Connor scoffs, shaking his head. “Good luck with that. If you don’t know already, you’re never going to be able to figure it out, Billie. If that’s even your real name.”
The tears come faster now, but I remain silent. There’s no point in arguing. He’s through with me.
“You need to leave.” His tone is like ice, cold and unfeeling. “Leave this campus and go back home to the States with your sick mom. Is she even ill? Or was that another lie? It doesn’t matter. You don’t belong here. If you’re not gone by the morning, I’m going to tell everyone who you really are and blow your supposed investigation wide open. I’m sure the police would love to know Peter planted someone with a fake identity on campus to, what? Impede their investigation? Sounds like a good reason to go to jail. And even if he’s a shitdad, you can take it from me: watching your father get hauled away in handcuffs is the actual worst.”
“What about watching your sister get charged with a crime she didn’t commit? Do you think that comes close?”
He clenches his jaw and just looks at me, letting me hear my words play back in my head. I cringe, but there’s no unsaying them. Connor will never watch his sister do anything ever again, good or bad. I can’t believe I let something so insensitive slip out of my mouth.
He pushes past me and exits the classroom before I can say a word, the door slamming behind him like the final blow that sends me to my knees. I cry and cry with my hands covering my face. It’s over.
Belinda Winters is no more.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Iarrive at the hospital in the early evening after ordering a car to London, adding the cost to the PETER PAYBACK note in my phone. Even if I failed in my mission here, I can’t let myself go home poorer for it. It will be hard enough to put myself back together after I eventually shatter into a million pieces. Because that’s how I feel—like there are fissures running through every part of me, and sooner or later, I’ll fall apart in a catastrophic shower of glass.
I’ve been a mess all day. I can’t eat. Can’t stop crying. I even vomited at one point, overwhelmed by the swirl of emotions in my body. I’m a failure. A fraud. I’m trying to do good, and instead I hurt the people I care about most.
Like Isla.
Like Connor.
Leaving Wickham is the only way to salvage this whole horrible situation. Connor was right; if I stay and he exposes me, Peter could get in serious trouble. There may be no love lost between us, but that doesn’t mean I want to see him putin jail or charged with a crime. Even if I think he deserves it a little bit, Whitney certainly doesn’t.
Keeping my head down, I enter the hospital and head straight for the elevator, finding Isla’s floor like a carrier pigeon flying to its coop. I wish I had a better message to bring her, but I’ll have to tell her I failed. Still, I need to see her one last time before I leave. She has to know how badly I fucked everything up, if only so she’ll understand how hard I’ve been trying to get it right. Not that she can hear me, but I need to get it out. Will purging my mistakes make me feel better? Probably not.
But I’m doing it anyway.
I find her room and slip inside before coming to a complete stop. Peter Vale is sitting at his younger daughter’s bedside, watching her immobile body like the force of his concentration alone could wake her up at any moment. He glances in my direction and stands, his expression thunderous as he approaches.
“What are you doing here?” His harsh voice has me on the verge of tears, but I refuse to fall apart in front of this cruel man.
“I came to see her.”
“Why? Have you discovered something? You should’ve called me. Our time is limited. Tomorrow is our last chance to file a formal injunction and stop the charges. How are you going to help us save Isla?” Peter is breathing hard, and there’s a wild look in his eyes. Like he knows his entire world is going to come crumbling down around him if his daughter is arrested for killing her best friend.
“I don’t know, okay?” I’m yelling, and I don’t even care.He’s pushed me too far, though I was already on the brink of despair before I got here. “I don’t know what to do anymore. All I’ve done is figure out whodidn’tdo it. It wasn’t Priya or Abigail or Julian or Connor. It definitely wasn’t Sophia or any of the Harringtons.”
Peter pounces on this information like a cat does a mouse. “You say it wasn’t Julian, but what about Max? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what you told me.”
I throw up my hands, moving past him toward the windows, trying to put a little distance between us. Peter’s intensity is stifling, a fire taking up all the oxygen in the room. “He definitely hates you, but that doesn’t explain how Emily ended up dead. Even if Mr. Ashworth wanted to get to you through Isla, I’d expect some sort of white-collar kidnapping scheme, or maybe he’d send Whitney some deepfakes of you with another woman. You know, to retaliate for your super funny joke at the last reunion,” I explain with a roll of my eyes.
“The reunion.” Peter scrubs a hand along his jaw, lost in thought. “Right.”
He joins me at the window and stands there silently, staring out at the bleak cityscape like he can’t bear to look at me. I study his profile, noting the way his once-sharp jaw is starting to soften around the edges. The version of Peter I’m most familiar with is the one in the picture of the four of us under the tree. All this time, I’ve been visualizing a ghost when I think of him. That man doesn’t exist anymore. Hasn’t for fifteen years. Now the man beside me is a different kind of specter. Haunted, rather than haunting.
“You didn’t happen to hear anything else about the reunion, did you?” he finally asks.
“You spreading rumors about a man’s loyal wife having an affair kind of stole the spotlight that night.” My sarcasm is on full display, because I am so over this entire thing. The back-and-forth and the secrets and lies. It’s exhausting.
Peter whirls to face me, clearly frustrated. “You think you’re so clever, Belinda, but not everything is as simple as you make it out to be. Max Ashworth’s histrionics served a higher purpose that night.”
“So what, stroking your ego is a higher purpose now?” My voice drips with disgust. “Sometimes I wonder what Mom ever saw in you …”
Peter storms toward me, and I flinch, fear streaking through my blood. I’m afraid of this man, my father, for the first time in my life. I scramble to the other side of Isla’s bed, using it as a shield. He stays on his side of the bed, but his expression is enraged. We glare at each other, and I refuse to be the one who looks away first. Until my phone buzzes with a text notification. The first one I’ve received all day. It’s a message from Sophia.
