“I knew immediately Omma wasn’t innocent. Just like you said, Thorne, she was too pushy. She played too hard on my parents’ insecurities, and then brought her own granddaughter into it.” He snorted. “I don’t know what her cut was, but any percentage of seven billion dollars is a lot of money. She just couldn’t let it go.”
“What happened when you confronted Omma?” asked Courtney.
They were doing all the talking, because I couldn’t get a word out.
“She denied it, of course. She even burst into tears—oh so wounded that I could accuse her of such a thing.” His fists balled. Micah was still angry—even then. “But she did feel terrible fortrusting the wrong person. She said she couldn’t forgive herself for being taken in by him too, and evenmore so that her relationship with her family was now in jeopardy. Her solution to make it all up to us was to sign over the manor.”
“Sign it over?” Courtney repeated. “Just like that, she gave you her home?”
Nodding, he looked to me. “Sorry, Sue, but that was another thing I lied about. We didn’t buy the manor from Omma to help her pay her medical bills. She transferred ownership to us and we had to take it. We just couldn’t afford living in New York anymore.”
“Wow.” Courtney dropped back on her heels. “I guess that was nice of her to—”
“It wasn’t,” Micah sliced in, eyes narrowing. “She did not give us that fucking manor to be nice. As always, we were too naïve and too late to figure out her real goal. After we moved in, sherefusedto move out. Just like that, she had her hooks in all of us—trying to run our lives, and most of all, trying to run Lily’s. It wasn’t enough that she fucked up Sue— No offense, baby.
“She was trying to ruin Lily’s childhood too.” He clicked his tongue, turning his glare onto the horizon. “Some days I wondered if the con was ever about the money at all. I think she was just a lonely, sour old woman who didn’t know how to have real relationships with people, so instead she schemed to make them dependent on her.”
Courtney slowly turned to me, worry lighting in her eyes.
It took me a minute, but I found my voice. “That’s a sad story, Micah, for all of us, but nowhere in there did I hear proof that you didn’t kill my mother.”
“What? Of course you did!” He advanced on me. “Sue, why would I kill Omma? She was already dying! I wanted her out of my life, my daughter’s life, and my marriage, and the cancer was taking care of that for me! What would killing her have accomplished, because it sure as hell wouldn’t have gotten my money back.”
“Maybe it would’ve.” I faced him head-on, chin hard and set. “Maybe you got tired of waiting and you wanted to trigger a little thing called an inheritance. All the money Omma had stashed would go to me, and you’d get it by getting custody of Lily and claiming every cent as childsupport.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he deadpanned. “Omma very loudly announced that she was cutting you out of her will. You wouldn’t have inherited my money. I wouldn’t have gotten any child support.”
Shit. I forgot I’m the twin who wasn’t cut out of the will. I’m supposed to be the one who was!
“But—but that doesn’t mean you didn’t do it,” I scrambled. “You can kill a person just because you hate them, Micah. She stole from you. She took everything your parents worked for, and then she turned her poison on Lily. That’s more than enough reason to want someone out of your life for good.”
“Sure it is,” he agreed, tipping his head. “But in my case, all I had to do was wait.”
I clamped down hard on my lip, frustration roaring in my chest. We just kept coming back to that. Why kill a dying woman?
My mind suddenly latched on to his previous words. “Yes, all you had to do was wait, but you didn’t want to. I heard you in the video, saying it wasn’t right that Omma would get to drift off peacefully instead of dying like a witch should.
“You didn’t want to wait, Micah. You wanted her to be punished inthislife, and there was only one way to do that.”
“Baby”—I squawked when he laced his fingers through mine—“I know that sounded bad, and it’s even worse because I lied to you on top of it. But I never laid a finger on your mother. I could never have hurt her.”
“Why?” I shook him loose. “Why is it so beyond the realm of possibility that you went upstairs and did exactly what you said you wanted to do?”
“Because I love you,” he exploded. “I love you and I could never do anything to hurt you. Especially not in those last few weeks when everything changed between you and Omma... Especially not when everything changed between you and me.”
A band latched around my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs. And if I couldn’t breathe... I couldn’t fight him taking me in his arms.
“For the first time in ten fucking years, we were happy.Youwere happy,” he whispered. “But the look on your face when you walked out of that room that night...
“I could never put that look on your face. Not even for seven billion dollars.”
I put my hands between us, shoving against his chest.
“I love you.”
No, stop. These are just more pretty words. Words I don’t deserve.
“I love you.”
