“Manning isn’t the one telling lies.” Ares steps forward holding his cell in front of Cadance’s face as he scrolls through multiple photos showing Amos with other women. Some are sexually explicit while others are him on dates with much younger women, wining and dining them, filling their heads with more of his bullshit I’m sure.
“He was getting ready to trade you in,” I say as she openly sobs. “He was planning to poison you next.”
“Don’t listen to them, darling. It’s a ploy to get you to speak, but you’re smarter than that. Don’t fall for it.”
“He called you a gold digger five minutes ago,” Athena reminds her. “And he’s been calling you defective for years, blaming you for not giving him an heir when it was his fault all along. We don’t like one another, Cadance, but this advice is given freely and without malice.” Fire dances in Athena’s eyes as she stares at the woman she hates. “Don’t let him win. Take back control and show him who the real boss is.”
Athena drapes a large bath towel over Cadance’s shoulders, covering all her exposed private parts. Then she dabs at the tears streaming down her face and sweeps her hair behind her ears.
She’s damn good at this, and I have to figuratively beat the beast in my pants into submission because he wants to get hard for her.
“It was my idea at first,” Cadance says in a quiet voice, and I know we’ve got her.
I unfurl to my full height and shove my hands in my pockets as I brace myself for the truth.
Amos starts shouting and cursing and threatening her, and my patience is all out. I punch him in his mouth before slamming a knife into his thigh, being careful not to hit the artery. Can’t have him bleeding out before I’ve made him suffer. Blood seeps from the wound in his leg, and he hisses, cursing me between gritted teeth before Ares shoves a wet, dirty dishrag in his mouth to shut him up. He secures it with thick tape, muting the bastard. He isn’t going to give us anything anyway. That much is obvious.
But Cadance is a gullible bitch. I think she thinks with Ares here she’s protected, so she has no issue singing like a canary.
“Jane was really shocked when she first discovered she was pregnant, so really we were doing her a favor.” She smiles sheepishly at me, hoping I’ll buy it. I have visions of wrapping my hands around her neck and choking the life from her, but I’ve had a lifetime of role-playing and fifteen years patience, so I stuff my true feelings down deep inside and encourage her to go on with a nod.
“I wore a prosthetic stomach, and we hired an ob-gyn who was willing to go along with the ruse. We attended appointments, and I took vitamins and everything. I even chatted with Jane about heartburn and back pain, and she didn’t suspect a thing. No one did.”
“You faked it good,” Athena says in a voice devoid of emotion.
Cadance smiles like it’s something to be proud of. “My idea was to buy the baby from Jane’s father, and we’d help them to escape overseas where your father would never find them, Drew.”
Amos shouts, but the words are muffled through the mouth covering. I know she’s lying. She’s not very good at it.
“I could tell Jane’s dad wasn’t pleased about the baby, and I knew we could have sold it to him. But Amos said it was too risky. He said if we wanted to make it believable Jane had to disappear, and unfortunately that meant he had to make her family disappear too.”
Amos is apoplectic, thrashing around on the chair and glaring at his wife.
“Amos considered going after you too, Drew, but it was clear you didn’t know Jane was pregnant with your baby, and there had been no contact between you.” She pins me with puppy-dog eyes. “That’s when Amos found the men you sent to watch over the Fords. He killed them all but kept their cell phones. He used to laugh when he was replying to one of your texts.”
I dig my hands into my thighs through my pocket. “Whose idea was it to traffic Jane and Vera and sell Silas to Cleo Carter?” I ask, wanting to be done with this so I can get to the killing and maiming part of the night.
“That was your father’s idea.”
I blink several times as I stare at her. “Myfather was involved?”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Anderson cuts in, coming up behind me. “Michael Hearst arranged a marriage deal for Jane and Drew. Why would he do that if he wanted her dead?”
“I only know what I overheard that time he showed up at our house. Apparently, he only agreed to let you marry Jane so he could get to Amos. He had discovered Ford and Amos were friends at Stanford, and he’d heard rumors Amos was part of a more powerful organization. He wanted an alliance, and he knew Ford was the way in. Except Amos was never going to ally with a lowly elite,” she scoffs. “Amos was furious when he showed up uninvited at our front door. It seemed Ford had called him. He was worried Amos was planning something, and he wanted to get Jane to safety, but he never should’ve called your father because he sold him out. Hearst made a deal with Amos. He’d help to make the Fords disappear and let us keep Arlo so we could pretend he was our son and heir as long as Amos helped him get control of the elite and one day he would propose him for elevation to Luminary status.”
The vein in Amos’s neck is visibly throbbing, and I hope he doesn’t have a heart attack. I’m not volunteering for mouth to mouth, but someone will have to do it because he’s not going out like that.
She cackles. “Hearst was such a fool to fall for it. No one gets elevated. Especially not the bastard son of a whore and an adulterer. He wasn’t even elite blood. Amos agreed because it served him to have Hearst do his dirty work. He was always planning to murder him when the time was right, but fate took matters into hand.”
Shocked silence greets her words.
“If it makes you feel any better, handsome, your father never had any intention of letting you marry Jane. She was a means to an end. He always planned to kill her to get her out of the way. She wasn’t worthy of his son, that’s what he said. He was enraged when he discovered the pregnancy. He said it would ruin everything and he wasn’t pureblooded enough to be your heir, he?—”
I lunge at her and swipe my knife across her lips, needing to stop the vitriol pouring from her self-serving mouth. The howl that spills from her throat is music to my ears, and I shed my skin, becoming the beast. No one stops me as I rip the towel away and stab her repeatedly, slashing across her chest, driving my knife deep into her stomach, and tearing strips off her arms.
Amos has gone still, and a deathly hush ghosts over the room as I gut the bitch, savaging her pussy last as I plunge my knife repeatedly into her treacherous cunt.
Her eyes are full of fear as the life force slowly ebbs from her mangled body. I’m covered in blood as I get all up in her face, pressing the knife against her throat. “You stole my flesh and blood from me. You helped to seal his mother’s fate, and you stood by and did nothing as your husband and my father killed Arlo’s grandparents. You didn’t deserve a place in my son’s life. You had the opportunity denied to me. You could have loved him. Youshouldhave loved him, but you chose to treat him with disdain.” I spit in her face as I press the knife into the flesh at her throat. “For that, you deserve to die. Rot in hell, gold digger,” I say as I dig the knife in and drag it across her throat ending her life.
