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God! He’d thought this out. Planned. Executed it perfectly. “Why didn’t you focus on your business like you focused on killing everyone? You would have made a crapload of money.”
“Too much work,” he said with a shrug. “Why would I do that when it was so much easier to take Dad and Mom’s money?”
Her brother was a monster. She’d seen it when they were kids, but hadn’t realized the depths of his evil.
Who wanted to believe her brother was a devil?
“But why try to kill me? You don’t look like Jeff. I’d never suspect you’re my brother. You didn’t need to do anything besides avoid me.”
“Why kill you?” His eyes glittered, and she realized he was excited by the idea of murdering her. She edged another step away from him. “Because I can. Because you’re living and breathing and using up air.” He scowled. “Our parents should have aborted you. All their money was supposed to go to me.”
“Not my fault I was born,” she managed to say.
“You’re right. But I have the power to get rid of you.” He scowled. “I tried to smother you once. You were just a baby. Two, maybe three years old. But I heard Mom coming down the hallway, so I had to pretend I was settling your head on the pillow and kissing you goodnight.
“When you were older and completely annoying, I went after you in the woods, when you were playing your stupid games with your stupid friends. But one of them saw my shadow behind a tree. She took off screaming, and the rest of you followed her.
“Jesus Christ, Julia, you’ve lived a charmed life.” Jeff scowled, like her being alive was a personal affront to him. “You’ve been damn lucky.” He smiled, and it sent ice down Julia’s spine. “But your luck just ran out.”
Where was Nico? She had to keep Jeff talking.
“Were you the one behind Carole’s scheme? Did you put the spyware on my computer?” she demanded.
He shrugged. “Why should I tell you?”
“Because you’re going to kill me. So why not explain it all to me? You know you want to.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Shrugged his shoulders. “Carole was easy pickings,” he said. “Desperate for attention. Love. All I had to do was plant the seed that you were taking advantage of her, and that she deserved more money, and voila! She was ready to roll. She let me in here one night and I installed spyware on the computer you use here. Put some cameras in your office. So I always knew what your passwords were. Made it easy for Carole to cancel out the meals for the people who paid cash.”
“Why were you trying to destroy my restaurant?”
He frowned at her as if she were a slow child. “If you had to close the restaurant, it would be easier to kill you. Who’d notice if you disappeared?”
“My friends would have noticed,” she said. But his words were chilling. She didn’t have much of a life outside of Madeline’s. It was part of the cost of opening a restaurant.
As if bored with his confession that he’d planned on killing her, Jeff looked around. “Where’s that busser you seem so fond of?”
“He left,” she said, afraid Jeff would go after Nico. She’d try damn hard to save herself. And if she couldn’t, Nico would have her back. “His day was over. Why would he still be here?”
“So it’s just the two of us in Madeline’s kitchen? Nice touch, by the way. Naming your restaurant after Mom. She’d be so pleased.”
“Don’t you dare talk about Mom!”
“Worked out for you, Julia. You got to use their money to go to culinary school. Dad would never have given it to you.”
“I’d rather have piles of college debt and none of their money,” she said, her hands curling into claws. She realized it when he glanced at her hands, and relaxed her fingers.
“So what’s your plan, Jeff?” She nodded at the knife in his hand. “You going to gut me and let me bleed out on the floor of my restaurant?”
“I’m going to slit your throat,” he said, as if describing a trivial chore he needed to do. “Then I’m going to burn this place to the ground, with your body inside. You were supposed to die in that fire sixteen years ago. It’ll look as if you died in another tragic fire.”
“You think I’m just going to stand here and let you kill me?” she asked, incredulous.
“’Course not. You were always a feisty kid. But I’m bigger and stronger than you. I’ll win eventually.”
Not if she had anything do to with it.
She needed to keep him talking, to give Nico time to stop him. “What did you do to Carole?”
