“Sheila doesn’t just hate Willow. There’s a reason somewhere in that sick fucking mind of hers!” Katrina snaps, then pinches the bridge of her nose in frustration. “Good lord, Daddy did warn me. He told me, ‘Be careful, Katie, honey, I don’t like that boy. He still has his umbilical cord, and his mother’s wearing it around that bony neck of hers.’ I didn’t believe him.”
“Jesus,” Terrence gasps.
I hit his ankle with the tip of my boot. “Think, Terrence. Just think. Willow’s life is at stake. I’m not playing. None of us is.”
It’s not just Willow’s life. There’s another growing in her womb, a life we created, a life we should be able tobring into the world. There isn’t a chance in hell I’m letting a sick monster and her ex take that away from us. There isn’t a chance in hell I’m letting them take Willow away from us.
“Sheila is behind this. Perry has no reason whatsoever to do this to Willow, but Sheila does,” Cole adds.
“She hates Willow,” Terrence concedes, “for her figure, for the way she carries herself, for the way she built her career, her success.”
Katrina scoffs and crosses her arms. “That woman is awful.”
“She’s still my mom,” Terrence mumbles, then gasps and lifts his hands when I move to hit him again. “I don’t know what else to tell you, I swear! Mom was cooking something up. She was determined to make Willow suffer, but she wouldn’t tell me more. I kept asking, and she kept saying it was no longer my concern. She got Willow out of my life. I’m a married man, so I’m supposed to move on with my life.”
Cole shakes his head, and it’s clear to me that we’re not leaving until we get some answers, the right answers.
“Where can we find Sheila when she doesn’t want to be found?” he asks Terrence. “There has to be a place somewhere in this fucking city.”
Terrence thinks about it for a moment, realization flickering in his green, scared eyes as he looks up at me. “Our old place,” he mumbles. “Mom was going to sell it, but then she met your dad and decided to keep it. She just liked to go there sometimes.”
“The old Madison mansion,” I reply.
He nods once. “Yes, in North Hampton.”
I’m not surprised. Sheila has many secrets of her own, and I’ve always wondered where she might go to hide anything she didn’t want found—including herself during the more dire times. I can almost see her retreating to North Hampton in the back of a black cab, sunglasses and scarf on, as she tries to keep a low profile while sneaking out there.
“Are you sure my mom had something to do with this?” Terrence asks, then clears his throat. “I mean, it’s a little extreme.”
“Yet it happened,” I bluntly reply. “Just pray we get to Willow in time.”
It’s a promise, not a threat.
Terrence had an inkling that something was about to go wrong, but in his animosity toward us and Willow, he chose to keep quiet. I have no mercy for anyone who had a hand in causing my love any form of suffering.
Because that’s what Willow has become.
My love. Our love.
The love of our lives, of all the lives we’ve lived before, and all the lives to follow.
29
WILLOW
I’m tied to a chair on the ground floor of an old mansion somewhere in the Hamptons. North Hampton, to be specific. I followed Brett’s instructions, I obeyed his orders. I tried to get him to talk, but he wouldn’t tell me anything.
At least I’m still alive.
I’m scanning every inch of this living room until I can figure a way out. It’s quiet and not as cold as I thought. Heat is coming up through the pipes, keeping the frost away from the windows. Outside, a cold wind howls, carried by the sea. The eastern tip of Long Island is awful during the winter.
It feels sort of fitting, given my current circumstances.
Brett sits quietly by the window, waiting.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re doing this,” I say, trying to strike up another conversation, but he doesn’t say anything. I notice his jeans, his black t-shirt, the aviator jacket with the woolen collar, the silvery stubble and almost white hair. The wear and tear of time passing and a life spentdrowning in a bottle of scotch is apparent on his face. “I just hope you’re being paid handsomely for it, otherwise, I don’t see the point. You don’t strike me as some sort of psycho.”
“I don’t?” he shoots back, then glances at his gun. It rests on the windowsill, silent and potentially deadly, just like him. “You just don’t know me well enough.”
