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“What are you doing?” I tore my eyes away from him and settled them on my mom, standing off to the side of the room, hovering alongside her boyfriend, Jared, the Secretary of Energy. I had yet to grow fond of him, and probably never would. It didn’t help that he kept pressing me to work with him at the Department of Energy. He hated the word no as much as Mom did.
“I’m asking you to marry me,” William said as if my brain had short-circuited, and I wasn’t comprehending him.
Then again, that was what was happening, right? I wasn’t getting it. Because he shouldn’t have been proposing.
Setting my hands to my abdomen, the top of the black dress far too tight, making it hard to breathe, I focused back on him.
My age. Dashingly handsome, so Mom called him, at least. A thick head of blond hair. Blue eyes. Clean-shaven. Smart. First in his class at MIT. Wealthy and connected—Mom’s two favorite things. He was perfect on paper and even more “perfect” in person, with those bright, white teeth on display as he smiled at me, assuming I’d say yes. Because who said no to “perfect”?
I had once already, though. I broke up with him years ago after Easter because some other man had made my heart pitter-patter when it shouldn’t have.
But then William and I bumped into each other on a plasma energy project in England, chasing the ever-elusive dream of cold fusion, and he convinced me it was fate we were there together. I wound up giving him a second chance, deciding maybe he was right and soulmates weren’t a real thing. Two people’s energy—spirits—weren’t truly destined to find one another. That was crazy talk. I was a scientist, and I needed to think like one. Act like one. Live like one. Practical and realistic.
“This is why you wanted to visit the States? To propose here?” I pointed to the hardwoods beneath my uncomfortable heels. “Because my mother’s house makes ‘perfect’ sense for this moment?” Shit, I’d meant that last question to remain in my head, and certainly not to throw air quotes at him.
William cleared his throat and swiveled his focus to Mom. He slowly stood, but kept the little blue box open with the not-so-little and far-too-perfect-for-me diamond on display. “Diana.” My name was a plea not to embarrass him.
My contacts began irritating my eyes as I stared at him in shock. Or maybe I was going to cry? I’d started wearing glasses two years ago, and I preferred them to contacts, but suddenly Mom’s insistence on me wearing them made sense.
Yeah, she was for sure behind William Wallace trying to marry me. Yes, the same name as the Scottish knight, the revolutionary immortalized in Braveheart. But he was no hero here to rescue me from the fortress of my mother’s expectations.
“Did you make sure we wound up on the project together, too?” I turned and asked her. She was smart enough to put two and two together and understand what I was getting at. I had no doubt she knew exactly what I meant. “You set us up, right?”
“Rebecca Barclay,” Mom whispered.
“Rebecca Dominick, you mean. She’s still married, right?” No divorce from what I knew, despite what Mom had suggested to her years ago. “And are you saying she’s why William and I . . .” Mom was no longer staring me down. Instead, she was staring at her phone, mouth open. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone turn on the news.” She kept staring at her phone, going pale. “Something happened to Rebecca.”
Before I could ask her for more information, Jared retrieved the remote and slid open the cabinet to reveal the TV hidden there.
“What’s going on?” William asked for me, but we had the answer the second the news started rolling.
“Billionaire heiress Rebecca Dominick of the Barclay family was found dead in her D.C. home last night after her husband called the police to report a break-in,” the reporter began. My shock at William’s proposal was instantly erased, the bombshell about Rebecca erasing my frustration with him and my mother, sending the room spinning ten times faster than it had seeing William on one knee. “Our source at the FBI is reporting it was most likely a home invasion gone wrong that led to her death.” The reporter’s “Viewer discretion is advised for what we’re about to share next” warning sent shivers throughout my body.
Mom stumbled back and Jared hooked his arm behind her before she collapsed.
“. . . Butchered.”
“Beaten. Stabbed.”
“Blood everywhere . . .”
The words came and went in my head.
The details.
In. And. Out.
“Rebecca’s dead.” This can’t be real.
The feed switched to video of Carter Dominick outside an airport, waving away reporters.
“Did you hire someone to do it?” a journalist yelled. “Reports are you’ll inherit eleven billion dollars with her dead.”
More questions followed Carter as he walked in silence, sunglasses shielding his eyes.
“Are the rumors you work for the CIA true? Do you think her death is your fault?” That question halted his steps, but only for a second, before he began quietly on his way again, the police working to push people back to give him room. The questions continued, a barrage of curious and absurd bombs and barbs following him as he opened the door of an SUV and disappeared inside without answering a single one.
