Chapter Thirty-Seven Him

Chapter Thirty-Seven Him

Five Months Earlier

For an uneducated sewer rat, Addison could weave through the truth and issue warnings like a pro. She’d honed and targeted

her skills, developing into a conniving monster in a very sexy wrapper. Long legs. Banging body. Knockout face that likely

led more than one poor sap to his financial doom. Yeah, someone had trained her well.

Addison sat across from me in a dive bar in New Haven, Connecticut, about an hour outside Rye. The dark interior and scent

of cheap beer fit her. Refusing to meet me alone, in private, showed her vulnerability. Behind all that tough talk lurked

a woman—maybe five-six and sturdy—who jumped back and forth over a line she shouldn’t cross.

She slid her finger over the rim of her glass. Water. Smart move. Keeping control of her mind and the drink at all times—even

smarter.

“This is not a negotiation, Richmond. I don’t care if you don’t like my marriage terms.” Her voice stayed steady. Clear. Forceful

and commanding without yelling. “You only succeeded in selling your convoluted hero tale for this long because no one was

alive to stop you.”

So confident but her sarcastic bullshit would stop when I choked the life out of her. Watching the light leave her eyes would be the best day I’d had in a long time. But it was imperative I find her supposed trove of evidence first. Neutralize her, then make her disappear. That meant outsmarting her, which would happen. I just needed to find the right pressure point to squeeze.

She brought this on herself. She was to blame.

I tried one last time to give her an ending that left her alive and mostly breathing. “Be reasonable. No one is going to believe

you.”

“You do.”

That damn map. Seeing it clouded everything. I’d watched Cooper burn it decades ago on the night before the world went wild.

Unless he didn’t really get rid of it because he wanted leverage. Not trusting me would have been out of character for Cooper.

Wise, but not who he was, especially at the end when I had him turning in circles under a flurry of punishing verbal blows

about Dad’s unreasonable demands and Mom’s refusal to forgive any slight.

I reached for the tone Kathryn once claimed to love because she said she’d found it reassuring. That was before she went to

all those charity meetings and discovered the concept of gaslighting, a word she threw at me so often she acted like she’d

invented it.

But the woman in front of me wasn’t easy-to-satisfy Kathryn. Addison was a completely different type of beast. Still a woman

and easy to train, so I steered her where I needed her to go. “There’s a simple way out here, Addison. Let me help you find

it.”

She snorted. “Does that condescending crap work on other women?”

The fact she’d followed me for months, studied me, sent a fresh bolt of rage burning through me. “Women like money. You like money. It’s what motivates you.”

“Money is your thing. That’s what caused all of this. Your obsession with hoarding things and cash.” Addison sighed. One of

those long, exaggerated sighs aimed at causing maximum annoyance. “Your mommy and daddy were loaded but they didn’t believe

in handouts.”

I would not do this. “Don’t talk about my parents.”

But she pushed on in that singsong voice. “They weren’t impressed with your entitled behavior, so they cut you off. The plan

was to teach you a lesson by making you get a job to cover your upcoming college expenses, even if that meant switching to

what you considered to be a lesser school or attending part-time. Potentially, a huge embarrassment for you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“They wanted you to be something. Not just take.”

“I am something.” Better than her. Superior in every way.

“How long did you work on Cooper to get him to do your bidding?”

My whole life. I hadn’t known what I was preparing for, but I was ready when the time came. “Do you like hearing yourself

talk?”

“Everyone agreed your brother was the weaker of you two. Younger by one year and not as athletically or academically gifted.

Following you around, trying to earn your approval.”

“He took a lot of shit at school. I protected him.” All true. Cooper was my job. Our parents coddled him, loosened the rules

until they ceased to exist. I made Cooper a man.

She smiled. “You were the one with potential. You had lots of friends.”

“Are those bad things?”

“No, but killing your parents for their money is.”

The words sliced through years of carefully constructed ambivalence. After the shooting, I cried on cue for the cameras just

like I’d practiced. I’d pulled off the unthinkable and was the only one left standing. I walked away with everything, putting

the echoes of Dad’s snide lectures and Mom’s constant squealing about being a better person behind me. Cooper had been a loss

but unavoidable collateral.

Faint regrets about being the sole survivor would well up now and then, mostly at the holidays, but even those moments proved

fleeting. Being a national hero guaranteed an avalanche of invites over the years. Sporting events. Sitting with the First

Lady at the State of the Union. So many admirers. With each new blessing and statement of gratitude for my quick thinking

that day, the certainty that I’d forged the right path by becoming the only living Dougherty swelled.

Addison was the wild card now. Having her around as a daily reminder of all I tried to slough off could not happen. She was

a threat to the future I’d picked, polished, and refined. If her scheming bought me a one-way ticket out of the marriage to

Kathryn, then that might be worth the temporary hit to my reputation, but Addison’s use ended there.

I glanced around our dark corner of the room. No one watched or leaned in. The bar manager pretended we didn’t exist because

I paid him not to notice us.

“One question,” she said.

She would never limit herself to one. She didn’t know when to stop.

“How hard was it to get Cooper to shoot your parents while they ate breakfast?”