I’m not giving in now.
Because the other thing I know is that the evidence won’t be enough.
Death is the only option.
I turn into the drive at the Bettencourt estate with tears stinging my eyes. I’m swiping them away as I roll down the window.
“Ms. Bettencourt.” The guard’s concerned. “Everything okay?”
“Just stopping by for a visit. I was listening to a sad song.”
I was listening to a song about feeling good as hell by Lizzo, but he doesn’t need to know that.
He waves me inside the gate, a sympathetic set to his mouth.
The thing is, I don’t actually want my dad to die. That’s the horrible thing about having an evil man for a father. He’s still my dad. That’s the most screwed-up thing about all this. There’s one recipe sheet in my mind with a list of every terrible thing he’s done, including the initiation. I mean, what in the overbaked hell? Howcouldhe?
And…there’s another recipe sheet with the stories he read to me while I fell asleep and the way he didn’t downplay how smart I was because I was a girl and the way he taught me everything he knew.Shouldhe have done that? Absolutely not. But I always had the full, criminal picture of how things worked. He didn’t raise me to believe in a fairy tale.
In a strange, poisoned way, I still love him. The most evil, childish parts of me, the ones that don’t care about right and wrong, still want him to be proud of me. He was so thrilled when I learned to read early. So delighted when I pointed out new words on the page and sounded them out.
I park the SUV slightly around the curve of the drive so it won’t block the police when they come.
The pistol isn’t a particularly large one, but it feels heavy in my hands when I check to be sure it’s loaded. It is. The safety is on. This gun is what I’ll use to protect Gabriel. As a side effect, it will also protect my best friend and Gabriel’s family.
I owe this to all of them, really.
The only thing to do before I kill my father is to get my mother out of the house in one piece. Then I’ll shoot my dad, gather the evidence, and hand it to the authorities myself when they show up with Mason and Gabriel at ten.
Assuming my dad doesn’t kill me first.
I should have gone and baked some cinnamon rolls for Lydia. There’s a real chanceIcould die today, and she loves cinnamon rolls.
But then she’d have to eat them while she was crying. Nothing’s good when you’re crying.
“This is not about baked goods,” I tell myself in the mirror, then get out of the SUV. “There are other things that could happen. They could prosecute me for conspiracy to commit murder. But even if they explain it away by saying I was six, I’m done. Nobody’s going to buy wedding cakes from a murderer.”
I knock on the door mid-sentence without realizing it.
A maid opens the door without missing a beat. “Miss Bettencourt? Is someone out here with you?”
“No, Gloria. I was just…going over some plans out loud.”
Doing this means losing the bakery. It might even mean losing my freedom, or my life. But my stomach is in knots because it’ll mean losing Gabriel, too.
I almost lost him before. He could have died from that fall. He was in so much pain in the hospital, and so…fragile. Even a man as strong as Gabriel Hill can’t survive everything.
Gloria’s brow furrows. “Are you coming inside, Miss Bettencourt?”
“Please, Gloria. Call me Elise. We’ve known each other a long time.”
“Of course, Elise.” Gloria ushers me into the foyer and closes the door behind us. “This is a…a rare visit.”
I step closer, put my hand on her elbow, and look her in the eye. “It’s the most important visit I’ll make. Listen to me. I need you to get everyone out of the house. All the staff. You need to be far away from here, as fast as you can.”
Her face pales, but the concern disappears into a stoic-for-a-crisis expression. “Of course. Right away.”
“Is my mother in the sitting room?”