by R. K. Lilley
My only regret was that I didn't get to see his face as I drove away, leaving him stranded on the side of the road.
In the middle of fucking nowhere.
I'd driven about a mile before I took some pity on him, slowing the car, rolling down the driver's side window, and tossing his phone out. Maybe he'd find it and get himself a ride.
If I were smart I'd have kept the car, used it for a spell. It was very nice, a brand new Audi. I could have driven around in style for a change. Even with how he felt about me now, I couldn't imagine him reporting it stolen.
Still, I wanted him to report it, because I didn't keep it. I left it in an empty parking lot a few blocks from my apartment, hoping he'd somehow get it back and find the present I'd carved for him on the hood.
I fucking hate you. Quit stalking me.
Subtlety had never been my strength. Why try to change now?
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
"There's nothing half so real in life as the things you've done... inexorably, unalterably done."
~Sara Teasdale
PRESENT
SCARLETT
We'd been living together in our love nest for a few months when it all came crashing down around us.
I was resigned to being together in secret for the foreseeable future, or forever if need be.
Hell, I was thankful for it. Even with the fighting, some of it horrible, messy, disastrous—some of it damn near too painful to take, I was still grateful for every second granted to us, only hoping each day that we could have another, and another.
We'd never had much luck with hope.
The movie was going well, scheduled to wrap up in days, and I'd just gotten into to my trailer and was changing to go home when I got the call.
It was an unknown number, and I automatically ignored the first few times it rang. Finally annoyance had me answering with a curt, "Hello?"
"Hello, Scarlett."
I hadn't heard the voice in a while, not since Gram's funeral, and then only briefly, but I recognized it instantly. "Hello, Adelaide," I said, voice gone cold with no effort at all. I had nothing but ice in my veins for this woman.
"How long did you think this could last?" she asked, poison dripping from the words. "How long did you think you could hide it from me?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said evenly and unflappably. I was an actress, after all, and there was only one person, one man to be precise, that I couldn't fake it in front of, in a pinch.
"Cute. Very cute. I have a man waiting for you, right outside of the gate at your studio. Get in the car. It's time we had a talk."
"Not likely. Why the hell would I want to talk to you?"
"Don't be coy. I'm in no mood. You'll do what I say because you know what I know and I'm just looking for a reason to turn you in."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Yes, I was still faking it for the simple reason that I didn't know what else to do.
"There's no statute of limitations on killing a cop," she said, tone flat. Dead. "Go get in the car."
Checkmate.
I changed and left the property.
I saw her car and driver right away. A man in a suit leaning against a Rolls Royce. Yeah, no brainer.
He opened the door for me as I approached, holding out his hand. "Your phone," he said without expression.
I eyed him. He was middle-aged and nondescript, head to toe—brown hair, dark shades, medium build, face deadpan.
I had a very bad feeling. "Fuck you," I said succinctly, eyeing the open door narrowly.
My cell started ringing. It was Adelaide again. "Do you have her?" she asked by way of greeting.
"He doesn't," I said, my temper boiling. I really wanted to hit something. Adelaide's face particularly.
She made a tsking noise over the phone. "Always difficult, even when you don't have a leg to stand on. Give him the phone and get into the car."
"What do you want?" I was already so fed up with her that I was ready to say to hell with the consequences.
It was a problem, except that my rage was almost a comfort just then, for the simple reason that the alternative was worse. If I was focused on my anger, I wasn't worrying about the fact that my life, and my options had just narrowed drastically.
"As I told you, I'd like to talk," Adelaide said into my ear, sounding almost reasonable, which let me know that she was full of it. "In person. I think we can work something out. I want you out of my son's life, and you want to stay out of prison. We're both motivated. This can be productive."
I wasn't sure what I could have done, I felt pretty cornered, but I was saved from having to decide by the sudden and very welcome appearance of Dante.
His car pulled up, he jumped out, and whisked me away. I barely had time to hang up on his mother before he'd bundled me into his car and started driving away. It was over in seconds.
His hands on the steering wheel were shaking. "What was that? Was that one of my mother's henchmen?"
"Yes. She was trying to get me to go with him. She said she wanted to talk. She knows about us, Dante."
He started cursing and did not stop until we were nearly at the house. "Were you actually going to go with him?" he finally asked incredulously.
"I don't know. Maybe. She wasn't exactly giving me a choice."
"Never deal with her by yourself," he told me. "Never go anywhere with her. Never engage her. If she bothers you, and I'm not around, you fucking wait for me."
We were home by then, and he didn't even allow me to respond. He was out of the car, on his phone, pacing.
"Adelaide knows," he was saying. "Yes. She tried to grab Scarlett. Sent one of her henchmen to pick her up right outside the studio." He paused, gripping a hand into his hair. "Yes. Fine. Fine. We need to figure this out and fast. We're running out of options here." He hung up and looked at me. "We need to meet up with Bastian. We've been working on some things, but we thought we had more time. Now we need to focus on plan B. Do you want to grab anything from the house before we go?"
"Where exactly are we going?" I worried about filming, but felt silly about it. What would the movie even matter if I went to jail tomorrow?
"Not far. Bastian's already here, so we'll meet him at his hotel."
This was news to me, and so was the plan B. And the plan A, for that matter.
We were driving again before I brought it up. "You're getting into that habit again. Keeping things from me. I know you think it's to protect me, but I want to know the truth more than I want to be protected, and I think you owe it to me to start respecting that."
He just nodded, mouth tight. "I do. I know it. And I'll bring you up to speed on everything tonight. If it makes you feel better, I don't even know some of it. Bastian's been doing some dirty work of his own, but he seems to think he has a solution for us."
It was becoming clear that Dante had nothing on Bastian in the scheming department. It was almost impressive. One thing was for sure, they were both, without question Durants.
The hotel was only twenty minutes away. Bastian was on the top floor, and he didn't have a room, he had a penthouse suite. And he wasn't alone.
He opened the door for us and led us straight into a large room with a bar.
A bar and a drunk Leo.
"Oh God, why is he here?" just sort of slipped out. Because Leo.
He shot me a very unfriendly look.
I returned it in spades.
"You can all hate each other later," Bastian said reasonably. "Right now, you need to work together. Leo has some pieces of this puzzle and a vested interest in seeing justice done. Isn't that right, Leo?"
He glared at his favorite son. His normally styled, dirty blond hair was sticking out all over the place, eyes squinting, his clothing askew. He looked ridiculous. "Em your dad. You're s'posedta call me Dad."
I arched a brow at Bastian. "Oh yeah, he seems to be in a very helpful state."
Bastian grinned and shrugged. "H
e'll sober up eventually. In the meantime, we have a whole lot of ground to cover without him. So Adelaide tried to grab you off the set?"
"More or less," I said tensely.
Dante and I still hovered at the entrance of the room, not advancing, not sitting, just standing side by side with near identical poses, arms crossed over our chests.
When I realized how we'd copied each other, I almost smiled.
Bastian was even more amused. He waved a hand back and forth at the two of us. "Feeling a little defensive? There's no need to be. Come on in. Make yourselves comfortable. Have a seat. Have a drink."
Well, he was certainly in good spirits. I sincerely hoped that meant he had some good news for us all.
Dante and I looked at each other.
"We're fine."
"We're fine." We said it almost in tandem.
My mouth twisted wryly. Dante grinned. We'd been spending a lot of time together lately, and it was starting to show. Like old times.
"Have it your way." Bastian waved us off. "But don't say I didn't warn you; you might want to be sitting down for some of this."
He took a deep breath and began, "I strongly suspect, and have since it happened, that Adelaide killed Gram. Or at least, had her killed."
I was floored. The thought had never even occurred to me. I don't know why. No one had ever accused me of not being paranoid and suspicious.
But it had still never crossed my mind.
I looked at Dante and found some comfort in the fact that he looked just as floored.
"It is a very hard thing to prove, but I have found a lead that's given me some hope that we'll see justice done for this. There's just one small hiccup in my plan. Or there was. I think I've got a handle on her now, but you're going to have to trust me here."
His wording was off, wrong somehow, but that wasn't what either of us focused on.
"I thought it was proven that Gram had a stroke," said Dante.
Bastian's mouth twisted. "It's complicated. There was extreme trauma to the back of her skull, and the coroner told us this was done post-mortem, meaning she had a stroke, fell, and hit her head, which is on its own suspect, because according to experts, generally you'd fall forward, not backward, so I certainly had some questions. But said coroner has since disappeared. Whether he was buried in the woods for knowing too much or given enough money to retire in Fiji, we have not been able to figure out."
"Adelaide," I breathed, feeling murderous.
"That fuckin' cunt," Leo said from the sofa where he was still drunkenly sprawled. "She was ne'er even worth the trouble. Terrble inbed."
"Nice contribution, princess," I told him, because Leo.
"You're a fucki—" he began.
"No," Dante was shaking his head. "Not fucking happening. Say another word to her, Leo, and see how much I don't have a problem beating your drunken ass."
Leo glared at me for that. "She started it."
He had a point.
Bastian sighed. "Back to the point, I've been chasing that trail since the funeral. Exhaustively. I'd just about given up hope. But then something even better came along." He smiled and there was triumph in it. "I've secured some additional insurance. For both of our issues, ironically enough. It wasn't cheap, but some things are worth paying heavily for." For some reason his eyes were sad and on me as he said it. He cleared his throat, and called out, "Tiffany!"
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
"Enemies are so stimulating."
~Katharine Hepburn
The bane of my existence came striding into the room. We shifted to the side automatically. To let her by or just make sure she didn't accidentally touch us, take your pick. Probably both.
"What is she doing here?" I asked slowly and with absolute venom.
Dante's arm wrapped around me, and he gripped my shoulder firmly.
Preemptively holding me back, of course.
Because he knew me.
"Hear me out," Bastian said, ever reasonable.
I glanced at him. He'd earned at least some of my trust, so even with her in the room, I was willing to let him explain. I nodded my assent.
Tiffany seemed particularly pleased with herself. Preening. Yes, that was the word. She was preening as she walked across the room to stand beside Bastian.
Her smile grew when she laid her eyes on Dante. "Nice to see you, Dante," she began.
I hated the way she looked at him, still with such warm interest. Still with frank infatuation. Even knowing everything had been fake between them, I still wanted to spit at her, to shout in her face, break her nose again.
I felt Dante stiffen at my back. "Fuck you, Tiffany," he growled back.
Well, hell. This was all going to go downhill pretty damn fast if I was supposed to be the calm one here.
Leo started giggling.
"Shut up, Leo!"
"Shut up, Leo." Dante and Bastian both said, which almost made me smile.
Leo shut up. For good measure, Bastian took away his drink and made him a cup of black coffee, ordering him to finish it.
"But I like it with milk," Leo complained, sounding like a whiny child.
"Shut up and drink." Even Bastian was losing patience with him.
"Tiffany has kindly agreed to switch sides," Bastian explained when he was finished tending to his father, making it sound like it was the most reasonable topic in the world. "And as she has been very firmly entrenched in Adelaide's camp for many years, and holds many, many of her secrets, this is very good news for us."
I glared at her. I just didn't believe it. Not for one second.
"Why?" Dante asked, sounding as suspicious as I felt. "Why would she turn on Adelaide?" He looked at Tiffany. "Why now? After all this time? After all of the vile things you've done for her?" Disgust was dripping from every word he addressed at her directly.
The look she gave him was filled with vulnerable reproach and even that made me want to do her violence. I was not okay with her looking at him with any personal thing written on her face. She wasn't entitled to any of that.
I owned him and she didn't. She fucking didn't.
"Since I was young I thought I would marry you," she told him, sounding sad and sweet, and like she'd fucking rehearsed it.
Dante's arm tightened around me.
Because he knew me.
"I was told I would, and I let myself want that, let myself fall for you, always thinking you were my future. You were promised to me."
Dante had both arms around me at this point, in a firm hold disguised as an affectionate bear hug. Or maybe it was both.
"You're delusional," he told her disdainfully.
"Promised to me," she repeated, tears in her eyes. "I was planning our wedding when I was fifteen. I even had the dress picked out. The jewelry. The shoes. Since I can remember, Adelaide promised me I'd be a Durant. You were never supposed to fall in love with her." She pointed an accusing finger at me. "And you certainly weren't supposed to stay in love with her. You were promised to me."
I was about done with that. I looked at Bastian, whose steady eyes were on me. "Is there a point to this?"
"Unfortunately, yes." He sounded resigned. Tired beyond his years. "It is our solution. Continue, Tiffany."
She sent him a teary smile. "You can call me Fanny."
Barf.
He didn't even roll his eyes. "Continue, Fanny."
"She promised me this, and I wanted it more than anything. She held it over my head, year after year, scheme after scheme. You wouldn't believe the things I did for her, all for this promise."
I was pretty sure we would, but I kept my mouth shut. I just wanted her to finish.
"And then it happened. I was engaged to him. But it only lasted six months, and it wasn't even real." Tears were pouring down her face, and silly or not, they were real. "But she told me to be patient, that she'd fix that too. But he wouldn't even kiss me."
"I told you then," Dante said with chilling animosity, "and I'll t
ell you now. I was never attracted to you. Far from it. Kissing you would be like kissing my mother."
She flinched but kept talking. "It's only recently that I realized that Adelaide is just keeping me on a string. She can't deliver the things she's promised me. If I want to be a Durant, I need to do it myself."
I was staring at her, my face stiff, expression filled with hate. I opened my mouth, to say what, I hadn't a clue, something bad, when Bastian spoke.
"Tiffany," he began.
"Fanny," she interrupted.
He merely nodded. "Fanny here knows things about Adelaide that would make your skin crawl. She's been a close confidante for quite some time.
"And an accomplice," Dante added.
"Perhaps," Bastian agreed. "But that's beside the point. We have bigger fish to fry. Fanny is a witness, and more, she recorded Adelaide talking about Gram's death and what she says on it is as good as a confession. At the very least, it will forever ruin her reputation. In addition, Fanny has agreed not to testify against either of you in the death of Detective Harris, which is a valuable thing, being that she personally witnessed parts of the crime. It was one of the most damning pieces of evidence Adelaide had on you, that in addition to the pictures taken, the photographer of said pictures," he waved his hand at Tiffany, "was a witness in her pocket."
"It won't matter whether she takes Adelaide's side or not," Dante pointed out. "Those pictures say enough. Enough to need an explanation."
"Ah. But there it is. There's no proof at all at this point that Scarlett was involved. They can prove what happened. And where. Everything else is debatable, even with the pictures. All of the DNA has deteriorated by now. Anyone could have done it.
"I doubt that will fly," I said. "She brings those pictures in, they're going to want a culprit, and they won't have to look far beyond me."
"Yes. True. But you didn't even live in that trailer at the time, correct?"
"Correct," I agreed, staring at him. His attention to detail was kind of scary.