“Because it wasn’t my fault!”
I blink, disbelief echoing through me. Whatever Oliver did, maybe he pegged Mitch right. Maybe he is a narcissist.
“I wasn’t meant to look out for her—she’s not my fucking sister.”
Like a clunk of gears, everything suddenly drops into place. Lucy wasn’t just his employee. “My God.His sister?No wonder he hates you.”
“Not as much as he hates himself. I might’ve fucked her, but he was the one who fucked her over.”
I turn away. I’m not cold anymore. I’m numb but for the swirl of sickness in my belly.Why didn’t Oliver tell me?
“He disowned his own sister,” he calls after me, his poison continuing to pour out. “Sent her packing because she made a mistake. Because she had a relationship with me behind his back.”
I spin around to face him. “His back? What about mine?” A slight overlap, so Mitch had said last time. But this right here is a different tack, so what does he hope to achieve this time around? Make me run from Oliver like I ran from him? A huff leaves my throat. This isn’t the same. It hurts that Oliver didn’t tell me—that maybe he felt he couldn’t trust me at one point. Maybe it hurts him to remember. Whatever the reason, we’ll talk it over.Because his heart chooses mine.
“It just sort of happened.”
My laughter rings through the night air. “Give me a break. You planned it. Just like you planned to use me. You strung us both along—her for some land, me for this fucking house!” I shout, glancing up at the ancient stone. This place, I bet it’s witnessed some scenes over its long years, but nothing as bizarre as this.
“Yeah, for this house—the one you’re lying for right now. Why, Evie? Why him?”
“Make up your mind. Last time, you accused me of sleeping with him while planning our marriage. Which is it, huh?”
“I don’t fucking know!” he yells. “I can’t make it out, but what I do know is I’m not the one who drove his sister to try to kill herself.”
“Nothing is ever your fault, is it?”
“It’s not like I gave her the pills!”
As I reach the door, I push my way inside the grand hall, not caring about the crush of people or whether Mitchell follows me.
How can he not see his part in this? He treated me like he treated Lucy. When I turned to Oliver on our wedding day,hehelped me when he could’ve kicked me out of the car!Ipushed at the hotel elevator when he would have left me alone.
He must’ve thought I deserved it.
I’m no longer jealous of Lucy. It’s no comfort when I feel hurt, when I see this for what it is. What happened with his sister must’ve crushed him, whether he sent her away or not. But people who try to end their own lives aren’t in their right state of mind—it’s called a crisis for a reason. Oliver isn’t to blame.Except maybe in his own mind.I have to find him—tell him I know. That I understand, and that it changes nothing.
My phone vibrates, and I look down, realizing it’s still in my hand. The number is unfamiliar but brings my mind back to Nora. My stomach coils tightly as I make my way to the side of the room to open it. I thought the last few minutes were a lot to take in, to process, but this makes my headhurt. Makes my heart feel chilled. Screenshot after screenshot, some with notes scrawled in a childish hand, others with roughly drawn arrows and highlighted text.
As the party swirls on around me, as people drink, and eat, and laugh, I stare at my phone until I’m sure of what I’m seeing. A web of offshore holding companies with assets valued at over three hundred million, largely in real estate, ultimately own Atterir Limited.The same company who fenced off Nora’s place.From reams of documents, with lawyers, accountants, and corporate entities named, to what looks like information pulled from a data leak, I find the answer I most dread. The ultimate owner’s name.
No.No.
This isn’t the man my heart softened for.
Chapter 44
EVIE
Am I the stupidest woman in the world?
Could he just not help himself? I can’t believe it—I want to believenoneof it, to put it down to coincidence and the ramblings of a teenage would-be anarchist.
My stomach knots as I set out to find Oliver. I need to hear him deny it, to listen as he explains why he didn’t tell me about Lucy. I need to hear that he loves me, that this isn’t some sick kind of payback.
As I move from room to room, my skin feels as though it’s burning, yet my blood feels like ice water as it pumps through my veins. There’s no sign of him in the ballroom, or any of the places where people gather. In the long gallery, outsize portraits of Mandy’s ancestors witness me freeze.
“A little bird says,” a woman’s voice trills.
