“At least Xavier never pretended to be a good guy. You do.” Hanna snorted. “Well, news flash, good guys don’t sleep with teenagers, lie to their wives, and wave knives around.”
Lukas shook his head. “This is not going to end with you playing the hero.”
This is the Lukas I remembered. In control. A flat, emotionless affect. I used to find that sexy. The whole brooding smart guy thing. Now I saw how he turned ruthless when threatened.
“Tell us how this little scene is going to end, Lukas.” Hanna stood up. She moved with care but she didn’t sit there waiting to be stabbed and dragged into the garden graveyard for burial. “Do you really think I just happened to be in this room? One with a passageway entrance? That I didn’t know you were coming?”
“Sit down.” Lukas had lost ground and Hanna’s respect with every word, but his deep voice suggested he hadn’t figured that out yet.
“You walked into a full house of women who are relishing the idea of destroying you, you dumbass. More than one person is waiting with their finger on the panic button to call in the police guards.”
I liked this Hanna. Direct and unshakable. A bit too wordy but hard to ignore. I almost felt bad that I’d mentally planned her murder more than once. Dreamed up delicious, detailed, sometimes intricate schemes about separating her from everyone she knew. Stabbing her. Burning her.
Clearly, that would have been a mistake.
“Think, Lukas.” Hanna shook her head. “Who sent you the text that caused you to run over here dressed in that ridiculous outfit? Not me.”
Stella stepped into the library from the hall.
“Me.” Stella held up her cell. Read from the screen only shecould see. “Jeremy remembers most of that night. He’s going to talk with the police tomorrow about what happened. This will finally be over.”
Lukas’s confident smirk vanished. “Stella, this is—”
She barked over him. “I’m going to kill you.”
Before Stella could make a move, Lukas took a step. Then another. He was on Hanna in seconds. Had his arm wrapped around her neck and the knife at her cheek as he held her in front of him as a human shield. “Everyone, calm down.”
The drama. The bad choices. The lies.
This was the show I’d been dreaming about. The one I’d anticipated during years of plotting while waiting for Gramps to die.
That was the deal. I stayed away, enjoyed the money and anonymity Gramps provided. I never expected him to hang on for so long. Even thought about taking him out, but the heart attack beat me to it. Which brought me to town to see this.
Lukas was on the verge of finding out what happened when you messed with dangerous women.
About fucking time.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Stella
Rain hammered against the glass. I concentrated on the steady beat of the storm while my insides shriveled. Hope vanished along with my prospects for an accomplished future. As I stood there, bleeding and dying while the parts still beating and pulsing with a hint of life disintegrated into tiny slips of nothing, that talk with Mom ran through my head.
“I saw them together in one of Xavier’s extra bedrooms. The door wasn’t quite closed. She was hanging all over him, but you can’t blame him. She wore those tiny bathing suits. Men are weak and you were always complaining. So prickly and demanding. He had so much stress and you piled on by insisting he be perfect. His parents did that, too. I tried to warn you to be careful, but you kept pretending to be Aubrey’s therapist. Letting her come around. I warned Xavier that his granddaughter was manipulative and dangerous, and he got furious. That’s why I didn’t tell him about Aubrey and Lukas. I was afraid he’d wrongly blame Lukas.”
Lukas’s twisted behavior. My mom’s complicity. He’d destroyed everything and still held a knife. Wielded it with ease as he pressed it against Hanna’s skin. He preached about decency as he cut a path of destruction through the ragged remains of my life and my family.
Survive this and get to Everly.I repeated the refrain, not thinking about what would happen after that.
I tapped into the deep well of indifference I’d constructed years ago to get through life without him. Pretended I felt nothing. Putting the pieces back together, recovering and moving forward, would be impossible. I was a therapist who missed her husband’s debauchery. A counselor so obsessed with shoring up her career that I broke the rules I vowed to protect. From here, I’d live for Everly and shielding her from the public battering to come.
I skipped over panic and moved right to orders. “Let Hanna go.”
“Stella, listen to me.” Lukas fell back on his usual silky-smooth placating. “None of this is what it looks like. You have to believe me.”
Never again.
The man I loved, sickeningly enough still did, had turned out to be a dangerous sham. Liar. Pervert. Creep. The descriptions piled up in my mind. My pain festered and anger burned the entire drive over. By the time I turned off the car lights and glided in neutral down the street on the far side of the pond, I’d slipped from rational thought to a venomous killing rage.
