Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
The guys were so weird about it when I wanted to cancel the party, but again, Rhodes had an explanation ready to go. They needed our anniversary to lure big clients to the firm—get us on a healthy financial track again.
But what if not?
What if everything they told me was bullshit? What if Detectives Kaplan and Balogun had only maybes and we believes when talking about Layton because he didn’t have a thing to do with Mrs. Prado or my mother? What if, like Courtney suggested, there was a reason Alex flip-flopped so suddenly after the party?
He had been so cold and distant up to that night, but then the next morning, he was sweet and charming—going on about how he refused to go to New York and leave me alone. Was he just trying to comfort his wife after she lost her mother... or was it more?
“Every time you questioned one of the guys, they immediately lied, shifted blame to someone else, and then confessed to a lesser sin when caught in that lie.
“They just keep pointing the blame every which way except at each other or themselves, even though the people who hated Omma most in this world were always sleeping right down the hall from her. Honestly, they likely would’ve been the main and only suspects from the start if it wasn’t for a conveniently thrown anniversary party that filled their house with cops, suspects, and witnesses.”
“They would’ve been the main and only suspects if not for that party.” My feet carried me out of the kitchen and onto the stairs. “They—all three of them—had everything to lose.”
I looked it up after Rhodes confessed to me. The statute of limitations was up for stealing the necklace, but unfortunately for the guys, they didn’t stop there. They then fenced it, laundered the money they received, and funneled back into a business built on dirty money. The clock for those crimes starts when the crime is discovered, and those were going to be discovered after Omma’s death.
My mother truly did have the means to put my sister’s husbands in jail, and she intended to do just that. They all had motive to stop her. Especially when she started rapidly declining and the end drew near.
“But what would you do to stop her?” I asked the walls as I topped the stairs. “Was it enough to get rid of the evidence? Or did you need to silence her for good—sending your secrets to the grave that much sooner?”
Naturally, the walls had no answers for me, but their rooms had to. There had to be some clue or hint as to what their true endgame is, and if they achieved it that horrible night.
I started in Micah’s room. I’d been in there enough times to know he wasn’t keeping anything incriminating out in the open, so instead I searched his drawers, closet, vents—everything.
I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, but if these men murdered my mother one night, and then crawled up my pussy the next, then one thing was for sure—they didn’t love me.
They didn’t love me. They didn’t want me. They had no interest in a future with the four of us together. There was simply no way they could convince themselves we could ride off into the sunset with my mother’s blood on their hands, so maybe I was never meant to be riding with them.
Plane tickets. I crossed the hall to Rhodes’s room. Stashed packed bags. Stacks of hundreds hidden in a shoebox. There’ll be proof that all of this was a lie.
I blew through Rhodes’s room, ransacking the place in a fit of fervor.
I pulled out the drawers, dumped them, and checked their bottoms. I turned out the pockets of every coat and pants. I checked under and behind all the furniture. I kicked the baseboards to see if any of them were loose, and hiding something behind them.
Rhodes’s bedroom turned up nothing, so I tore across to Alex’s.
The distance between this quadruple was felt from the moment their concern morphed into hostility after I walked in with a bleeding head.
Their bedrooms were in an entirely different wing from Sue’s. They cut her out of the family finances and parental decisions. Every kind thing I said or gesture I made was met with narrowed eyes. But when they changed, I believed I had something to do with it.
That my love, respect, and care for them had melted the frost around their hearts, and we were truly beginning to build a loving, safe family.
“But what if I was wrong?” I yanked out Alex’s bedside table drawer and dumped its contents on the carpet. “What if you all were keeping me sweet so that I’d ignore every glaring red flag!” I kicked over the table, looking for something taped under it like Rhodes claimed the password to his incarceration was stuck to the bottom of my mother’s file cabinet. “Does a man really trust that deleting a file is enough, or does he go a step further and silence the witness so that not even in a morphine-hazed dream can she ever admit the truth?”