“Noah knew you left me everything?” she asks slowly.
“Yeah. He walked in when I was having my will redone. I planned to tell you about my change of will, but it slipped my mind. But he knew. He knew that’s why Frank was looking for you, but he acted like he didn’t know where you disappeared to. When I found out you were with him the entire time, at his house, I thought you were just hiding your relationship.”
“He never told me,” she breathes. “I didn’t know anything.”
“Everything had to look like I was dead, but I never would’ve left you without making sure you were taken care of.”
“Oh my God!” She gasps. “Now it all makes sense.”
“What?”
“Noah wanting to marry me. He knew I was left everything…”
Holy shit, I didn’t see it. I was too blinded by the rage I felt over them getting married, thinking she could so easily move on and leave me behind.
“He said he wanted to take care of the baby and me and he could do that by me marrying him. When I refused, he snapped. Like, he turned freaking psycho. He went from sweet and caring, to crazy.”
“He was hiding you from Frank so you wouldn’t learn that you were a very wealthy woman. If you knew, you would have no reason to marry him.” Motherfucker! When I get my hands on him, he’s a dead man.
Camilla threads her fingers through my hair and I revel in her touch. Fuck, I’ve missed her so much. “Even broke, with nowhere to live, no one to turn to, I told him no. I told him you were the love of my life and I could never marry anyone but you.” She shakes her head and I fear what she’s about to say because I know I fucked up. I jumped to the wrong conclusions. “While I was mourning you, trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces and somehow live this life without you, you were hiding. I gave you my heart and soul, and even after you died, you had it, but—”
“No… Don’t say it,” I beg, knowing deep in my gut what’s coming next. “Please, baby…”
She slides off my lap, and as much as I want to hold her to me, I let her go because I deserve what’s to come. She pulls a ring from her pocket—the ring I gave her—and places it on my lap. “I had to take it off, so Noah wouldn’t find it, but I kept it in my pocket, so it was always close to me. I believed in us, Isaac. You were… are everything to me. But when shit got rough, you not only pushed me away instead of pulling me closer, but you thought my love for you wasn’t real… wasn’t enough. You thought I could turn to another man only days after losing you.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Cam, please. I fucked up.”
“Yeah, you did. And I could forgive you for faking your death to keep me safe, but what I can’t get past is that when you came to get me today, it wasn’t to save me, it was because you believed the worst in me.”
She backs up and I stand to go after her, but she puts her hands up. “I need some space. I’m not going anywhere until we know you’re safe, but I need some space.”
As she walks away, taking my heart with her, I want to beg her to come back, but I know I have to let her go, because I did this. I hurt her, and now I have to figure out how to fix it.
I sit here for several minutes, thinking about everything Camilla said. Noah not telling her about the will, trying to force her to marry him. Something isn’t adding up. And then it hits me, the day he walked in, when I told him about leaving her everything, he looked pissed. I assumed it was about something else, when he told me he was handling it.
Handling it… I swallow thickly as all the pieces of the puzzle shift closer toward each other. Noah has millions of dollars, access to Horatio… But what the hell were his motives? He’s been working with me for years. Why try to take me out now? Something tells me once I figure out the missing piece, everything will click together.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and since only one person knows this number, I answer it without bothering to look at the caller ID.
“Find anything out?” Frank asks.
“Yeah, we need to find Noah. I have a feeling he might’ve had something to do with my death.”
“Oh, shit. All right, I’m on it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
NOAH
“Honey, I’m home,” I call out with a chuckle as I walk through the door of my house with a wedding cake in my hand. Camilla’s been acting stubborn about this whole marriage thing, so I’m hoping something sweet will cheer her up. She is acting like her love for Isaac is all she’s capable of, but I’ll show her I can be a just as good, if not better husband to her. She might be upset now, but over time she’ll grow to love me. And if she doesn’t… well, I don’t really give a shit. Her dad will be in prison for the next fifteen years, and aside from him, nobody gives a fuck about where Camilla is. The one man who did has been blown to smithereens.