Page 37 of Clever Deceit

“I’m so sorry,” I offered finally. It wasn’t much, but it was the least I could do, knowing what had happened to them. “I’m so sorry you had to go through any of that. If I could go back in time, if I could do what I could to warn you of the kind of man he was and protect you from him...”

I choked up, shaking my head. Madison frowned at me and put an arm around my shoulder.

“You know we don’t blame you for any of that,” she promised me. “You can’t let that sit on your shoulders. This is about him, not about you. He’s the one who hurt us.”

I looked up at her, my eyes prickling with tears, and tried to pull myself together. She was right, and the sooner I could get that through my head, the better.

“Thank you,” I replied, gulping down a big breath of air to try and ground myself again. “I...I’m sorry. We have to focus on him.”

“So what exactly is the plan here?” Iris asked. “Why did you get us all together like this?”

“Because I want to know if any of you are going to be willing to testify against him,” I explained. Iris sucked in a sharp breath.

“Testify?” she replied, her eyes flashing with fear. “I...I don’t know if I can do something like that...”

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Just hearing your story is an amazing help.”

“I’ll testify,” Jane cut in suddenly, like she had made her mind up right there on the spot. I glanced over to her in surprise.

“You will?”

“Me too,” Julia added. “I can testify. I want to look him in the eye and tell him just what he did to me. I’ve lived with it alone for long enough. I don’t want to keep it that way.”

I felt a smile spread up my face before I could stop it. This was a huge step forward. The more people we had on our side willing to go on record against him, the easier it was going to be to make this work. There would be so much evidence, so much proof of the pattern he’d exerted over each of us. And maybe Iris would come around eventually. She was clearly still going through it, the memories all too fresh for her, but once she saw how much we would be able to do with her help, she might be willing to step up.

Madison and I exchanged a grin. This was exactly what we had been looking for to bring down both Tony and his father. Irrevocable proof that they had been using their power for dangerous purposes. Tony had left a trail of women behind him, all damaged by his abuse, but if he thought we were going to be scared into keeping our silence any longer, well, he had a whole other think coming.

“We need to do some more research into the McCarthys,” Madison remarked as Julia reached for her coffee with a shaky hand.

“Yeah, this will be enough to cause trouble for Tony, but we might need more to pull his father into it,” I agreed. “We need to dig up something else on him, his businesses, find some way to connect him to what Tony did. I’m sure Tony had to have abused the company credit card at some point when he was with one of us.”

Another silence fell between us. There was something so strange about being here, all together, with one specific thing in common. All of us had been through a kind of hell most people would never even have been able to imagine, and I hoped it stayed that way for them. To be drawn together by something so dark and traumatic, it wasn’t something I had ever experienced before, and I was still trying to wrap my head around how it made me feel.

“And if we can find that girl who took a restraining order out against him, that would be the icing on top,” I muttered.

“You think she would want to get involved with this?” Madison asked in surprise. “I mean, someone like that, she’s gone to pretty extreme lengths to make sure she never has to see that guy again...”

“Yeah, but if she knows it’s to help with something like this, she’s going to see it differently,” I reasoned. “She wants to see him put away more than any one of us. She got a restraining order against him, and heaven only knows what he did to her to cause that...”

I shivered at the thought. I could still remember the way he had slammed my head into that wall, the stars that danced around the edges of my vision, that helpless, useless feeling as I realized the mess I had gotten myself into. Had he done the same to that woman who had gotten the restraining order against him? Something worse? I didn’t even want to think how much darker it could get...

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” Madison agreed, pulling me out of the spiral rushing through my mind right now. This was what he would have wanted—he would have wanted me so scared about what was going to happen next that I couldn’t even think about doing what was right for myself. I hated that he still had such a hold on me, but that wasn’t going to be the case for much longer. I would make sure of it.

We talked for the rest of the afternoon, ordering in some food to eat together. Once we had put the topic of Tony behind us, we moved on to other things—finding other ways that we could connect with one another, that had nothing at all to do with the awful man who had pulled us together in the first place.

I was tired by the time I heard Warren roll up outside Madison’s place. Pulling on my coat, I leaned over to give Madison a huge hug.

“Thank you for having us here today,” I murmured to her. “You have no idea how much of a difference it made.”

“Oh, trust me, I do,” she replied, smiling as she pulled back. “You call me if you need anything, okay? I’m going to sit up with the girls a little longer, see what else they might share now they’re a bit more relaxed.”

“Don’t push them too hard,” I warned her, and she nodded in agreement, though I could see the flash in her eyes—the same thing I often felt in my own system, that dedication to bringing him down. After so many years wondering, wishing someone would step in and help, we were the closest we had ever been to getting justice for what he had done to us. It was tantalizing, and I wanted nothing more than to dive head-first into it and forget about everything that had come before.

I stepped out of her front door, to find Warren leaning on the car and waiting for me. I greeted him with a kiss, standing on my tiptoes to plant my lips against his.

He winced slightly as our mouths met, and I pulled back at once.

“Are you okay?” I asked him, frowning. I peered at his face, but I couldn’t make out much in the dark half-light outside Madison’s place. Unless...wait, was that the beginning of a bruise on his chin?