CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

"You need to shut up."

Paulina Fitzgerald—better known to the world as Adrienne Shaw—was fed up with this little brat's muffled sobs. Part of her regretted abducting the pain in the ass. In retrospect, maybe she should have just gutted the girl on the spot like all the others.

But she had bigger plans for Lila Warwick. The woman was her opportunity to finally lay bare the disgusting excesses of these skanks. When the world understood the obscene amounts of money these women burned on a daily basis, all when there were countless sick, starving people everywhere, maybe something could finally be done about it.

The thought made her smile slightly to herself as she looked out on the Los Angeles skyline from the roof of her apartment building, where she was keeping Lila until the moment was just right. She brushed her long, dark hair out of her brown eyes and wrapped the blanket tighter around her curvy frame to protect against the cutting nighttime wind.

Of course, if she was honest with herself, Paulina had to admit that her recent actions weren't exclusively altruistic. After all, at one point she been one of these uber-rich bitches too.

That felt like ages ago. Sometimes it seemed like a dream, or more accurately, a nightmare. She still remembered how her stepfather first snuck into her bed when she was twelve, and how he'd continued to do it for fifteen more years.

It was still hard to fight off the guilt that came from having let it go on so long. All through college at Loyola Marymount University and while she got her master's in Finance from USC, she lived at home, in the massive compound in Bel-Air that was paid for by her stepfather's unimaginable wealth, all due to shady oil deals, many of them with men who had been labeled war criminals by various international bodies.

And all that time he would visit her, sometimes after her mother, Carmel, was passed out drunk. Other times, he didn't even bother with that formality. It was only when she was 27 and had been working as a junior financial advisor for a full two years at a Beverly Hills firm, that she finally screwed up the courage to tell her mother what had been happening right under her nose.

She knew the horrible truth the second the words came out her mouth and she saw Carmel's face. The woman had known all along. Maybe that was what drove her to drink. Worse, she didn't seem to care. Paulina threatened to go to the authorities.

Her mother said that she didn't believe her, almost certainly because to say anything else would have put her extravagant lifestyle at risk. Until she married Donald Fitzgerald when Paulina was five, the two of them led a tough life, surviving on public assistance while Carmel worked as a cocktail waitress. That's how she met Donald. Paulina knew that after years of easy living, her mother would never risk going back to that old life.

Paulina realized just how desperate to hold onto her current life her mother was almost immediately. Carmel told her daughter that if she went to the police, she would tell them that Paulina was lying, that she had emotional issues which had never been properly addressed. She even went to Paulina's stepfather and told him about the allegations.

Soon after that, both her parents came to talk to her in the cavernous breakfast room where she was sipping her coffee one morning before heading off to work. She still remembered that it was a lovely fall day, just a week before Thanksgiving. They sat down opposite her, stern expressions on their faces.

They told her that they were cutting her off financially, and in fact disowning her as their daughter. They reiterated that no one would believe her allegations and that if she insisted on going to the authorities, they would bury her in lawyers, filing defamation lawsuits against her and trying to get her committed to an institution.

Stunned but deep down, not really that surprised, she agreed to move out and not pursue any legal action. With the tiny nest egg that she'd scraped together since she started working, she decamped to a weekly motel in Mar Vista that let her pay in cash and didn't ask for any ID to verify the fake name she used when she checked in.

But somehow, her stepfather found her anyway. He had people for that. And apparently, he'd paid off the night desk manager at the motel to give him a key to her room. When he opened the door, she woke up and found him undressing. She said that if he didn't leave, she'd go to the cops.

"Who will ever believe you over me?" he asked dismissively .

Then he got under the covers with her and climbed on top of her. Fighting him for the first time in her life, she managed to shove him to the side and scramble away to the bathroom. She tried to lock the door, but he slammed it open. She was knocked backward, and his momentum sent him forward too fast. His leg hit the edge of the bathtub shower.

He careened in and slammed his head against the tile before slumping down in a heap, semi-conscious and groaning. PaulaPaula rushed out of the bathroom and started for the front door, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and panties. But then she stopped.

She looked over at the tiny kitchenette in the corner of the room and remembered the steak knife that she'd used earlier in the evening to cut her microwaved chicken nuggets into extra-small pieces to make them last longer.

Without stopping to think, she hurried over, grabbed the knife from the drain tray, and headed back to the bathroom. Her stepfather, the wealthy, illustrious Donald Fitzgerald, was lying naked in the bathtub, struggling to pull himself upright. His eyes were glassy, and he blinked repeatedly.

Paulina took two steps toward him, pulled the plastic shower curtain across the tub, then grabbed a washcloth and shoved it in his mouth. His eyes popped wide as she leaned down and plunged the steak knife into the side of his neck.

He flailed wildly. Blood spurted everywhere. He tried to scream, but the washcloth muffled it. Then she stabbed him again on the other side of the neck. More flailing. But she stayed focused, keeping her hand pressed against the washcloth while jamming the knife into any soft spot she could find, of which there were many.

It took thrusting the knife into her stepfather a good fifteen times before he finally stopped fighting. She pulled back and watched his last, fitful, wheezy breaths. Then he stopped moving entirely.

TheThe rest of the night was exhausting, but everything she did seemed to make sense. That included throwing on jeans and a hoodie and going to the nearby big box hardware store, which was open all night. She bought a hacksaw, rubber gloves, a drop cloth, several small towels, bleach, and a box of heavy-duty trash bags. It was self-checkout, so no one batted an eye.

She spent hours cutting Donald Fitzgerald into manageable pieces and stuffing him into trash bags. She did the same with the shower curtain, which was beyond salvaging, and the drop cloth. After that, she wiped down the tub with the bleach until it was immaculate and tossed the towels into a bag with most of Donald's arms.

Then, while it was still dark out, she hauled it all out to the trunk of the crappy old beater she'd bought earlier in the week after her parents had her Porsche repossessed. She left without checking out of the motel.

She drove around in the wee hours until she found an empty lot that had a rusted oil drum. She folded down the backseat, shoved it in and drove out to Pyramid Lake, in the Angeles National Forest, up near Castaic, a good fifty-five miles north of the city. She remembered visiting the lake when she was a kid and learning to jet ski there. She also remembered that the lake's beach was rocky in places and that there was a fishing pier that extended unusually far out into the water.

When she arrived, it was just as it had been in her memory. She didn't waste time on nostalgia. Instead, she loaded up the oil drum with big rocks, along with trash bags full of Donald's body parts. Then she put the top back on the drum and smashed it down with a rock so that it was snug.

After that, she rolled it down the pier and into the water. The sun was just starting to rise over a mountain to the east as the oil drum plopped into the lake. In the dim light, she watched it bob on top of the water. For an endless moment, she feared it would stay that way.

But then water slowly started to seep in through the myriad rusted holes in the drum. After what felt like an eternity but was probably less than two minutes, the drum began to sink. Soon it was completely below the surface, and then, too deep to see at all.

Over the next few weeks, Paulina had much work to do, but that didn't stop her from keeping half an eye on the news, which detailed the missing father and daughter, Donald and Paulina Fitzgerald. There were lots of theories but not much evidence.

And with Paulina now in Mexico, using a false name, the trail ran dry. She saw fewer and fewer stories over the next few months, which she spent laying low as she used what remained of her nominal funds to get plastic surgery and pay for forged documents that gave her a new identity, education, and work history.

Unfortunately, there were cost overruns that her nest egg couldn't cover. In order to pay for everything, she had to do some escort work at a few high-end hotels in Mazatlán. Nothing she experienced there was worse than what her stepfather had done to her. Eventually, after nearly a year, she had replenished her nest egg enough to feel comfortable returning to L.A.

With her new face, her blonde hair now dyed black, brown contact lenses to hide her naturally blue eyes, and a breast reduction, she was virtually unrecognizable as the same person. In fact, she wasn't. Now her identity was Adrienne Shaw, an in-demand financial advisor to multiple ultra-high-net-worth individuals. Conveniently, she couldn't name any of them to potential new employers during job interviews because of nondisclosure agreements.

She got an internship at Wealth Consultants West and quickly moved up the career ladder, in large part because of her past experience in the field, which far exceeded the other interns. It didn't hurt that at 28 (though her faked birth certificate said she was 25), she was older and more erudite than her peers.

Within a year, she had her own accounts, Within three more she was juggling several of the most prominent clients in the firm's portfolio, among them the Baptistes and the Warwick family, along with their daughter, Lila. At one point she had also worked with the Moreno family, including their daughter Isabella, before eventually handing off that account to a colleague.

Adrienne was raking it in. Admittedly not anywhere close to her clients or her stepfather, but still pulling in a solid seven figures. Considering that less than five years prior, she was selling her body in Mexican hotels, she'd come a long way. No one questioned her identity or her bona fides. Everything was going wonderfully, until she made one mistake.

In a meeting with Chloe Baptiste last week, she had unthinkingly mentioned that the art dealer had overpaid for a piece she bought. Adrienne knew that because her stepfather had bought it eleven years ago for $6.9 million. In an unfortunate coincidence, Chloe ended up buying it from Paulina's mother, who apparently wasn't as liquid as she liked, for $11.1 million.

Chloe became immediately suspicious of her young financial advisor's unexpected knowledge of the high-end art world and had some research done by an off-the-books investigator. Pretty quickly, he unraveled some of her background, including her surgeries and her time working the Mazatlán hotel scene.

Chloe asked for an unscheduled lunch meeting in a café yesterday, where she revealed to Adrienne what she knew, including sharing some grainy photos of her getting extra handsy with potential clients in hotel bars before heading back to their rooms.

She didn't seem to have made the connection between Adrienne and her past life as Paulina Fitzgerald, but that loomed as a possibility, maybe even a certainty, if she kept digging. Luckily that wasn't her focus. Instead Chloe revealed that in addition to being an art dealer, she ran a top flight escort agency on the side, and she thought that Adrienne could fill a gap in her services.

She said that she had several pretty young things in her stable. But she didn't have a girl who met the needs of men looking for a little more maturity. They wanted adult women who gave off an air of elegant professionalism rather than mere nubile enthusiasm. Adrienne could meet that need.

"I promise that it will be our little secret," Chloe said over a Cobb salad. "Your employers need never know. It's time to get back into the business."

"I'm happy with the work I'm doing now," Adrienne had told her.

"Maybe re-think that," Chloe warned. "This could be a boon for you, or it could destroy you."

"What about you?" Adrienne had challenged. "A mega-art dealer married to a big-time film executive. Yor reputation is at risk here too."

"Oh, you're so sweet, trying to threaten me," Chloe said, after sipping a glass of Chablis. "That kind of allegation wouldn't affect me. I'm richer than God. Besides, I would just deny everything. Those accounts are well-hidden. And let's be frank, at the end of the day, who would believe you over me?'

Those were almost exactly the same words that Adrienne's stepfather had said to her as he climbed into bed with her in that ratty motel room all those years ago. And when she heard them again, something in her snapped. But outwardly, she just smiled.

"Can I have a little time to think about it?" she asked.

"Of course," Chloe had said. "Not that there's much to think about. It's 1 p.m. now. I'll give you twenty-four hours, until exactly this time tomorrow. If I don't hear from you by then, I'll assume we have a deal. If you do call, then we may have a problem."

After lunch, Adrienne changed into sweat pants and a hoodie, then went to a local army supply store where she bought an all-black outfit and a ski mask. After that, she went home and collected the hunting knife that she'd kept under her pillow at night ever since her stepfather snuck into that motel room .

That night she drove to the art gallery where, at lunch, Chloe had mentioned that she'd be tonight for an auction. She parked a block away and walked to the alley behind the gallery, hiding in the bushes until she saw the woman emerge. The rest was shockingly easy. And liberating.

It was as if each plunge of the knife into Chloe's body broke a shackle that had had been binding Adrienne, until by the final blow, she was free. After the deed was done and she rushed back to her car, she luxuriated in the rage. She'd never felt so powerful. It was as if she was finally, after two decades of subjugation, in control of her own destiny.

She had to recreate this high again. And then, on the drive home, it hit her. What better way to regain the glorious fury she'd just experienced than by unleashing her wrath on others who deserved it?

Her firm had multiple other clients who were just as self-satisfied with their grotesque wealth as Chloe. For example, there was the model, Isabella Moreno, who thought that her success was a result of her own talent rather than daddy's bankroll.

But she knew that if she butchered only her own current or former clients, she'd be easy to find. So she decided to mix it up. Back in her Paulina Fitzgerald days, when she was a financial advisor at her first firm in Beverly Hills, one of her clients had been a real nightmare named Fiona Cantwell, who owned a successful purse boutique.

In the years since, Fiona had married extremely well, taken her husband's name, and no longer needed to work. But according to everything Adrienne had heard, the woman was even more awful than when she'd known her. So, she added her to the mix.

Getting into the Greene mansion wasn't hard. She simply waited outside the back gate until an employee left for lunch, and then followed him to the local Jack in the Box and offered him a $1000 for the gate entry code. The guy gave it up without any fuss, likely assuming she just wanted to rob the place. He even offered to tell her where the security cameras on the property were for another grand, which she happily handed over. Adrienne knew that he'd never reveal what he'd done after Fiona was dead. He'd be considered an accessory to the crime.

Once Fiona was no more, Adrienne wracked her brain for the next best candidate. It didn't take long. Lila Warwick, who would be just another wannabe influencer without her father's ill-gotten gain, had mentioned to her recently that she would be announcing the release of her very first fragrance on her livestream tonight. That outlet would provide the perfect chance to let the world see, in real time, just how craven these women were. But unlike the other kills, this time she wouldn't do it right away. She would take her time.

That's why she had to rush Lila out of her Silver Lake house quickly before the police arrived. It was also why she brought a roll of aluminum foil along with her. After securing Lila in her trunk, she removed the SIM card from the girl's phone, turned it off, and wrapped it in the foil as an extra precaution so that it couldn't be traced.

All of that had led to this moment on the roof of her building. With the door to the roof barred and Lila gagged and duct-taped to a chaise lounge chair, Adrienne finally had a moment to relax before the big finish.

She leaned against a wall and basked the rainbow-hued glow of the sign shining across the street from the Paradiso Hotel. Somehow the psychedelic wash of colors that periodically splashed across her building's roof, and the empty pool, seemed appropriate for the magnificent madness of this moment.

She took a deep breath and turned her attention back to Lila. The respite was over. It was time to get down to business. Soon the whole world would watch Adrienne complete her mission. Everyone would know the truth about these people. It would be laid bare in blood.