Page 82 of Fire and Ice Cruise

Silas inches back, his hand gripping the railing. “Why, yes, I have two grown children. A son and a daughter.” He gives a nervous laugh that sounds like breaking glass. “Both are in their twenties now. Time flies, right Trixie?”

“That’s not the one we’re asking about.” I take a step closer. “You miss Griffin, don’t you?”

His face crumbles for half a second before he reconstructs it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s what Gideon had on you, isn’t it?” I press. “Griffin. He’s your son. The one you’ve been hiding from the world.”

“I said I don’t⁠—”

Marina cuts him off, her voice sharp. “I bet Holland doesn’t know, does she?”

Silas grows rigid, his face turns every shade of purple and red.

“You can’t tell her!” The words explode out of him. “It will end our careers. Everything we’ve built. The Second Act Society. Nordic Hearth. All of it. Gone.”

Marina gasps. “Is that all you care about? Money? You men are all the same.”

I look at her. “Not all men. Ransom isn’t like that. Neither is Wes.”

“Oh, I love a good man debate during a murder confession,” Celeste trills while floating closer to the immanent disaster. “This is better than my soaps.”

Silas tries to move past us, heading for the door, and I step sideways to block him.

“You strangled Gideon Vale because he was going to expose you,” I say, trying my best to keep my voice steady. “And no amount of money would make him stop.”

Silas’s face twists with rage and desperation. “Yes! I had to do it. He forced my hand! I offered him everything short of my soul and that man laughed in my face!”

Celeste laughs as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

I grab Marina’s hand, and she startles as the sound of Celeste’s laughter suddenly becomes audible to her once again.

“Now hearing all about the naughty things Gideon did just gets my engines going,” Celeste purrs. “Gideon really knew how to stick it to people. How I miss that man.”

Marina and I share a wry look.

Silas paces before us, his hands running through his hair, destroying that perfect styling. “You don’t understand. I’d lose everything. Holland would leave me. The business would collapse. Griffin’s mother would take him away completely. I’d have nothing.”

“You’d have your integrity,” Marina says coldly.

Silas laughs, and it’s bitter and sharp. “Integrity doesn’t pay for private schools. It doesn’t fund a company. It doesn’t keep your wife from discovering you had an affair that produced a child.”

“So you killed Gideon,” I say.

“I had no choice!” Silas stops pacing and turns to face us. “Look, I can make this worth your while. Every product Nordic Hearth makes—furniture, home goods, all of it—yours, free, for life. Both of you. Just don’t tell anyone.”

“We’re not interested in your blood goods,” I say.

His eyes enliven with rage. “Then you leave me no choice.”

He moves faster than I expect, lunging for one of the heavy deck chairs and swinging it as though it were a baseball bat. Marina tries to dodge it, but the chair catches her shoulder, sending her stumbling backward.

“Marina!” I shout.

Silas raises the chair again, this time aimed at me, and Celeste roars to life, or at least so to speak, and she dives for the weaponized furniture.

The chair flies out of Silas’s hands, arcing through the air and splashing into the ocean below.

“Did I do that?” Celeste examines her ghostly hands with delight. “I did! Oh, this is fantastic!”