It’s not until the man turns that I recognize him.
A minute later, my stepmother and her husband are heading our way. I take in her couture gown and obscenely expensive jewelry and realize she’s enjoyed a significant upgrade.The bitch.
“Di Rossi.”
“Remington,” Angelo replies through gritted teeth. “Vivian.”
“Is this husband number three?” My delightful ho-bag stepmother glares at me before good manners prevail.
“Tim is my husband now, yes. We’re deliriously happy.” To reinforce the point, she wraps her hand around his arm and simpers. Tim’s expression remains blank, so I assume the honeymoon period is over for him. If there ever was one.
Christ, fucking Vivian must be akin to sticking one’s dick in an embalmed corpse.
“Congratulations,” Angelo says politely.
“Hope you have good life insurance,” I quip. Angelo digs his fingers into my wrist, but I ignore the silent warning.
To my surprise, Tim chuckles. “I’m not planning on dying just yet, my dear.”
“My father didn’t expect to die so soon after his marriage either.” I smile serenely, but from the way Vivian’s left eye twitches, she's unhappy about my insinuation.
Angelo clears his throat and moves the conversation on to business matters while I listen, bored out of my skull. But the more I observe Remington and my stepmother, the more something niggles at me. I don’t recall seeing him before the charity ball when Angelo first introduced me, but I swear I’ve heard his voice before.
I listen until my eyes glaze over, and then it hits me. He was at our house in the weeks before my father passed away. I remember overhearing Vivian and a strange man talking outside as I sat in my bedroom with the window open.
The scales had fallen from my eyes that night when I realized she was having an affair. Dad was away, and because it was so late, she’d probably assumed I was asleep.
I normally would have been, but a migraine had woken me, and because it was a warm evening, I’d left the window open for some fresh air.
At first, I assumed my stepmother was talking on her cell, but when I looked, I spotted two shadowy figures under the gazebo. It wasn’t long before talking turned to sex noises.
I’d tried telling Dad about it, of course, but he hadn’t believed me.
Vivian marrying the man she’d been having an affair with cements my belief that Dad’s death wasn’t an accident. I can’t prove it, but I know in my bones she killed him. Maybe not directly, but he died at her hands. And if this Remington guy is the sort of man I think he is, I strongly suspect he played a part in Dad’s death too.
Naturally, she didn’t immediately rush out and marry him. Oh no. She played the long game, the role of the grieving wife left to care for her poor, orphaned stepdaughter. That served her well while she depleted what remained of my father’s estate and left me penniless.
Marrying me off to Angelo was probably part of her big plan. She’d have known that the moment I became Angelo’s wife that there was nothing I could do to challenge her. Even if Angelo believed me when I accused her of killing Dad, the Di Rossi family wouldn’t want the publicity of a murder case linked to them.
“Everything okay?” Angelo’s surprisingly solicitous question jolts me out of my trip down memory lane.
“No,” I admit, honest for once. He takes my elbow and steers me into a side room, where it’s quieter.
“Tell me.” I open my mouth and it all tumbles out: my suspicions about Vivian’s motive for marrying my father, her abysmal treatment of me, and my belief Remington is the one she was having an affair with.
“I’m sorry,” Angelo says when I finally fall silent.
“It is what it is.” Dad’s dead, and nothing will bring him back now.
“Remington is a nasty piece of work, and if it makes you feel better, Vivian has met her match there.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t seem like an upstanding citizen.”
“He’s not. He masquerades as a financier, but his businesses are corrupt as hell.”
“I guess it takes a criminal to know one.” I chuckle softly, and Angelo smiles.
“One more hour and then we can leave.”
