Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
We’re going to get away with this.
Because of vanity and ego. Because Trent can’t even consider, for one second, that foul play might be involved. Because he was there the night she died, and surely, he’d know if she were murdered.
But it’s not how we do things. It’s ruined everything, everything we had planned. “Did you talk to the lawyers?” I asked.
“We’re reading the will tomorrow, and it’s likely everything will be split fifty-fifty between me and him. We might be fighting over some of the properties. But my father told me it’s legit. She did update the will to include me.”
Turns out, Claudia didn’t want to give her favorite son everything anymore. Because it wasn’t smart to leave a hundred percent of her family’s legacy to Trent, a son who’d been dragged in the mud for something so…minor—an audio leak. What if an uglier skeleton fell out of his closet? That’s what Addison and Elizabeth stressed to Claudia for days. That she needed to hedge her bets.
Claudia had listened to them. And so it really turns out, we did need the godmothers after all.
It’s good that Jake walked away with something, but Trent was supposed to have nothing. Now he has ten times more power than he did. And killing his mother has only endeared him to the town. They knew he was Claudia’s favorite son, and he’s milking their pity.
We’ve been slowly setting him on fire. It extinguished with one wrong move, and he’s risen from the fucking ashes.
Jake plucked out an orchid, twisting the stem between his fingers. Hailey’s favorite. “Honestly, man…I wish we were burying him instead.”
I nodded stiffly. “Sentiment is shared.”
Phoebe has said my brother killed the wrong Koning. If there were a choice, I think we all would’ve targeted Trent over Claudia.
Why had Trevor chosen her? He’d given me a runaround answer. “It was a one-step solution. It helped, didn’t it?”
Not really.
Claudia was never blackmailed. She never made Jake sole heir before she died.
Trevor chose to kill her either because Phoebe was the principal and he wanted to show he could execute it better than her, or because Claudia was threatening Sidney. And he cares more about Sidney Burke than I thought.
Whatever the motive, the Koning matriarch is gone.
“How are you holding up?” I asked Jake.
“I keep waiting for the guilt, the sadness, but it’s just not there.” He set the orchid back. “I keep thinking about Kate.” Jake faced a giant poster on the wall.
I turned with him.
It said Victoria’s most celebrated flower with an art sketch of a giant mountain laurel—prominent pollen stems arched toward purplish-pink petals like spider legs. The mountain laurel is on lamppost banners. It’s on the logo of the country club. It’s on brochures for the town. It’s everywhere.
Including in Claudia’s bloodstream.
I started laughing.
Jake side-eyed me, and then he started laughing, too. “Your brother either loves poetry or has a sick sense of humor.”
“The latter, probably.” He killed Claudia with a mountain laurel. Toxic if consumed. Lethal in large quantities. He muddled it in her bedtime tea.
Before we left the florist shop, Jake asked me, “How old are you then? For real?”
“Like you ever knew my real age,” I said under my breath and slipped my sunglasses on. “How old did you think I was, Jake?”
“I never believed you were younger than me. I’ll just say that.”
“You could just keep believing that.” I flashed a tight smile.
Jake ground out an annoyed sound, like I was a shithead little brother. “Or you could tell me the truth.”
The truth. “I thought I was going to turn twenty-six on the nineteenth.”
His brows jumped. “Holy shit,” he said with a laugh, like I just descended into puberty.
I made a face. “That’s barely younger than you.” He’s twenty-eight now.
“Meh, it’s pretty young.” His lips rose, and he shoved his wallet in his back pocket. “Real age then?”
“I’m turning twenty-seven.” Addison and Everett found me when I was one, but they made me believe I was a year younger. One when I was truly two. And so on, and so forth.
“You were born in ’85.” He smiled at me like he saw me. “Do I call you Brayden, Grey, or Rocky?”
“From you, I prefer jackass.” I backed up to the door. “Every time Victoria’s Sweetheart curses, a baby bird dies in the sky.”
He laughed. “Phoebe did say you’re afraid of geese.”
“Christ.” I rolled my eyes.
“Bye, jackass,” he called out.
“Bye, sweetheart.” I middle-finger exited.
Now at the funeral days later, it’s setting in. The finality of what happened that night. Not just with Claudia.
But in the storm shelter.
All of it.
Us.
Once the crowds disperse and the casket is lowered, I distance myself and walk the old cemetery.
It takes me several minutes.
But I find them.
I stuff my hands in my leather jacket and stare down at four headstones—the engravings badly chiseled. Names and dates nearly illegible. They were reburied farther back in the cemetery in the nineties. Away from the other Wolfes.