Page 80 of Defending Love
“But you hired one for Dani, your parents, and your wife.”
“Because I don’t want anything to happen to any of them.”
“You’re not worried about yourself?” Eli asked.
“I wasn’t,” Damien replied with a tilt of his head. “Now you have me concerned.”
Chapter
Thirty-One
Eli
* * *
I turned to Damien. “Would you be willing to submit a fingerprint sample?”
“Of course.” He pointed toward the hallway. “I touched the things in Dad’s safe. I’ve told you that.”
“It’s just routine.”
“Bullshit,” Damien said. “You fucking suspect me. I’m the one paying you.”
“Damien.” Dani stepped closer. “If Guardian can eliminate our fingerprints, it could help them find who else was in the safe.”
He lifted his palms to his temples. “You said whoever stole the journals didn’t get in the safe. So what fingerprints are you trying to find?”
Dani looked at me, asking permission. If only she’d done that earlier. I nodded. At this point, I wasn’t certain what to think.
“Damien, we found one other thing in Dad’s safe.”
“What?”
“It was a letter written by Dad.”
His blue eyes narrowed. “Let me see it.”
“We don’t have it,” I replied. “I sent it to the main Guardian office. They ran it for prints. Derek’s prints weren’t on it.”
“Then he didn’t write it.”
Dani and I nodded.
“Whose were?”
“Possibly yours,” Dani said. “If you give a sample, we’ll know for sure or eliminate you as a possibility.”
“Fine,” he said. “Take my prints. I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. There wasn’t a letter when we cleared out the safe.”
Dani replied, “It was in a manila envelope under the felt on the bottom of the safe.”
Damien sat back in the chair. “Fuck, I can’t remember if we looked there. I’d have to ask Stephen.” He looked back up to both of us. “If it wasn’t there, that means that someone put it in between the time we all went down when Dad was shot to when you found it. Has anyone else been in the house?”
“The people who took the journals,” I said.
“But they didn’t take the things in the safe. They came to you, knowing you had.”
Dani nodded as she took a seat. “It’s a circle. It doesn’t make sense.”
