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)
“But when she got the truth about what happened to Jason Earnst, that was the jackpot. She told me that if the three of us didn’t sign custody of Lily over to her, and if I didn’t get the fuck out and disappear, she’d put us all in jail,” he said. “Divorce seemed inevitable back then, so it was quite a threat. When we left, we’d leave alone.”
“But— But it can’t have been that simple,” I burst out. “You could’ve fought the charges. Even the murder charge! It was self-defense and you were eleven.”
“It was a cover-up, Sarang. The cover-up of a child’s murder in a state-run facility. Compounded by the fact that said child killer then grew up to be a money-laundering thief,” he dropped. “The only thing the jury would’ve seen is a dangerous felon that escaped justice for too long. They would’ve put me away, and I’d have lost the only thing in my life worth having—three-fifths of this family.”
“So what happened?” I couldn’t help myself. If all of this was more lies, they were the most engrossing lies I’d ever been told. “You obviously didn’t leave. The four of you didn’t get divorced.”
“What happened is Sue got hit with those lawsuits, and suddenly her useless husbands weren’t so useless after all. Rhodes leveraged the firm to pay everyone off and keep her out of jail. Micah has a bunch of big clients who loan out the keys to their summer and winter homes in the off-season, giving Sue endless escapes to lie low and figure out how to blame everyone else for her problems, and I continued to love and raise Lily, so she didn’t have to.
“Suddenly, trading us for richer husbands didn’t seem so likely, so she settled for the ones she had. After all, who wanted to be attached to the bird-poop lady?”
“Who indeed.”
Step. “Omma kept pushing for Sue to dump us, but Sue refused while the lawsuits were ongoing, and she definitely fucking refused when Omma let slip that Sue could walk away with Rhodes’s firm, and Omma could walk away with Lily.” He whistled. “Wow. Did that blow up in her face.”
“It did?”
“Oh, yeah. Sue did not want a firm she had no idea how to run. Your sister was born to be famous, loved, and adored, and investment managers did not have worldwide fans. And besides, who would fund her rise to fame if she signed away her only bargaining chip?”
It took me a sec, but then I got it. “You can’t get child support if you don’t have custody of the child.”
“Ding, ding, ding,” he sang. “When Sue found out your mother was maneuvering behind her back to force through the divorces, send her free nanny away”—he gestured to himself—“and rob her of future child support payments, she lost her flipping mind. She blew up on Omma, telling her that if she didn’t back off and stay out of our marriage, she’d sell the manor right out from under her, and the five of us would take off. She’d never see any of us again.
“That threat hit the bull’s-eye. Because Omma had just—”
“—found out she had cancer,” I finished, hearing the pieces fall into place. “She was scared. Afraid of dying. Afraid of being alone. But most of all, afraid of dying alone. She took her finger away from the nuclear button because she wanted you all to stay here in the manor with her, but a ceasefire isn’t a surrender. She planned to have the last laugh by making sure this...” I held up the drive. “...was released after she died.”
“Yes.” Alex took that final step, surrounding me in his spicy-sweet cinnamon cloud. His thumb and forefinger closed on the drive. “But I didn’t kill your mother, Sarang. There wasn’t any need or point. She kept my secret for an entire year. She was obviously content with knowing our lives would be ruined after she died. All we needed to do was find the email and backup drive, and destroy it without her knowing. Then she’d just peacefully pass on, and that’d be the end of the whole sorry fucking episode.
“I got the drive that night and hid it, and the clothes, under a loose step in the servants’ staircase. When I went back to get it the next morning, it was gone. I thought the cops took it, but then they arrested your friend. You were protesting her innocence so hard, it occurred to me that maybe you found the clothes and drive, but you didn’t know what to make of it. You were hanging on to it until you figured out what to do with me.”
I made a strangled noise. “That’s why you suddenly started acting all nice and sweet to me.”
“Well, I certainly wasn’t going to piss you off when you had the key to my freedom in your hands,” he said. “But it’s different now. You know the truth now.” I felt him tug on the drive. “I’m innocent, Sarang, so what I’m going to do now is burn the drive and the clothes, and we’re all going to move on with our lives.”