My words earn me a look. Not anger. Not denial.
Approval.
“Yes,” she says softly. “She was. And I did find her. Or…well, Henry did, but the bastard got greedy and complacent. He chased her down several times. Every time she ran from him until one day, she disappeared completely. Then, when he found her, he couldn’t do as I ordered and kill her. No…he wanted to play. If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d be dead. Just like her.”
My chest tightens. “Killing us wouldn’t have gotten you the money you wanted.”
“No,” she admits coolly. “But it would have gotten me the control. The ascension. Power. Influence. A seat at the table of being passed scraps like a good little ranch wife. I would have spun both of your deaths to fall on my dear old husband. I would have been shocked and disturbed. Turned him in to Hudson to gain favor and it all would have been mine.”
She turns away from me, heels clicking as she paces, hands clasped behind her back like a lecturer warming to her favorite subject.
“Do you know who Emma Denver is?” she asks casually.
The name hits like a punch to the gut.
John’s first wife.
Pace and Lee’s mother.
“She was kind,” Laurel continues, not waiting for me to answer. “Beloved. Loyal. Everything a woman is supposed to be.” She scoffs. “Which made her very inconvenient.”
My pulse spikes. I remember the news article in the barn. The one about the car crash that was assumed to be an accident.
“What did you do?”
Laurel stops pacing. Slowly, deliberately, she turns back to me.
“I removed an obstacle.”
The world goes quiet.
Not silence, but pressure. As if the air itself has thickened, pressing in on my lungs.
“She died in a car accident,” I say numbly. “That’s what the article said…”
Laurel nods. “Accidents are remarkably easy to arrange when you have the right leverage and the right men.”
My vision blurs. “Why?”
“Because John Denver was untouchable as long as he was happy,” she states simply. This woman is psychotic. “A loyal husband. Devoted Father. A man content with his place.”
She steps closer, eyes glittering. “Grief changes people.”
I shake my head weakly. “Why would you do something like that?”
“Emma’s death was the first move,” she admits, almost wistful. My hands tremble against the restraints.
“And my mother?” I whisper.
Laurel exhales through her nose, clearly irritated now. “Sadie was the second.” She tilts her head, studying me, gauging how much I can take.
“I raised her to be obedient,” Laurel continues. “To understand that family obligations come before personal weakness. She was beautiful. Persuasive. Easy to mold.”
My stomach churns, bilious and sour.
“You set her up.” The truth dawns on me in horror. The warehouse closes in on me.
“I instructed her. John needed a little…help, to see her in a new light,” Laurel admits casually as if she wasn’t talking aboutrape. “It wasn’t hard to convince her, she loved him so much and had been so heartbroken when he chose Emma over her.”
