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“That’s the thing. My brother is dead.”
I grimace. “Okay. Now you’re just creeping me out.” Because the man who kissed me on the plane was very alive.
“No. You don’t understand. My brother, Mason, was a coldhearted, ruthless son of a bitch. He would sell out anyone for a buck. He even cut our parents from the family business and took control behind their backs so he could run things his way, which basically meant selling off the company to get richer. It broke their hearts, but they couldn’t do a thing to stop it.”
That doesn’t sound at all like him. What is this woman up to?
Thinking carefully about my next question, I slip off my black peacoat and set it on the counter, leaving me in just my jeans and a plain white T-shirt. This is an opportunity to discover some of those missing pieces, but I’m not sure I can trust anything this woman says. She strikes me as the type who’s used to lying.
“Why would he stab his own family in the back?” I raise a brow, judging her every word.
“Asking me that is like asking why Mason was born without a soul. It’s how he was built. He even chased away the man I loved because Mason didn’t see any business value in aligning our wealth with their ‘nothing middle-class trash of a family.’”
“I find that hard to believe. Because—”
“Because the man you know is obsessed with charity and giving?”
“Yes.” He doesn’t come across as moneygrubbing at all.
“When Mason was alive, he only cared about one thing: money. And when he announced he would be marrying the daughter of Jim Bryson, the owner of the biggest whisky distillery in North America, we all agreed we would do everything in our power to talk her out of it, even if Mason cut us off and left us penniless.
“The weekend Mason died was the weekend of the engagement party at our family’s lake house.” She exhales with despair, like it pains her to relive this memory, but she’s going to do it anyway. “I took Amanda aside the first opportunity I got and told her what she was getting into. She was devastated. She’d been completely charmed by my brother’s good looks and education. She had no idea he’d been putting on an act just to get his hands on her family’s business. She confronted Mason immediately.”
Pinpricks explode over my skin. Please don’t tell me he killed her. Please, I’m begging. I couldn’t forgive it.
Rebecca continues, “We could see and hear them arguing from the terrace overlooking the beach. Mason denied everything. She was hysterical and ran off on the ice and fell in. Mason ran after her and fell in too.”
“So he tried to save her?” Because that would mean he did care.
“No. He tried to save his deal.”
I take a shallow breath. I don’t know how much more I can take. That said, I asked for the truth. Now I’m getting it. Or, at least, Rebecca’s version.
“Our dads went for rope, and I got a paddleboard from the garage, but by the time we got to where Amanda had fallen in, she’d already lost consciousness and drifted under the ice. It took us another five minutes to find an ax and crack through the surface to get to her. We were unable to revive her, and Mason’s body was nowhere to be found.”
I cover my mouth, seeing the scene play out in my head—the dead fiancée lying across the ice, surrounded by her grieving family, while Mason’s parents frantically searched for their son. If the ice wasn’t completely solid, which it sounds like it wasn’t, that would make searching extremely difficult. How horrible.
“The hard part was,” Rebecca’s blue eyes fill with tears, “all I could think was that I hoped to God he didn’t survive. My brother was a tyrant and caused nothing but misery. And when they didn’t find him after searching for days, it was a blessing. For the first time I could remember, I felt free. I think even my parents, who prayed every day he’d be found alive, were somewhat relieved. They were afraid of him.”
I swallow down a cold lump in my throat. This awful story can’t be true. Can it? “So how did Mason end up—”
“Alive?” She shrugs. “Fuck if I know. He just showed up a few weeks later, a hundred miles away, walking down the highway. A patrolman stopped him because he didn’t have a coat or shoes and it was snowing—figured Mason was just some guy who’d gone off his meds. They found his driver’s license in his back pocket and gave us a call. The rest is history.”
“Aren’t you leaving out the part about where he was all that time or how he showed up so far away? How about why he uses a different name?”
