Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance (43 page)

“Sir, I have a deep personal need to know, right now, exactly where Kevin “Waste of Skin” Killane is buried, so I can dig him up and light what’s left of his sorry ass on fire. Are you cool with that?”

I expected a sigh, a shrug, well-mannered agreement – what I got was a sad, patient stare.

“Miss Daniels, I fear there was not enough left of Kevin Killane to bury. His death was an ugly business, just like his life – in any case, he was cremated, and his ashes interred in the family crypt.”

“Do I want to know what happened to him?”         

“Probably not, but none of this is about what we want, is it? It is instead all about what we need, so that we may protect Devon as best we can.”

While I wondered if I could get away with pulling out my trusty iPhone and googling ‘Kevin Killane death,’ my honorary Jedi uncle got us back to the point.

“A few days into that fourth visit, when he was nine years old and far more insightful than many adults, Devon asked me during dinner if I knew where his mother was.

“The subject came out of the blue. I looked up from my plate to see those strange eyes of his staring at me, his face alight with interest, concern, and a certain dispassionate calculation, as if he’d balanced a difficult math equation whose result told him I could be trusted not to report his question to anyone named Killane.

“I told him, as gently as one can say such a thing, that I’d heard his mother was in a hospital, a special sort of hospital for –

“ ‘For crazy people, right?’ Devon challenged me with his eyes, dared me to say his mother was mad, and of course I could do no such thing, so I just stared back at him.

“He told me she was not crazy and that he needed to know precisely where she was, so he could save her – at all of nine years old, he was determined to save his mother from an entire family of abusive monsters and bring her safely back to a home that no longer existed for either of them.

“I suppose the responsible thing to do would have been to discourage him, to urge this shattered yet unbreakable child to accept that his mother was lost. Instead, I somehow heard myself saying that I would find out where she was and what might be done for her.

“ ‘I just need to know where she is, so I can save her.’ Never in all my life, before or since, have I heard such a brave and hopeless announcement. But I did not discourage him, though I did urge caution. I told him that we must both walk with care, and that if either of us breathed a word about his mother where the Killanes could hear, not only would she be moved somewhere far beyond his reach, but he and I would never be allowed to see each other again.

“ ‘I’m not stupid, Uncle Sheridan. I know what they’ll do if they find out, and I really want to keep coming here. I know I’m just a kid, and I know it will be a really long time before I can get Mama out of that hospital – but someday, I will. Please, just find her for me, okay?’ ”

The old man sighed, and looked about twenty years older than he had only a moment before.

“God help me, I did look for her. I looked for her, and I found the hospital where she’d been locked away. I spoke with my own family’s lawyers, people I knew could be trusted to keep the matter quiet, and I directed them to research what might be done to move her to a facility beyond the influence of the Killanes. I further asked them to determine if there was some way she might even be released and reunited with Devon.

“I was advised it was a thorny legal situation, full of dangers and ambiguities, but that with time, many months or years of time, it might be possible to bring that gentle, innocent woman safely home to her son.

“Sadly, time ran out. Less than a year later, Kevin Killane died; shortly thereafter, Devon’s panic attacks began.”

29. Broken

Something major was being skipped over here, and sweet old guy or not, I wasn’t letting Uncle Sheridan get away with it.

“But just how did his dad die, and why would his death spark off the panic attacks? Wouldn’t his kicking the bucket be, I don’t know, more like cause for celebration? And what happened to Devon’s mom, once the bastard was gone? Did the other Killanes figure on just keeping her locked in a padded room forever?”

Uncle Sheridan didn’t answer, not at first. He peered into the depths of his coffee – no answers there, sir – and then he looked up at me, searching my face for … what?

When he spoke, his voice walked a tightrope between what he wanted to tell me and what he knew I needed to hear. Within seconds, I realized I wouldn’t be getting answers about the demise of Kevin Killane – not yet, anyway.

“I know Devon would trust me to tell you the story of his father’s death, but I do not think I am the person from whom you should hear it.”

“Sir, if you mean that Devon should tell me, it’s my humble opinion that he’s already gone way above and beyond in telling me the kind of stories that stab a person right through the heart – I need to know, but I don’t think he needs to soldier through telling me another horrifying emotional hell ride of a story, okay?”

“You fight for him like a pit bull, you know that?”

“Whoa – did you just compare me to a dog, old man?”

He grinned like a fiend. “Not as such, since I’d rather not end the morning as a mauled corpse – but I will say that you are the sort of fierce personal defender that Devon should have had long ago, when it might have made all the difference. As for his father’s death …”

His face turned distant and sad, and his voice softened – as he spoke, I now had to strain to hear him over the dozens of chattering conversations around us.

“Miss Daniels, Devon was there when his father died. He witnessed the nightmare at point-blank range, he watched the man’s life wink out in an instant, and although he has told me about it in heart wrenching, bloody detail, I suspect that he has not told me everything.”

I suspected that the universe had picked Devon out on the day of his birth for one serious fucking over, like a fly getting its wings torn off by some bent, deviant kid.

While I wondered about the possibility of punching the universe right in the face, Uncle Sheridan continued, his voice growing stronger.

“Some stories grow in the telling, but others shrink. I could do my best to give you the entire awful tale just as he told it to me, but it would not be the same. His father’s death had an enormous impact on Devon and his future, and only Devon himself can tell that story as it should be told – as it needs to be told, and as you need to hear it.”

So not only would he not tell me, but just maybe, Devon hadn’t even told him everything about the moment Kevin Killane kicked off this mortal coil? What could he have refused to tell Uncle Sheridan? What could have been that bad?

I filed those questions away for later worrying, and moved on. “So what happened to Devon’s mom after that? Did the hospital staff just not tell her about his dad’s death? Did the Killanes insist on keeping her a prisoner, even after Kevin Asshole was out of the picture?”

“I suppose you’ll be cross with me, but –”

“But you’re not going to tell me what happened to her, are you?”

“When Devon finds the strength to tell you about his father’s death, I imagine that is also when you will learn what happened to his doomed mother. She and Kevin Killane were as mismatched a pair as you will ever meet, yet in death as in life, their fates were intertwined.”

Way to be cryptic, Uncle Jedi.

He must have used the Force to read my mind, because he smiled like a patient dad riding herd on a grouchy toddler.

“I apologize for not being more forthcoming on this particular subject, but once you’ve heard the details from Devon, I trust you will understand my reasoning. In any case, there is a great deal more that I am able to tell you, though I rather doubt you will enjoy hearing it.”

“Count me as not surprised. So anyway, it was after his dad’s death and whatever happened to his mom that Devon’s panic attacks kicked in?”

His smile turned weary, and when he spoke again, he used that dry, professorial voice that told me more nightmares were on the way.

“Yes – though the groundwork was laid for them long before, it was in the aftermath of Kevin Killane’s nasty end that Devon’s panic attacks first seized hold of him, and he has suffered in their grip ever since.

“You must understand that after his father’s death, matters became much worse for Devon. Kevin Killane’s will was a legal quagmire, seemingly written with the deliberate purpose of causing as much chaos and anger and infighting as possible. Some thought the will was intended as his final revenge against the family, while others, myself included, saw it simply as a last and terrible joke from beyond the grave.

“He knew the family wanted his majority stake in Killane Industries, and so he settled it upon Devon, who didn’t want it. He knew the family hated Devon and despised each other, and so he gave joint custody of the boy to them – all of them. Every senior member of the Killane family was to share custody of the child they hated, the child who, once he was a legal adult, was to receive every penny of the billions that they saw as theirs.”

“Jeez, just what the hell was wrong with that Kevin moron, anyway? Did he spend his childhood being tortured with thumbscrews by clowns every day, or did he just start his drinking career at age six?”

Uncle Sheridan shrugged. “I’m inclined to think Kevin Killane was simply born with a great knot of defective genes that always destined him to become a thoughtless, heartless cretin of a man. His father was cold and distant, true, and his mother was scared of his father, but I believe the ultimate fault lay in the man himself, and not in his upbringing.”

“But no matter – as it happens, I did not escape his posthumous sense of humor. He knew I cared not one whit about the Killane fortune, so he named me as the administrator of Devon’s inheritance. He also knew that I cared very much about Devon himself, and so I was very much not included as one of those holding joint custody.

“I found myself in an impossible position. If I stayed on as administrator of what would one day become Devon’s fortune and worked to ensure that he received every penny he had coming to him, I earned the undying hatred of the entire Killane clan, a group of people who disliked me quite enough as it was. If I surrendered the position to someone more pliable, I gave up the only leverage I had that might force the Killanes to grant me access to Devon.

“As Kevin Killane knew I would, I accepted my role as administrator of his son’s inheritance, because I couldn’t bear to leave the boy adrift and alone with people who would gladly have seen him dead.

“The Killanes went quite mad with rage, of course, trying repeatedly to break the will and seize control of the family’s business empire. But the will’s ironclad terms proved unbreakable, and so despite all the worst the Killanes could do, Devon’s inheritance remained safe and stored away for the future.

“And they did a great deal to that boy in the interim, I assure you. The Killanes vented their frustration on him at every opportunity, and every member of the family took a turn.

“Those vile, grasping people wanted his money, but the custody arrangement ensured that they got him instead – and since they couldn’t stand the sight of an innocent child who had something they wanted, he was bounced from one hostile Killane household to another, staying two days here, a week there, and an hour somewhere else.

“Devon never knew a steady home in those days, never had a bed he could count on or possessions he could be sure of – although he could be quite certain of being hated and utterly unwanted, no matter what Killane roof he was under.”

It struck me that a few of the older assholes Devon had faced down Saturday morning had to be some of the same people Uncle Sheridan was talking about, people Devon had met and learned to fear when he was way too young to protect himself. I decided right then that once I was done frying Kevin Killane’s ashes, I needed to pay a hostile little visit of my own to whatever federal lockup those vicious bastards were cowering in at the moment.

“But at least he still bounced your way once in a while, right?”

Uncle Sheridan sighed like a man resigned to a death sentence.

“Miss Daniels, after Kevin Killane met his sudden and awful end, I was not allowed any contact with Devon for over a year. When I did see him again, he was … changed.

“He was still brilliant, still devouring books like a starving man eating a steak, and I later learned he’d picked up a smattering of Hindi in that lost year, so I know he was still absorbing languages and comfort from servants – but he no longer talked a blue streak at every opportunity.

“He was silent, guarded, and shrank into the shadows of a room with the manner of someone who knew his survival depended on not being noticed. He was thin, exhausted, sick, and his pale complexion was overlaid with the yellowing remains of two bruises, one high on the right side of his head and the other over his left cheekbone.”

The old man shook his head in disgust. “I am not a violent man, but in the moment I first saw what had been done to that boy, when I guessed at what he must have gone through during the year since I’d last seen him, I desperately wanted to hurt someone.