She ignored me and kept on walking toward her great-aunt’s absolutely monstrous brick manor house. Thank god there wasn’t anyone out here to witness this scene but the valets. From the number of cars lining the driveway, we must have been some of the last guests to arrive.
“Stella,” I said again, louder. She picked up speed, almost running.
Fucking hell, this was not the way we should be walking in, but I had no one to blame but myself. Talking about my childhood always left me soangry, and Stella was such an easy target. Not just because of her proximity to Richard, but because she had become something akin to the embodiment of everything wrong with the wealthy. So I’d lashed out and gone too far. And while I wouldn’t say I was sorry for what I’d done, I wasn’t entirely immune to regret.
Why couldn’t I remember that in order to pull this off, Stella had to be willing to workwithme? Hell, if she were telling the truth, that’s what she’d been trying to do tonight. And I’d gone and fucked it up because I couldn’t keep a lid on my goddamn temper.
I put on a final burst of speed and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her off her feet and hauling her toward a screen of evergreen shrubs.
“Let mego!” she yelled, thrashing.
One of the valets stepped forward.
I pointed a finger at him in warning. “A hundred bucks to each of you who minds their fucking business.”
He stepped back, miming zipping his lips shut. The others followed suit.
I shook my head and stalked into the shadows, disgusted that that had worked so easily. They didn’t know me. There was nothing to say I wasn’t about to assault the woman in my arms. And yet all it had taken was money to corrupt them.
We rounded the side of the house, where I dropped Stella to her feet, pinning her to the wall by her shoulders before she could escape. “What do you mean, you weren’t driving? You were the only one at the scene.”
Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. She shook her head. “I’m not doing this with you. I don’t owe you shit.”
“I’ll become an even bigger bastard if you don’t tell me.”
“Do it,” she spat. “What do I care?” Her lower lip trembled, and she bit it like she was trying to keep me from noticing.
My heart kicked against my ribcage. I hated this. Hated seeing her vulnerability. I’d much rather she were still screaming at me. I dropped my voice. “No. Tell me what you mean. From all the documents I read, it was clear you were driving.”
“How?” she asked, voice cracking. “My fingerprints were nowhere on the driver’s side of the car.”
“You wiped them off.”
“Then why were Maddie’s still there?”
I blinked. “That wasn’t in the court transcripts.”
“Yeah, thanks to her lawyers.”
I loosened my hold on her shoulders. Was she... telling the truth? Had Stella really not been driving? Goddamn it, I was going to ream out my private detective. I paid him too much for him to miss shit like this. He was supposed to dig until all the bodies were unearthed, and then keep on digging until he found the ones no one else knew about. He’d never failed me before, but if Stella was being truthful, clearly he’d fucked up.
She must have sensed my distraction, because she managed to duck out of my grip before I realized she was moving. This time when I rushed after her, there was an older couple ambling up the driveway, so I couldn’t drag her back into the shadows.
Stella nodded toward them. “Mr. and Mrs. Ashley. Nice to see you again.”
“Miss McCormick,” the man replied.
The woman said nothing, and I shot her a censorious look before catching up with Stella, careful not to touch her this time because she looked about ready to scream.
“Don’t do anything to ruin this,” I warned, my voice low as we approached the front door.
“I won’t,” she snapped.
And then we were inside, accepting glasses of champagne from a server posted up in the entryway. My gaze rose to the grand, spiraling staircase, which climbed several stories up to a stained-glass skylight high overhead. The hanging art looked like it belonged under bulletproof glass, and I didn’t even want to know the cost of the ancient statue currently operating as a coat rack.
Had she truly not been driving the car?I wondered, my mind stuck in a loop.
“Stella?”
