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“Why me?” But I already know why, don’t I? How did he find out? No one was ever supposed to know. I’d been so careful.
“A little birdy clued me in.” The muscle in his jaw flexes. “Why did you lie to me? I told you how I feel about liars.”
Yes, he had. It was one of his rules he’d outline in the car that first night. And I’d taken the risk anyway because the reward outweighed everything. I have no answer to give, so I remain quiet. It isn’t as if I can do a lot of talking right now anyway. Not with the way my stomach is cramping, and the drinks and food I consumed are trying to crawl their way back up my throat. I clamp a hand over my abdomen and moan.
“What did you do?” I whimper, abject fear consuming me. Am I…dying?
“Me?” Declan shakes his head sadly. “No, Faith. You’ve done this to yourself.”
“I never asked for this,” I hiss, a flash of anger briefly overriding the pain. “I asked you to get rid of my sleazeball husband. To rid me of a lifetime of misery.”
“You asked me to kill an innocent man.”
I ignore the accusation. “But you didn’t. In case you don’t remember, I was the one who took care of everything. I solved my own problem, no thanks to you.” Does he think I owe him something? I hired him to do a job that he failed to carry out. If anything, he owes me—a refund!
“Yes, you did, and I was a party to it. I was there, so my hands are just as dirty as yours.” His lips peel back from his teeth as he leans in. “It never should have happened, Faith, and you know it. Glenn was a good man. You lied about everything. He never cheated on you a day in his life, did he?”
“Yes, he did. Every day that he lied to my face, he cheated me. Every day he ran around with that trash, he cheated me.”
“That trash? You mean your mother?”
The realization that he does know the truth finally slaps me across the face, and I flinch as if it were a physical blow. “Who told you?”
“From her lips to my ears.” The confession makes my jaws clench even more than the pain. Declan continues. “She found me a few days after the funeral, let me in on a little secret you’d been keeping. How much was the insurance policy, Faith? Enough to get you all the way here,” he concludes before I can offer an excuse. “I’m only mad at myself for missing it. All the little lies you sprinkled along the way to cover your tracks. Stick close to the truth to cover up the lies, right?”
He was exactly right. I learned early on in life that lies have to skate as close to the truth as possible to ring true. It was difficult to remember lies since they had no basis in truth, which is why so many liars get caught. What I’d found out was that if I stuck close enough to the truth, if I said it enough times, if Ibelievedin it myself, no one could tell the difference. It was all about having faith in yourself, inyourtruth. Glenn had cheated me. Out of everything.
So I’d found a way to cheat him. Of his life.
And I’d managed to trick the man who made it his life’s mission to see through the bullshit. I’d say I’d done pretty damn well for myself. Until now.
“I have to say after the initial anger passed, I was impressed. You got past me, and it’s my job to spot liars. I believed in you so much, I didn’t dig deep enough to uncover your little plan. Instead, I only scratched the surface. I played right into your conniving little hands, saw what you wanted me to see.”
Glenn hadn’t been totally innocent. He’d always been a huge flirt. Couldn’t pass by anything in a skirt without smiling and chatting them up. He had a wandering eye, but he was never unfaithful in the physical sense. I could have dealt with all of that, but then he’d crossed the line, befriending my mother. The one person in the world I couldn’t tolerate, had the worst relationship with, and despised to my very marrow. No amount of requests could sway him. Glenn went out of his way for that woman, helping her when she should have been left to fend for herself. He could never understand why I hated her so much, but when a mother keeps something as important as a child’s father from them, it tends to breed a hatred deep enough to scorch the very air they breathed.
When I learned my father’s identity, it was already too late. He’d been gunned down years before by some rival. But that’s what happened when you were a member of the mafia, I suppose. He had an expiration date, but I might have gotten to know him, just a little, had my mother not kept him a secret.
I will never forgive her.
“Congratulations,” Declan interrupts my thoughts. “You deceived the deceiver. You managed to get past my defenses, got me to let my guard down, to trust you enough to let you in. You tricked me.”
I smirk. “The darkest deceptions are often the deadliest. You should have done your research better.”
He tips his head. “You’re right. I was complacent. I broke my own rules, and look what happened.” He shakes his head, admonishing himself.
I open my mouth, prepared to say something that will rub more salt in his wounded ego, but a coughing fit overcomes me instead, ripping through my chest and throat like a raging inferno of pain, until I double over and vomit onto the soft golden sand.
“It’s working faster than I expected.”
What? Horror struggles to reach past the fog of pain and illness as I heave.
“It’s a good thing you decided to come all the way out here, away from everyone. No one will notice until it’s too late.”
“Notice?” It’s a strain to get that one word out. What is happening to me? “What…have…you…done…to me?”
Declan sighs and relaxes back, bracing his arms behind him in the sand. “At first, when I heard you were boarding a plane to the Dominican Republic, I was enraged. Even more so than when I found out and confirmed the existence of the insurance policy you hid so well. I’d ask you more about that, but you don’t seem to be in a chatty mood.”
Was that his attempt at humor?
