“I just don’t understand. Please, make me understand. I deserve that much.”
He shakes his head slowly. “You wouldn’t get it.”
“Try me. How much are you getting paid? A hundred thousand dollars? Two hundred?”
“It’s not about money,” he scoffs. “You haven’t got a clue.”
“Clue me in!”
“Perry won’t tell you anything; he’s too loyal,” Sheila says as she walks into the living room, like my being tied to a chair is no big deal.
I’m breathless, stunned, as I stare at her. “Perry,” I gasp. “You’re Perry,” I whisper. “Her ex…”
“Never her ex.” He chuckles dryly, then gets up and walks over to Sheila. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into a greedy, fiery kiss. It causes my stomach to turn inside out as I put the pieces together. Finally, the puzzle makes sense. “Her first and only true love.”
“Perry has been my rock from the moment I stepped outside my parents’ apartment,” Sheila says, resting her head on his shoulder and giving me a cold smile. “He would do anything for me because he knows I would do everythingfor him.”
“Everything?” I ask. “While you’re married to another man? While you were married to another man before him? While you had another man’s child? Is this the everything you imagined, Perry?”
Perry shakes his head and gently pulls away, going back to his seat by the window. “Sacrifices were made for us to get to this point. We’re almost across the finish line now, though.”
“What’s the finish line, exactly?”
Sheila takes a seat in the chair across from me and crosses her legs. The skinny jeans and deerskin boots aren’t her usual style choice, but I’m guessing she opted for something more comfortable for this part of the plan, because this was always the plan; it’s written all over her face. When the poisoning failed at her son’s wedding, she and Perry had to think of something else.
“Why do you want me dead?” I ask her. “What did I ever do to you?”
“Do you know what the hardest part is about raising a child?” she replies with a question of her own, though she doesn’t wait for me to answer. “It’s making sure he goes on to have a better life than you and has the freedom of choice. I never got my freedom of choice, you see. I didn’t choose to marry Terrence’s father; I had to.”
My frown has her rolling her eyes.
“I was dancing at his favorite club,” she adds. “I took him to the back room and let him have his fun. He paid well. It helped us get Perry’s Mustang at the time.”
“What a great ride that was,” Perry says with a laugh.
Good grief, he’s as crazy and as delusional as she is. It’s a match made in hell, and I’m smack in the middle of it and at their mercy.
“But then I got pregnant. I knew it wasn’t Perry’s.”
“I’m shooting blanks,” Perry feels the need to clarify, prompting a scowl out of me.
“I loved Perry, but I wanted a baby, too. James gave me that. It landed me in the Madison family, though. I’d hoped he’d just pay me off and leave me alone, but no, James had honor,” Sheila scoffs. “I played along for a while, but I never left my Perry behind.”
“And Perry made sure we’d be together again,” he says, oddly referring to himself in the third person.
“Then I met Cole. Perry didn’t like him much,” Sheila adds. “And it turns out Cole’s brothers didn’t like me much either.”
“So you married the father. You want a chunk of the Morgan fortune. That’s what it has always been about then.”
“As far as Perry and I are concerned, yes.”
“You squandered Madison’s fortune,” I say.
“It wasn’t that much to begin with,” she replies with a casual shrug. “My lifestyle demands a certain amount of money. In the long term, I suppose we made some bad investments, but none of that matters anymore. We’re about to come into a new fortune soon enough,” she adds, giving Perry a playful wink.
I shake my head in genuine dismay. “The sad part is that Bill already knows what an awful person you are, yet he chose to respect his vow to you. That’s the promise he made to you and Terrence. Does Terrence know aboutall this?”
“Oh, no. I spared him,” she says. “He’s better off not knowing. He’ll meet Perry soon, though. It’s time.”
