I either want to forget, or whatever she did to me erased my memory.
“Watch what you say. Your accusations are dangerous.” Her expression is smooth as glass, but I can hear the frustration in her words. The warning in her tone.
“They’re especially dangerous because they’re true.” I shake my head again, and again when she tries to talk, effectively shutting her up. “Don’t bother denying it or arguing with me. I know the truth. I lived through it. And that’s why I don’t want to be around you anymore. You’re a threat to my life. You’d rather see me dead—or close enough to it.”
She gapes at me, her mouth opening and closing like a dying fish. “That is the most—absurd thing I’ve ever heard. How dare you say that, Sylvie! How dare you.”
I watch as she leaps to her feet, ever elegant as she heads for the door. She’s going to leave without me having to kick her out, and that’s so much easier.
“I refuse to sit here and let you say these sorts of things to me and expect me to just take it.” She pauses at the door, her hand on the handle when she glances over her shoulder at me. “I’ve always wondered a few things about you.”
That’s all she says and, of course, she knew I’d ask what. So I do.
“What do you mean?”
Her eyes sparkle. “Your husband. His death was such a mystery. Did you have something to do with it?”
It’s my turn to gape. To open and close my mouth, unable to form words. When my silence carries on, the triumph that alights my mother’s eyes cannot be denied.
“That’s what I thought.” A sigh leaves her and she opens the door. “Such a shame. He was the one man I thought could tame you.”
She shuts the door behind her before I can protest, and I slump against the couch, gazing up at the ceiling as my breaths come faster and faster.
Does anyone else believe I killed Earl? His children have made thinly veiled comments that were digs, but they never came right out and said it.
No one ever has. Until my mother.
It figures.
TEN
SPENCER
I’m sittingat my desk in my office at Donato Enterprises when there’s a knock on my door. Before I can ask who it is or wonder why my assistant didn’t call with a warning first, the door swings open and Whit Lancaster strides inside, impatient as ever.
He comes to a stop in the middle of my office, resting his hands on his hips as he takes in the interior. Me sitting behind the grand desk that used to belong to my father. Until he bought a bigger, grander desk to sit behind and gave me the old one.
Whit grins. “What the fuck, Spence? Who are you now?”
I slam my laptop closed and lean back in my chair, contemplating him. “While you’re off traveling the world for your month-long honeymoon, some of us have to work for a living.”
“We were gone for three weeks.” Chuckling, he wipes the smile off his face with his fingers, falling into one of the chairs that sits across from my desk. “This is unbelievable. You’ve really come up in the world.”
I ignore his statement. “How was the honeymoon anyway?”
It’s been well over a month since the wedding. Since I last saw Sylvie in the flesh. Moonlit and dancing with roses in her hair. Beautiful, infuriating Sylvie.
“Amazing. Exhausting.”
“All the sex?” I arch a brow.
“My wife is pregnant,” he says indignantly, like I offended him. “And we took August with us.”
That was your first problem, is what I want to tell him, but they are a solid family unit and do everything together. It’s not just Whit anymore. It’s Whit and Summer—and August. Eventually, there will be another baby joining their ranks.
I can barely date the same woman twice in a row, and here’s Whit, the most selfish asshole I ever knew, now a solid family man.
Life is wild.