CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 48

NEENA

Ten hours after a police car took me from my own home, I stepped outside the cab and stared at our house. The porch light was on, illuminating the bright-yellow tape that stretched between each column and to stakes in the yard. I stepped forward, my tennis shoes crunching across the gravel as I hefted my purse over my aching shoulder.

It should be a crime to be this exhausted, my emotions and body stretched beyond reasonable limits. Ten hours of waiting, of questions, of explaining my story over and over again. Constant accusations and photos and speculation and lies. Ten hours that had convinced me that someone was behind all this and out to get me. As I trudged up the steps, my purse slipped off one shoulder and knocked against my knee. I managed the final step and staggered to the front door. I tried the handle, which didn’t give. I jabbed at the doorbell and considered finding my keys, buried somewhere in the bottom of my purse.

I peered in the door’s glass cutouts, the interior dark. Matt had to be here. I opened the top of my purse and flinched when the heavy door moved, swinging inward, the porch light spotlighting a thin sliver that revealed my husband.

I flinched at the sight of Matt, his eyes bloodshot, his hair wild. He looked like he hadn’t shaved today, his paunchy cheeks covered in a fine layer of stubble. His T-shirt, a baggy graphic tee that I could have sworn I’d thrown out, boasted the words Don’t Be A, followed by a photo of a rooster and a lollipop. I hated that stupid shirt. He’d picked it up at a cheap tourist shop on Duval Street and insisted on wearing it on the cruise ship home, despite my staunch opposition to the garment.

So, this was the path he was taking. A childish T-shirt and making me get a taxi home. I pinned him with a look and went to step inside. He didn’t budge, his body blocking the doorway.

I glared at him. “Are you going to move?”

“You have ten minutes to get anything you need out of the house.” He spoke slowly, his words slurring. “Any longer and I’ll have that officer escort you out.” He pointed to one of the police cars parked on the edge of our drive, its parking lights dimmed.

I gawked at him. He was the one who had thrown me under the bus, he was the one who had given them the code to the safe, yet he was throwing me out? “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea what I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours? I had to take a taxi here. Why aren’t you answering my calls?”

“I loved you.” He wilted a little against the doorframe, but he would forgive me for the affair. He just needed some time. Some soothing. A reminder of how much he loved and needed me.

“Move out of the way.” I pushed forward, using my shoulder to force him back. My purse strap caught on the door handle, and I yanked, almost tripping over Matt in an attempt to get fully inside the door. “What are you—” I shoved off him and made it to my feet. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” He gripped the door with one hand and slung it closed with a ferocity that shook the entire wall. “You hired someone to kill me.”

“Oh my God.” I threaded my arms across my chest, watching as he thudded past me and into the kitchen. I followed him, pulling on his arm. “Matt. You can’t honestly believe that.”

“I believe it,” he sputtered. “You pathetic whore.”

My mouth gaped, and there was a full moment where I couldn’t even formulate a reaction. Matt didn’t speak to anyone like that, much less me. I couldn’t think of a time he’d ever said anything remotely rude to me. He knew better. Yet now, after everything I’d been through, had been accused of, he was making it worse. I swallowed. “You never called Mitchell, did you?”

It had been so embarrassing, expecting to see our attorney and then having a public defender walk in. The man had taken ages to appear and hadn’t known anything about me or Matt or our history. Mitchell would have known I was innocent. Mitchell knew me. I could have told Mitchell everything and not sounded like a . . . a . . . a pathetic whore.

Matt’s accusation echoed, the words fitting for how I had felt in front of that public defender. I’d been forced to tell him the intimate details of my relationship with William and had seen the judgment flicker across the man’s craggy face. I’d hotly contested his questions about hiring someone to kill Matt and could tell he didn’t believe me.

“Oh, I called Mitchell,” Matt sneered. “I called Mitchell and made it very clear where his loyalties should lie.”

My cheeks burned at the realization that Matt was the reason the public defender had been assigned to me. And I had believed in him the entire time in the station. Assumed, however naively, that he had been back at home, believing in me.

I let out an awkward laugh and tried to understand where all this had gone so wrong. “But . . . it’s all crap, Matt. I didn’t hire someone to kill you. You know I didn’t do that.”

“So, I’m unlucky?” He lifted his arms out to each side, and I couldn’t believe I was being subjected to these accusations. I should be getting a hot shower right now. “I guess we just happened to be missing the screws on the railing I like to lean against every morning? I guess the liqueur you bought specifically for Cat just happened to contain antifreeze? I guess, out of all of the houses in this town, some random psychopath happened to come into ours, without breaking a single window or lock, and stick a gun in my mouth?”

“You can’t be serious,” I sputtered.

“Cat went to the hospital, Neena. I was one misfire away from death. Was it worth killing both of us for William?”

God, I hated that woman. Screw the shooter coming after my husband. He should have entered that diamond-encrusted mausoleum and shot her pretty little face right between the eyes. Then we’d be in our home, happy as pigs in crap, and it’d be their life being picked apart right now.

“You’re lucky that Cat kept the police from investigating that limoncello. We protected you,” he spat out.

“Were you protecting me when you told them to look in the safe? Did you enjoy stressing me out, holding that over my head?” I could feel tears burning at the corners of my eyes, my very thin thread of self-control frayed to breaking. “I fainted, Matt. I fainted when I thought that they were going to find my will. Why put me through that?”

“Oh, please.” He shook his head at me. “You’d already removed it. Probably destroyed it. What was there for you to faint over?”

I froze at the implication of his words. “I didn’t remove it, Matt. I—”

“I spoke to Cat this morning, and we decided—”

“We decided? Where did you talk to Cat? Did you see her? Was she here?” He knew the rules. I’d been very clear for the two decades of our relationship and drawn his lines in bloody red paint. Having a woman in our house, alone with my husband, was a football field outside those lines, and he knew it.

“You are not going jealous psycho on me right now.” He held up his hand, and I wanted to grab it by the wrist, flip that switch by the sink, and shove it down the garbage disposal. “What matters is that she agreed not to mention the poisoning to the detective or share the broken railing with them.”

“Oh, how kind of her,” I sneered. “So generous. I should write her a freaking thank-you card. You believe that act? She probably poisoned herself.”

“Sit down, Neena.”

Had he ever said my name in such a cold way? He pointed to a stool. “I’m going to explain this to you one time, and I swear on my life, if you say one word before I finish, I’m going to slap the shit out of you.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it, stunned at the stranger standing before me and the words he’d just growled at me. Stunned at how, if he had only shown this side of himself earlier, I might have actually respected him. Stayed loyal to him. I sat.

“I’m having Mitchell’s office prepare divorce papers. I’ll file on Monday.”

“You’re doing what?” The words exploded out of me as my panic flared.

The impact of his hand threw me backward, the stool tipping. I scrambled to grab the edge of the counter and failed, the expensive three-peg stool leaning to one side, the soles of my shoes sliding along the tile as stars dotted my vision.

He hit me.Matt had hit me.

If he had pulled up his shirt and produced a third nipple, I wouldn’t have been more surprised.

I tugged at the edge of the counter and found my footing, my legs weak as I struggled to stand, my vision clearing. Matt stood across from me, still and silent, and stared at me as if I were a stranger. Me.

He pointed to the stool, which lay on its side, the wood knocking on the floor as it rocked a little in place. “Sit back down. Shut up. If you speak again, I’ll hit you again.”

It was pure torture to keep my mouth closed. What was he thinking? My cheekbone throbbed. I’d have a bruise. How would we explain that to the police?

I lifted the stool and righted it. I moved dully to sit atop it, my hands sweating as I gripped the counter and vowed to myself to stay silent. In my head, a slow-motion picture of Cat Winthorpe played. Laughing at my arrest. Feeding carbs and sugar to William in a sexy negligee and making him fall back in love with her. I was the one who was supposed to win this game. Me.

Matt continued as if all were fine, as if he hadn’t just abused me. “You will not contest the divorce and will give me all the assets of our marriage, including my company.” He looked at me, making sure that I was following his ridiculous monologue.

He might be saying this now, but he couldn’t mean it. Through everything, Matt was my rock. The only one who loved me through my flaws. The only one who looked at me as if I had value. The one who had provided for me since the moment I’d lost my father. That emotional security had been the only constant in my life for the last two decades. It had been the foundation I had depended on when I had stepped out on him. His love for me . . . it wasn’t going anywhere. It couldn’t go anywhere. Him leaving me was never a piece of this plan.

“I will give you a thousand dollars a month in alimony for two years. That’s all you’ll get. Not one dollar of the bonus from Ned Plymouth. Not one dollar of our stocks or savings or the equity in this house.”

I would never agree to that. He was crazy if he thought I would.

“You’ll sign the settlement agreement and leave me alone, because if you don’t, if you ever come near me—I’ll tell them about your father. I’ll tell them the story that you detailed in your will. And they’ll believe it, especially if I have Cat beside me, sharing everything about the liqueur you gave her and the details of my fall. They’ll believe your confession, and they’ll dig up his body, and you’ll go to prison.”

I will kill Cat.I didn’t know how or when, but I’d do it. I’d cut her brakes, or push her off a mountain, or get her drunk and drown her in her giant ridiculous pool.

I risked a glance at Matt’s face and inhaled at the contempt and hatred that seeped from the look he was giving me.

Somewhere inside, there was still love. There had to be.

I pushed off the stool and bolted upstairs, needing to get away from that look before it broke me in half.