My breath stutters.
Millions?
The word seems surreal against the backdrop of blood and rope and the way my arms burns like it’s on fire. Millions. Stolen. Hidden.
“I don’t know anything about money,” I choke out in a whisper. “She never had any money. We were broke.”
Laurel tilts her head, debating on whether or not I am lying. Her eyes flicker, calculating, then narrow.”
“Of course you’d say that,” she murmurs. “Sadie always was convincing when it came to playing the victim.”
“She wasn’t playing,” I snap, pain spiking as my voice rises. “She went hungry so I could eat. We slept in our car. Shelters. Motels with roaches in the walls. If she had millions of dollars, don’t you think she would have used it?”
Laurel straightens slowly, her expression cooling further. “You assume she would have spent it on you.”
That’s a knife to my heart I wasn’t expecting.
I shake my head. “That’s not…she loved me.”
“Love is a convenient excuse,” Laurel says lightly. “Especially for people who don’t want to explain their greed.”
My heart pounds, each beat a full ache in my ears. The drugs in my system make it hard to separate rage from nausea, fear from dizziness.
“You’re lying,” I say hoarsely. “You killed her because she didn’t give you want you wanted.”
“Laurel smiles then. Not wide. Not Cruel. It is satisfied.
“Yes.”
The single word drops like a guillotine.
“And now,” she continues calmly. “Here you are, because your fucking mother couldn’t do what she was fucking told. Always the screw up, that one.”
She gestures to my arm, to the blood soaking my sleeve. “All I wanted was to move up in the ranks. I didn’t want to be the wife of a cattle rancher. I wanted more and your mother was supposed to get that for me. But she couldn’t even do that properly.”
“What are you talking about?”
Laurel’s nostrils flare. “Stop pretending like you don’t know.”
My stomach lurches. “I don’t know anything. I’ve told you that. I don’t know where she would have hid millions. Hell, I barely know why she left Crimson Ridge.”
Laurel laughs.
“You poor girl,” she pouts mockingly. “Did you honestly not put it all together yet? How thick can you be? I would have thought that with all the evidence I piled in that dilapidated old barn, you would have figured it out.”
I stare at her, breath ragged, heart pounding so hard it makes my vision pulse.
“The barn,” I whisper.
Laurel’s smile sharpens. “Ah. So you did see everything.”
My stomach rolls. Images of that day flash through my drug hazed mind in disjointed pieces. The packed boxes, the newspaper articles, the obituary. Documents that didn’t make any sense. Names I didn’t recognize. The weight of it all, hidden away like rot beneath hay and dust.
“My mother wasn’t exiled, was she?” I ask, the words scraping out of my throat. “She took the money so she could hide.”
Laurel laughs, slow and indulgent. “A cowards way out if you ask me. A weakness.”
“She was terrified,” I snap, remembering as child all the times she looked over her shoulder, coached me on what to say, hid in the shadows. All before Henry. “Of you. Of what you would do if you found her.”
