Page 103 of His Wicked Revenge

“I was able to rip my wrist out of his grasp, but then he kept saying, ‘I can’t let you leave. You’ll turn me in.’ And then he lunged at me. I dodged him, but the knife still sliced my arm. I ran for it, and when I got into the hall, he took the knife to my chest.” Her hand lifts, the tips of her fingers brushing against the bandage. “You and your partner showed up just in time. He would have killed me.”

See how easy it is for her to lie?

“We were coming back in hopes of speaking to Aiden,” Officer Stevens says, flipping the notebook closed. “He wasn’t here for the initial questioning, and we figured if we came by late, we could catch him.”

Veronica nods, finally moving her eyes to where I’m standing. Stevens follows her gaze. “Where were you tonight?”

I break my focus from Veronica and look at him. “My friend’s bachelor party.”

He doesn’t give me a look of doubt. He only nods and turns back to Veronica. “I’m glad we got here when we did. Aiden will be in our custody until we run tests on the knife. If it comes back that it’s the victim’s blood, he will be arrested.”

“How long will that take?” Veronica questions.

“Two weeks. Maybe a month,” he tells her. “For the time being, rest. We will call you when we find out more.”

Stevens tells the other officers and medics it’s time to head out. They disperse away from the area in the hallway and approach the elevators. Other residents watching the entire scene are now retreating into their apartments.

With the coast clear, I clench my jaw and inhale deeply. “Inside. Now.”

Veronica’s head falls like a child who is about to get yelled at. As she opens the door, her eyes remain on the floor. I follow her into the apartment and lock the door behind me.

Once it’s just the two of us, I let out an elongated sigh. She stays silent as she makes her way over to the kitchen island, sitting down on a stool with her head in her hands. She doesn’t even look at me.

The emotion rolling off of her is fear. I don’t need to see her face to understand how she is feeling; I can sense it in her body language.

“What really happened, Veronica?” I ask, not moving from my spot by the door.

She exhales, lifting her head to stare at the kitchen sink on the other side of the island. “I couldn’t sit in your apartment with the knife still being here.”

“I told you we would figure it out together,” I remind her. Finally separating my feet from the floor to move to the side of the island where her eyes are trained.

“I didn’t want to risk it, Leo!” Her eyes lock with mine, palms landing flat on the counter with a thud. “And it’s a good thing I didn’t wait because the cops would have come back regardless! You heard him; they came to question Aiden, and with how the one officer had been staring at my picture, what would stop them from knocking on either of our doors to ask more questions?”

She has a point. The officers were coming back to talk with Aiden, and there wasn’t anything stopping them from talking to us again. That still doesn’t account for the fact that she did this on her own without talking to me first.

My eyes drop to her chest, where the bandage is secured over her wound. “You should have called me.”

Her head shakes frantically, and her tongue swipes her bottom lip. “No. I had to do it on my own.”

“Why?” I step up to the island, grabbing the edge to support myself while I lean over it a bit. “Why do you always think you need to do things alone? I would have helped you, Vee! I would have⁠—”

“I care about you too much to put you at risk!” Her words cut me off, nicking my heart in the process.

Hearing her admit that she cares about me just adds to the confused emotions spinning around inside me. Hanging my head, I shut my eyes and allow her admittance to consume me.

She’s lying, Leo. Just like she lied to those cops.

“I knew what I was doing,” she attempts to reassure me. “When the idea popped into my head, I called a friend to do a background check on Aiden. He has a history, so them finding him with a knife with that man's blood on it was believable.”

My head tilts back up, narrowing my eyes at her. “You called a friend but didn’t want to call me?”

“Leo.” She sighs, moving from the comfort of her seat to stand behind me. I stay still, not facing her. Small arms wrap around my waist, and her immediate touch makes my body relax. “It was a friend with access to the tools you need to do a background check. To really dig deep.”

“Let me guess… Slater?” I’m not asking out of jealousy. I’m asking it because that is the only thing that crosses my mind when she says, friend. It is the only person I know she talks to regularly besides my sister.

“He is good at his job.” Her voice is muffled by how she buries her face in my shirt. “I get that you're mad, but… this doesn’t change anything between us, right?”

The fact that she worries about losing whatever it is between us has my anger slowly slipping away. Moving my hands to her wrists, I detach her from me enough to turn myself around. She looks up at me, eyes brimming with tears.