CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 43

NEENA

The cash was stacked in three neat rows along the bottom of the hidden cavity. I stared down at the display and tried desperately to come up with an explanation for its presence.

It was in the floor of our master bedroom, the hole cleverly hidden under a trapdoor that fit seamlessly into the wood planks, the pattern hiding the outline of it. I’d found it when we moved in and had quickly put a rug over the find. Matt . . . Matt had never found out about its existence. Now, he crouched and tested the trapdoor lid, the hinges operating without a sound.

“We found this a few hours ago.” Detective Cullen nodded to the money. “What’s all the cash for?”

“I don’t know.” I held up my hands. “I didn’t even know that compartment was there.” Too late, I noticed the fingerprint powder on the top of the inset handle and cursed the oversight.

Matt reached forward, then hesitated. “Can I touch the money?”

Detective Cullen passed him a set of latex gloves. “Wear these.” She held out a pair for me, and I shook my head, stepping back. Matt got the gloves on, then picked up the closest stack of cash, the bills bound with a two-thousand-dollar wrap. He thumbed through the ones underneath it, then tapped his finger along the rows, counting. My mind calculated along with him. At least eighty thousand dollars, assuming each row held the same. All underneath our cheap rug from Bernie’s Furniture.

“It’s not yours?”

I hesitated, wondering if the cash could be taken from us, depending on my response. “I may have put it there,” I said carefully. “And forgotten it.”

Matt’s head snapped toward me, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. I glared back at him, unsure of how he didn’t see the importance in claiming this small fortune as our own. There was a long and quiet battle of eye contact, then he looked back at the cash, his focus zeroing in on the red box sandwiched beside the green stacks of bills. I followed suit, taking in the familiar red square. “What’s in the box?”

The detective nodded at it. “Open it.”

My chest tightened as Matt reached for the lid, and I wanted to shout at him that this was a trap, to step back, to not touch—

He leaned forward and stared into the box. Despite myself, I navigated to the side to see the contents from his viewpoint.

It was filled with photos. A stack of them, varying in size, the original photos cut into varying sizes. He pulled out the stack and flipped through the glossy prints.

They were all photos of William. Some blurry, some crisp. Some taken in our house, the angle odd, his attention elsewhere. Others showed him in New York, smiling for the camera, or covered in mud, at a runner’s event of some sort. It was the ones near the end that were the hardest to see. I saw the tightening of Matt’s back, the stiffening of his neck, his movement slowing as he looked at each of them in painful slow motion.

William’s wedding photo.

A selfie with him and Cat, obviously in bed.

Him at a football game, his arm around her.

Another with the two of them, laughing on a Hawaiian beach.

In each of those, Cat’s face was scribbled over in black marker, and a careful cutout of my face was glued atop the scribble, my bright smile next to William’s. Looking over his shoulder, it looked like the work of a crazy person. Me.

The last three photos were the worst. Shots of the four of us. Poolside at the club. At the Winthorpe Foundation charity golf tournament. At the Fourth of July party. In every single one, Matt and Cat were beheaded, drops of blood painted in red marker around the crude hole where their heads used to be.

He dropped the photos as if they were poisoned, his fat knees scooting back on the floor, his breath wheezing as if we’d just had sex. He turned to me, and the pain and hatred that emanated from him made me step back in defense. “You—you’re obsessed with him.”

“What?” I shook my head. “I’m not. I didn’t—I didn’t do that, Matt. Come on! I love you.” I sank onto my knees before him, abandoning any thoughts about a life without him. I couldn’t lose him, couldn’t have him look at me like this, not when he was the only person in my entire life to look at me as if I had worth, to cherish me as if I were a prize.

“Have you slept with him?” he gritted out.

“What?” I gasped. “No. Matt.” I grabbed his hand, clutching it between mine. “Matt, I love you. This—this is all a setup. Someone else put those photos in there. I didn’t do that. I don’t love him. I don’t even like him. I love you.” The lies mixed with the truth, and I prayed that he would believe them all. He had to.

“For twenty years, I’ve bent over backward to be a perfect husband,” he seethed. “I’ve dealt with your jealousy. I’ve supported your career, your plastic surgeries, your insecurities . . . and for what? Eighty thousand dollars underneath our bed and an obsession over our neighbor? I’d thought it was Cat, all this time. Cat you hated. Cat you wanted to be like. Cat you were obsessed over.”

“I’m not obsessed with Cat,” I spit out. “I hate Cat.”

“Then why have we spent so much time with them? Why all the dinners? Why the stupid pop-ins? Admit it—Neena. It was because of him.” He stared at me with a look I couldn’t escape two decades ago and was helpless to avoid now. “Look at me, Neena, and tell me the truth.”

“He’s my boss,” I said quietly. “Anything I did was to keep my job and to give us new opportunities.” Like a weed, the idea immediately grew. William could have forced himself on me. Made inappropriate comments. Touches. No one knew what happened in that boardroom. It’d be my word against his. Maybe tonight was all William. Maybe he’d grown obsessed with me and hired a hit man to kill my husband. It could work. And even if it couldn’t, the threat of it to William’s empire would be enough to get something. Some additional reward for all this.

“There was this, also.” The detective crouched beside the open cavity and pulled out a picture frame, one that had been under the box. She held it out to me, and Matt flinched, recognizing the carved wooden frame that used to hold our wedding photo. As if pulled to the spot, I looked at the dresser where it had previously sat.

“The frame is ours, but the image . . .” I shook my head and lied. “I’ve never seen that photo before.” It was a solo picture of William, a candid shot where he was smiling into the camera. The photo was from an African safari that he and Cat had gone on—the photo one of hundreds on her Instagram feed.

“These pictures are all of your neighbor.” She tapped the glass, her short nails dotting William’s face. “William Winthorpe.”

I cleared my throat. “Yes, but I didn’t do any of these. I’ve never seen any of this.”

“You just said that you might have put the cash here.”

“Well, I lied. It’s not my money.”

“Were you aware of this compartment in the floor?”

My chest grew tight, panic running like a fever through my chest. My fingerprints had to be on that handle. I hesitated. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Matt repeated. He stared down at the photos, and I needed to get him alone before the images of me and William were seared on his brain forever. He pushed himself to his feet.

“Are you feeling okay, Mr. Ryder?” The detective’s words floated from somewhere to my left, and I stared up at Matt, alarm rising as I saw the gray pallor of his skin.

“Honestly?” He held the side of his chest, and I thought of his heart, the thickening of his ventricles that had shown on his latest ultrasound. “I feel like I’m about to vomit. I didn’t know . . .” He swept his hand across the display. “About any of this.”

“Neither did I,” I snapped, frustrated with everyone’s inability to believe me.

The detective also stood, moving toward Matt with a concerned look. “Would you like some water? To use the restroom?”

He shook his head. “No. I just—am I done here? Did you have more questions for me?”

Detective Cullen’s gaze swung to me. “No . . . ,” she said slowly. “You can go. But Neena, we have more questions for you.”

Matt brushed by me, his steps unsteady as he went for the door, and I followed after him. “Matt, you know I didn’t put that there. You know I don’t—”

“I don’t know anything about you anymore.” His voice was low, but each word punctured through me like a bullet. “Stay away from me.” Just before the door, he paused and looked over his shoulder. “And, Detective? You might want to look in our safe.”

I opened my mouth but could find nothing to say. Inside me, everything catapulted and twisted, my biggest fears tunneling into one slow and silent scream of agony.

My husband, my sweet, stupid husband, had betrayed me.