She gave me a tearful smile. A pink arrowhead syngonium was clutched between her perfectly manicured hands. She offered it to me. “Hi Lola, you look well.”
I pretended to sniff the air. “That smells like bullshit.”
She laughed, her hands twisting. This was not the same woman I’d met two weeks ago.
Alfie came and crouched in front of me. “You’re supposed to be in bed.” He lifted one of my hands and kissed it. His sister looked at him in shock.
“I heard Grace was here, I wanted to know why.”
“I just wanted to check on you after the accident.”
“More bullshit. I thought rich people were supposed to be good at lying.” I looked at Alfie. “What’s going on?”
“Lo,” he spoke softly, as if trying to shut out the other people in the room, “I don’t want you to deal with anything but resting and recovering. Please let me protect you from the world right now.”
“No. We face things together.”
“Fine, but you’re staying in that chair and I need you to attempt breakfast. Ada, fetch some tea please and the muffins I sent out for.” Ada hurried out the room and Alfie wheeled me over to his chair so we could sit together. I wanted to ask about the men who had attacked me, the photographs, but I wasn’t sure how much Grace knew.
“Thank you for the necklace and the letter.”
“You’re welcome.” He held my hand. It was still sore from the cannula but I didn’t mind. It felt like a lifetime since Alfie and I had been together. “Elliot tells me your family is fine, no trouble there.”
“That’s right,” Elliot said. “I doubt the Donal’s will bother them anyway, especially now, but it doesn’t hurt to take a precaution.”
I glanced at Grace, wondering how much she knew. “I filled her in already,” Alfie said. “What she needs to know anyway.” He hadn’t told her about the baby, is what he was trying to say.
“I’m so sorry, Lola.”
“It’s not your fault my father got mixed up with drug traffickers.” I let out a laugh. It was all so surreal. Grace didn’t laugh though, she was too busy frowning at Alfie. “What’s going on? Why are you really here?”
She didn’t answer me, neither did Elliot.
“I asked her to come,” Alfie answered me finally. “I know the last few weeks have been hard. You feel like I’ve kept you in the dark?—”
“You have,” I cut in.
“I know but with good reason. I wanted to keep you out of the way until I had answers to every question. You found out a week ago that someone had stolen a large sum of money from me. What I didn’t want to tell you was that the account that money was transferred to was under your name.”
A cold sweat broke out over my skin. “No! No, Alfie, I didn’t?—”
“I know. You wouldn’t. But whoever thought you would believe that I’d cheat on you with Angie, obviously thought I’d believe you’d steal from me.”
I frowned. “I don’t get it. Why? If they want money they obviously have access so why not just take it?”
“For the same reason they didn’t blackmail us over those photos. They don’t want money, they want us separated. They want us hurt.” Alfie took a breath. “Elliot has managed to trace it to my mother. It wasn’t difficult. She was unnecessarily sloppy.” He seemed embarrassed that a Tell would be so ham-fisted.
“Not sloppy, she just failed to read the room,” Elliot spoke up. “There’s a hundred million in that account, Lola. All yours under your name.” I stared at him.A hundred million.Grace’s eyes were fixed on me, studying my reaction. Alfie didn’t even look at me. He didn’t need his x-ray eyes to figure out how little I cared about the money. “I expect she thought you’d just take it without argument and Alfie wouldn’t question it, that he’d hate you and ruin you over it, branding you a thief and a liar. She didn’t expect him to see through it, she didn’t expect you not to take it, didn’t think he’d bother to look into who had really moved it.”
“She really hates me this much?”
“She’s threatened by you,” Alfie said, “and she doesn’t want me to be happy.”
She blamed him. Deep down she knew what he’d done to Joseph and Charles and she blamed him. She wanted him to suffer forever.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was trying to protect you. I feared her taking more steps that might hurt or embarrass you. I thought if it seemed as though I was distancing myself from you, she would stop. At least until I had enough evidence it was her and had decided what to do about it.”
