Her face grew redder with each word. “You’re not to take anything other than the jewelry your late husband bought you when he was alive. All the family heirlooms and keepsakes are to be left for their rightful owner, the heir to Sterling Winthrop’s estate. If you’ve forgotten what all that entails, I have a list for your perusal.”
“I’ve already sent someone to the estate to look after my wife’s interests, so if you even think about damaging anything before you leave, you will be held accountable.”
“You…what’re you talking about? Who did you send to my home? You have no right.”
“According to my lawyers and Sterling’s, I do. According to the estate lawyer, when I called to alert him to the fact that Kynlee Winthrop is indeed alive and my wife, who’d changed her name, he had a lot to say. Thanks for letting them know that she wasn’t dead all these years, by the way.”
“My guess is that you planned on keeping her alive until her thirtieth birthday, just long enough for her to receive her inheritance then arrange some kind of accident afterward, which would leave you as her sole beneficiary, of course. I don’t guess I have to wonder what you planned to do with my son.” It was taking everything in me not to go for her throat. But, as satisfying as strangling her would be, I wanted her to suffer much worse than that. This game of cat and mouse had only just begun.CalenI can’t show my hand too soon, not until after I’d backed her into a corner and got everything I want out of her. “Were you by any chance planning to kill him as well? That would be quite a feat, wouldn’t it? To have killed off three generations of the Winthrop family.”
“It’s what they deserve…” She caught herself, but I just quirked my brow.
“You don’t say. Do tell, what exactly do they deserve?”
“You think I’m stupid; you think you can trap me?”
“How would I do that? It’s just the two of us here. It would be my word against yours.”
“That’s right. And I have a very good standing in the community, just as good as yours.”
“Yes, it’s easy to do that, to buy off whomever you wish when you’re living off of the interest from someone else’s inheritance. Tell me, does she even know how much she’s worth? I mean, apart from what she now owns as my wife. I’m guessing no.”
“She doesn’t deserve any of it. I was his wife; it should’ve all been mine.”
“But this started long before he died and left her everything, didn’t it? I wonder, did you know he was going to leave her everything, or did you think you killed him before he had a chance to change his will?” For someone as smart as she is, I didn’t think my little word game would work. I thought for sure she’d see the trap and sidestep it, but she walked right in.
“Of course, I thought I got to him before he had a chance to change his stupid will. He came to me about the divorce, and I knew I had to get rid of him before he could do any…” Her eyes widened, and she looked at me with fear until she remembered that she and I were alone, and it would be my word against hers.
“It doesn’t matter if you tell anyone about your stupid suspicions. People have been gossiping about that since his death. I’ll just tell the authorities that your accusations are more of the same. Besides, a man like you would never go to the police about this. You wouldn’t want your wife or your precious son associated with something like this.”
She smiled smugly, and I looked down at the hands I had clasped over my knee. “You’re right; my family name has been blemish-free for hundreds of years, barring the occasional minor scandal here and there. Something like this, having a murderous mother in law, might be bad for business.”
“So you see if you want me to keep my mouth shut, you’d tell that bitch to give me what’s mine.”
“Wait, wait, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. I can still work around all of that. I can pay people to put a spin on it so that nothing touches us, but you, on the other hand…” I let the words trail off until she got the message.
“Me what? Nothing will happen to me because no one would believe that I had anything to do with Sterling’s death after all this time. He’s been cremated, you know, so there’s no way for…” “But you and I both know. You know what, forget about all that. We seem to have each other at an impasse. I don’t want word of this getting out to taint my family name, and you don’t want it getting out for obvious reasons; why don’t we make a deal?”