"Not that I didn't already know. My wife stopped wanting any physical intimacy from me years before that. She wanted a divorce. Can you imagine?From me,the man who provided her a comfortable home, everything she could ask for, and she wanted to leave—as if I'd ever let her. I even offered to raise you as my own when the pregnancy test came back positive.
"I said we could be a family, how we were supposed to be. I'd been trying to get her pregnant for years before she started to refuse me. It never took. It felt like a good opportunity, maybe a new beginning for us. But she never could forgive me for killing her lover."
I know he isn't lying now. Not because I'm trusting the emotions I see on his face, I know now those can never be trusted, but because I can feel it. It's true. All of it. What reason does he have to lie to a dead girl?
Ambrose rubs the little charm of my necklace between his thumb and index finger, pinching it as if he can snuff it out of existence. There's a faraway look in his eyes as he continues,and every one of his words makes my heart grow heavier and heavier.
"All it took was one mistake. Just one, and she slipped through my fingers, taking you with her. She'd been planning it for some time. She had to have been or she never would've succeeded. She was smart, your mother. Much smarter than I ever gave her credit for. A brilliant actress. Much better than you. But now…"
He blows out a musty breath all over my face and then rips the necklace from around my neck, holding it up so it catches the light streaming in from the window behind his desk. The tiny diamonds throwing larger rainbows over his tan cheek.
"Now I get to set that right, too."
Ambrose rises back to his full height, clasping the delicate necklace in his palm and squeezing it until his knuckles turn white.
"I told her to get rid of this, and I thought she had. All the beautiful, expensive jewelry I bought her, but this piece of trash was always the most precious because he bought it for her."
I want to ask what he's going to do with it. It means more to me now than it ever did. But it's not like it matters.
"Are you done with your shitty villain monologue? Nobody cares, asshole."
"Oh, but you will," he sneers. "I haven't told you the best part."
Then something else he said registers in my mind, about setting things right with my mother.
He checks his watch again. "She should be here any minute."
Ambrose goes to the long shelves along the left side of the room, hunching to check his reflection in a small decorative mirror, and straightens his vest.
"What does that mean?" I demand, pulling where the man is still gripping my arms from behind. "Ambrose, what the hell does that mean?"
He finishes arranging the side of his hair into a neat line, peering at me with something like excitement glimmering in his eyes.
"I really should be thanking you," he says. "I never anticipated she would give you up. I always thought I'd find the pair of you together. I was looking all these years for a mother and daughter, not just a woman alone. Don't you see, Aurora? If it weren't for you so willingly throwing yourself at me, I might never have gotten close to her."
A storm of emotion rages through me, splitting everything I thought I knew into unintelligible, unidentifiable rubble in its wake.
But one thing becomes clear. A moment brought forward into sharper clarity.
On that stage in front of all of those reporters after my identity was so conveniently 'leaked' to the press, I recall how Ambrose stopped before giving his announcement. He drew my necklace from the high neckline of my dress and set it so delicately atop the fine fabric.
You're perfect, he said.
The perfect bait.
I want to cry at how stupid I was.
How stupid we all were.
Playing right into his hands the whole fucking time.
Every time we thought we had a small win, it was only because he let us. Every time we thought we were one step ahead, it was only because hewantedus to think that.
"Sir," Coyote says from the opposite corner of the room. "She's arrived."
Oh my god.
"What are you going to do to her?" I demand, my voice hoarse and cracking, giving away the fear I'm incapable of hiding any longer. "What are you going to do?"
