But not as real as his sister's must have been, Ryan thought. "How could you?" he asked barely concealing his disdain.
Russ's eyes suddenly blazed with emotion. "How could I? I'll tell you how. I was Faith's only ally in that house, just like I've been yours. I was the one who comforted her when her parents yelled and passed judgment. I bailed her out of trouble more times than your family knows about. Especially that last time."
Ryan's legs shook and he lowered himself into the nearest chair. Zoe remained behind him, her hand on his shoulder and he appreciated her steady support. "What are you talking about?" Because for all his sister had revealed in her letter, he'd sensed there was much she hadn't said.
And unfortunately, Uncle Russ was the only one who could fill in the blanks. It was up to Ryan to decide whether or not to believe him.
His uncle rose and paced the small area behind his desk. Sun shone in from the plate-glass window behind him, but Ryan felt as if the sky were full of black clouds.
"Your sister had been doing drugs for years," Uncle Russ began. "I didn't know where she got them and I didn't ask. I tried to get her into treatment and I paid for shrinks your parents didn't know about, but the bottom line was, Faith was messed up and she still had to go home to that dysfunctional house every night. Therapy wasn't working. So when she came to me that last time, I had no choice."
"But to throw her out?" Ryan asked, unable to contain his sarcasm.
Zoe's hand squeezed his shoulder tighter.
"To bail her out and send her away." Russ shook his head, the bachelor looking older than his years for the first time in Ryan's memory.
But Ryan wasn't ready to believe that easily. He swallowed hard. "What do you mean?"
"Your sister ran out of money to support her habit. Your parents weren't giving her cash and I sure wasn't helping her kill herself. We all thought she'd give in and let herself be helped. But she began to borrow money from a friend at school. The friend turned out to be connected and when Faith couldn't pay him back, he threatened her. And she came to me."
Ryan rubbed his hand over his burning eyes. He refused to be conned, but so far the story made sense. "Go on."
"I met with this friend who brought his boss. They were only too willing to let me take on her debt. In fact they'd had it planned all along, using your sister's addiction to further their bottom line. Threatening Faith was never about the couple of hundred dollars she owed. They wanted a cut of Baldwin's profits. And they wouldn't leave her be until they got it."
His voice cracked and his eyes glazed over as he remembered. "They promised the truck hijacking would be a one-time thing. If I turned over the trucking schedule, they'd pick the shipment. They'd let me know with plenty of time to up the insurance so I could make some money off it too." He looked down, shame briefly clouding his expression. "But that was peanuts in comparison to their take when they sold the goods on the street."
Ryan's head began to pound, but he forced himself to focus on what was most important. "Why did you pay Faith to leave?"
Uncle Russ slammed his hand on the desk, making Ryan flinch.
"You're a smart man, Ryan. Use your brain. Faith had a drug habit. She wasn't getting better. Hell, she just didn't care. Living at home, she was destined to repeat the cycle and I was afraid Baldwin's would be in bed with the mob forever, to use a cliché. But I hoped that if she got away from the situation that caused her to turn to drugs in the first place, maybe she'd get better."
"That's the most naive thing I've ever heard," Ryan muttered.
"And stupid. But this was seventeen years ago. What did I know about addiction? As the only person who was thinking clearly about the business and the family, I had to consider the possibility that Faith was on such a destructive path, eventually she'd cause someone in the family to get hurt. We were already involved with the mob. What was next?" He glanced at Ryan, his eyes imploring. "You have to believe me. At the time I thought I had no choice."
Considering what a shock all this was, and knowing his uncle had made a profit off the scheme, at the moment Ryan wasn't sure what to believe. "Yet you lied and told us all that Faith stole money from you to run away."
"That wasn't far from the truth. She stole the key to my briefcase along with false insurance papers documenting a shipment worth more than the actual goods."
Ryan narrowed his gaze, confused. "You'd been helping her. Why would she turn on you before leaving?"
Russ spread his hands wide. "She was a drug addict, Ryan. Who knows why she did what she did?"
"Why did you continue the scam over the years?" Ryan asked.
Russ frowned. "Who says I did?"
"You did. Through your actions." Though Ryan laughed, he recognized the hollowness in the sound. "If you'd done it once to help Faith, you wouldn't have been in a panic when you saw Sam's key. Your actions were screwed-up, but sort of justifiable and eventually forgivable."
"I don't see you believing in me at the moment," his uncle said, his voice laced with bitterness.
"That's because Faith's letter indicated you made money off the scheme more than that one time. It seems she kept those papers in the locker for a year or so, adding to them on occasion."
His uncle opened his mouth, closed it again, then finally said, "How the hell would she have known?"
"Because like you said, she was a drug addict. She needed drugs after she ran away and turned to her 'friend' to supply her before she finally took off for New York. He must have filled her in."
"Good Lord." Uncle Russ turned toward the window.
"Yeah," Ryan muttered. "So what the hell was going on?"
Russ faced them again. "It was supposed to be one time. Then a year later, they called on me again. Between their veiled threats to reveal my insurance scam and the fact that the extra money in my pocket helped my lifestyle- "
"You're hardly hurting for cash from the business," Ryan pointed out.
"And neither is your father or brother and they don't work nearly as hard as I do. After a while, it seemed like I wasn't getting what I deserved from Baldwin's," he admitted. "Who was it hurting?"
"How about the small-business owner who sees insurance rates skyrocket year after year?" Zoe said, making her presence known.
Not that Ryan had forgotten.
Uncle Russ scowled, but the slight incline of his head acknowledged her point. "I heard from your sister from time to time."
"What?" Ryan asked in shock.
"She'd call collect or drop me a note. She'd remind me of what she knew and I lived in abject fear of her revealing all. But then after a while the threats stopped. It seemed as if she was cleaning up her act and I was able to justify sending her away. But then it was silent for too long. I was petrified of her going back on drugs, or exposing me. That's when I began my investigation into her whereabouts."
Ryan's head pounded and he braced himself for his uncle's next admission.
"I found out she'd died in a drug dispute," he said, his voice cracking.
"You kept that from my parents? From me? You let me investigate and search and hope?"
Russ nodded. "Please hear me out. When I first found out, the guilt nearly killed me. I blamed myself and I stopped my part in bilking the insurance company. It helped that the feds were cracking down and the guys I dealt with wanted to lay low and focus on other things."
"And with Faith gone, so was the threat of discovery," Ryan said.
Russ nodded. "I stayed clean and focused on you, but the guilt never went away. Guilt over sending her away, over her death, over keeping the news from you, but I couldn't see what good it would do to tell you. I couldn't hurt you that way."
"Or deal with my reaction to your role in it."
Russ hung his head. "That, too."
"But then I started investigating on my own. With only partial information to go on, since you withheld the important things, like my sister's death," Ryan said with contempt.