back and fourth.

"Do you remember Kelsey Allen from the fundraiser?" She began.

I nodded.

"I heard her and my dad in his study when I got home from my run this morning. My dad has been taking advantage of her for years. He was blackmailing her. She had been publishing whatever my dad wanted because until the video at the fundraiser, no one knew she slept with my dad. I heard her saying how she wanted to stop helping him after she met her husband, and my dad wouldn't let her. After the video of them together came out, her publication dropped her. Her career fell apart. She was going to publicly come clean about what my dad did to her. She was going to tell everyone how my dad left her with no choice and threatened her into everything. Before she left, he said if she came out with the truth it would be the last thing she did. He said no boundary or law would stop him from keeping her quiet. She was shot and killed in the parking garage of her office building an hour ago as she was walking in to try and get her job back. She's dead."

The words were spilling out at one hundred miles per hour. Bridget ran her fingers through her hair.

"Who else knows about this?" I asked.

"Just you as far as I know. There's more though. She told him something about  Martin Shepard being alive. He didn't believe her, but–"

My body went cold at the mention of my father's name. The blood running through my veins froze.

"Who is Martin Shepard?" I asked her as my jaw clenched.

"Nick never told you?"

"He hasn't mentioned him." I said.

"He worked with Nick's dad at Gallagher Investments before he started Payco. He was a board member, and he was a co-founder if the the company. Martin was suspected of embezzling money from the company and using it for drug deals. My dad and Nick's dad didn't believe it, but there was an investigation. While that was going on, Nick's dad and Martin Shepard were working on a partnership deal between my family's company and Payco. One of the investigators walked in during a meeting about the a partnership. Martin lost it and shot everyone in that room. Everyone, including Nick's dad, was killed. My dad was running late that day. He luckily never made it to the meeting. At the time, there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with anything. No one even suspected he killed anyone until a week later."

"What happened the next week?"

She shook her head slowly as she remembered. I knew the next thing she was about to say would make my blood boil even more than it already was.

"He burned his entire house on fire with his family in it. His wife and all but one of his children died. The house was burned so badly that they never even found the bodies of the two kids. They just assumed it was impossible to get out in time. No one knew what happened to Martin. A lot of people believe he burned with his family, and a lot of people think he fled. No one ever found a trace of him again."