“I didn’t kill your mother.”
“Then how do you explain this?” I ripped the tux out and shook it at him. “Let’s hear your slick-ass explanation for why the clothes you were wearing that night are covered in blood? Are you going to claim it’s someone else’s blood?”
“No,” he drew out. “It’s Omma’s blood.”
“I—” I choked. He came out with it so easily, my heart stopped.
“But I didn’t get blood on it from killing her,” he breezed, “and you can see that for yourself. The person who attacked Omma would’ve been covered head to toe, whereas I only got some smeared here and there on my tux.”
I couldn’t breathe. “What the hell is wrong with you? How can you stand there casual andlyinglike you did nothing wrong?”
“Because I did nothing wrong.” He took a step and I shouted, making him throw his hands up in surrender. “All right, all right, chill.” Alex actually sounded a bit annoyed with me. “It’s not as big a deal as you’re building up in your head. I did go into your mother’s room that night, but she was already dead,” he dropped on my head like a ton of bricks. “The minute I saw her, I knew my time was up. I needed to findthatthumb drive before a forensic team found it for me.
“I’d been looking for it for months—”
Visions flashed through my mind of that first day when I walked into Omma’s room and found Alex being all shifty and suspicious.
“—and I wasn’t going to pass up my chance,” he continued. “Reynard was gone for the night. Everyone was downstairs preoccupied with the party, and there was an entire three-hour window before you were expected to look in on her. I had to find it, and stumbling on her dead body wasn’t going to stop me.”
The callousness in his voice reflected the emptiness in his eyes.
“All that looking around got some blood on me,” he said, nodding at the plastic bag. “But I finally found it in one of the bed posts. I unscrewed the top and there it was.” Alex shook his head, a tiny smirk tugging athis lips. “Excellent hiding place, I’ve got to give Omma credit for that. I wouldn’t even have thought to look there if the internet hadn’t given me the idea. Truly well done.”
I gaped at him.He’s nuts. A true and proper psychopath stands in front of me.
“Anyway,” he said. “I had to climb on the bedside table to reach it and I accidentally knocked over the clock and broke it. It occurred to me that I could use that to my advantage, so I moved the hands back.” He shrugged. “Simple, see? I didn’t kill your mother.”
“Simple, huh? Fuck you!” I bellowed, blowing his brows up. “Because you’re lying. You’restilllying! I don’t believe for a second that you were in her room and Rhodes was kicking it next door, and neither of you knew! What’s even on this flash drive? Did you think it was another copy of the emails? Is that why you three planned the second dumbest heist in history!”
Alex cracked up. “Hey, no need to be mean,” he hooted. “Our first one wasn’t that dumb. We did get away with it after all.”
“You doorknobs spilled all the details in trackable, recoverable emails! You went to the same fucking school, why wasn’t it possible for you to do all your planning in person without a record?”
He blinked at me. “I... uh... Damn, that’s a good point. Shit, maybe we are doorknobs.”
“You are! And instead of owning up to it and accepting the consequences for being thoughtless idiots, you guys killed my mom to cover it up.”
“Again, we didn’t kill your mom. If we wanted her death, why wouldn’t we have smothered her with a pillow or slipped something in her morning tea? Here’s a newsflash, baby girl, people don’t ask that many questions when an old lady dies of seemingly natural causes. They just assume it was natural,” he said. “Truth is we could’ve gotten her out of the way whenever we wanted, but that’s not what we wanted.”
“We, we, we,” I hissed. “So you admit you were in this together.”
“I admit that it was Rhodes’s job to find the password and delete the email, and my job to find the backup evidence on the flash drive,” he said. “Micah was supposed to stay downstairs and make sure you didn’t feel theurge to check on your mom sooner, but then he saw one of the officers sneaking Mrs. Finley into the downstairs pantry.” He beamed at me. “Obviously, she wasn’t there to steal jars of our imported marmalade. Micah figured her presence might come in handy, so he popped upstairs at one point just so people would believe it when he said he saw Mrs. Finley upstairs.
“But no part of the plan involved killing Omma, because, as I said, she was already dead when I went in there.”
My mind spun. Was any of that true? Was he lying to me again? Was he trying to get me to let my guard down, so he could do whatever he followed me here in the middle of the night to do?
“Why?” I rasped. “If you’re telling me the truth, explain why? Why was it so important for you to get this drive, that you stepped over my mother’s body to do it? You truly did something so cold and inhumane just to save yourself from some charges over the creation of a business you sold over ten years ago! This”—I shook the drive—“matters to you so much!?”
Hard eyes met mine. “It matters more than anything. It’s all that matters,” he growled. “You don’t know this. I mean, you literally don’t know this since you haven’t actually been here for the last seven years, but I have nothing—fucking nothing—except for Lily.”
I reeled back.Lily?
“And your mother wanted to take her from me too.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “How could my mother possibly take Lily from you?”
Alex scoffed. Crossing his legs at the ankle, he leaned back against the doorframe—raking me up and down like he pitied me.
