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I quickly deleted the notification so it would disappear from my phone. “Just saw a news headline.” I returned my phone to my purse, and we left the market and returned to the street.
Victor continued to study me like he didn’t believe me, but he didn’t press me on it.
A couple days later, Victor and I had dinner together at my favorite restaurant. He always let me pick, and he always insisted on paying, even though Bartholomew had just dropped a small fortune into my bank account. I could leave my apartment and move in to the Four Seasons. I didn’t want his money, but I couldn’t deny it was a godsend. My savings had taken a serious hit, and very soon, I was going to run out of money. I’d pushed it to the back of my mind because my revenge was more important than whatever I had left, but he’d now fixed that problem for me.
I would spend it because I didn’t have a choice, and if he hadn’t given me that money, I would have had to ask Victor…and that would make me feel dirty.
We didn’t say much over dinner. We spent a lot of time together now, so there wasn’t always much to talk about. His eyes were on me most of the time, catching glimpses of my face when he thought I wasn’t looking. “I feel like there’s something wrong.”
Guess I wasn’t as good of an actress as I thought. “I guess I’m just confused…”
“About?”
“I don’t know…it’s complicated.” I was making all of this up on the fly.
He moved closer to the table, resting his elbows on the tablecloth because the waiter had removed our dirty dishes. “Talk to me, Laura.”
“I left my job. Left my apartment. Left everything to come here and kill my father. But now…I don’t know.”
“You’re getting cold feet.”
“I wouldn’t call it cold feet. I just…feel differently. It’s nice to spend time with my sister. It’s nice to be home again. It’s nice to…have a relationship with you. Maybe I’m just going crazy, but I’m not sure if I even want to hurt my father anymore…”
He didn’t blink, hung on every word.
“I mean, I’m angry. A part of me will always be angry. But…I don’t know… I’m not making any sense.”
“Actually, it makes sense to me,” he said. “Before everything happened, we were happy. You were happy. Now, it’s like you’re back in time. Why destroy something that makes you happy? Because if you did kill your father, it would destroy everything else. There’d be nothing left.”
My heart sank because I saw it—the truth.
Bartholomew was right.
Victor had played me—and he’d played me good.
I made sure my expression didn’t change as the truth sank in. My father knew everything. My father knew I was biding my time for the opportunity to torture him the way he’d tortured me. When he came to my apartment, he knew. When he made that comment about Victor…he was playing me.
I was such an idiot. “What about you? How do you feel?”
“How do I feel about what?”
“You said you wanted to hurt my father for what he did to me.” The fact that that was a lie hurt even more, because he hadn’t changed at all. He’d never stand up for me. He’d never defend me. He’d never be the man Bartholomew was.
“It was an asshole thing to do, and I’ll always be upset about it. But there was no long-term damage to your arm. You made a full recovery, and you’re right about what you said—that our lives would be forever different if he were dead.”
No long-term damage? How about trauma? Heartbreak? Insatiable blood lust?
“I support whatever you decide.”
Sure. “I’m not sure if my relationship with my father will ever be what it used to be. I was still loyal to him in our estrangement, but I’m not sure if I can ever be that loyal again. Just because I don’t want him dead doesn’t mean I trust him.”
“That’s fair.”
“I’m just confused right now…”
“There’s no rush. I’ve enjoyed the time we’ve spent together.”
It took all my strength to say the words back and mean them. “Yeah…me too.”
