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My hands in my lap shook with sudden nerves and deep rage. Past the last tree, the front of the house appeared with its marble steps and Corinthian pillars. And there like a Greek goddess secure in her kingdom was Caroline. Blonde and beautiful as ever, her face making the appropriate expression of worry and relief.
Caroline was wearing her signature cream, a pair of pants and sweater. She’d tried so hard to make me over in her own image. Blonde hair, pale dresses. Young and feminine and forgettable. It was all part of Caroline’s systematic control of me, couched in care. In love. In favors and generosity.
But always at the root of it—control.
“You can stay in the car,” I told Raj when he reached for the door.
“You’re joking. Ronan honestly will kill me.”
“Ronan’s not here.” And I needed Caroline to tell me the truth, something she wouldn’t do with a stranger in the room. Caroline controlled the narrative and I was done with the story she’d been telling me. The driver opened my door and I stepped out, watching Caroline every minute. I saw for a second that she didn’t recognize the person standing in front of her, and when she realized it was me with new hair and new clothes, a badass scar on my shoulder, her eyes went wide. That was real. All real. I knew that because she immediately covered her honest reaction with a trembling hand pressed to her mouth.
“You’re alive,” she said, tears in her blue eyes, and man, you had to give the woman credit. If I wasn’t looking, if my eyes hadn’t been opened to her duplicity, I would have sucked down her concern for me like mother’s milk.
“I am,” I said, coming to a stop on the bottom step. We were nearly eye to eye.
“Where’s Ronan?” she asked, glancing over my shoulder. And then at my shoulder.
“Not here.” I saw that register. A slight widening of her eyes. The twitch of her lip like a smile before she hid it.
“What happened?” Caroline asked, reaching for my hands, my scar. “When we heard your driver was killed and you were missing, I had no idea—”
“Stop,” I said and pushed her hands away. “Just…stop. We’re going to talk, but if you keep pretending like you didn’t know exactly what was happening, I’m going to leave and go right to the Morellis.”
And like a switch was flipped, Caroline stopped. The tears dried up and the tremble in her hand was gone and she looked at me with new eyes. Wary eyes. “Well, well,” she said, her voice colder. “I wonder what got into you. My bulldog, perhaps?”
I nearly laughed. “Are you asking me if I had sex with Ronan? Have you not heard the news, Caroline?”
She went excruciatingly still. “I married your bulldog.” I held out my ugly unholy ring. She stared at it, speechless. “Invite me in, Caroline. I have some questions I need answered.”
Inside, there was a man standing at the door. Thick neck. Hands tucked behind his back. His eyes locked on the middle distance. Ronan’s replacement. Did Caroline pick him up off the streets of some city? Feed him and train him to believe she cared about him even a little bit, only to make him a killer? I doubted it. This guy seemed like hired meat. He had none of Ronan’s lethal edge. His keen hunger. His beautiful intelligence.
I took the sweeping staircase on the other edge of the foyer to the second floor and then the smaller staircase to the third, where Caroline’s windowed aerie of an office looked over the rolling green hills of Bishop’s Landing.
I’d been in this office a million times, the last just a few weeks ago, when we talked about the foundation. When she granted me control of it and I felt so proud. So strong. The version of me then couldn’t even dream of the version of me I was now. Caroline’s assistant Justin jumped to his feet behind his desk, unable to hide his surprise at seeing me. He at least looked happy. “Poppy. You’re here.”
“I am. We’ll need some coffee,” I said. Inside the office, Caroline made her way behind the desk and I realized how she was going to try and recalibrate the power dynamic. She was going to take over from behind that desk because that was what she did. She’d control the conversation, feed me lies and gaslight me into believing her. And that no longer worked for me.
“How much did you know?” I asked before she even had a chance to open her mouth.
“About what?” Caroline asked, and I saw right through her wide-eyed innocent act. God, how long I’d been a fool.
“Let’s start with Theo the driver.”
“Did I know he was a Morelli hitman? No.”
“Did you know the senator was working for the Morellis?”
