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That anger brewing in my belly starts spewing as I march outside the bar and spot Bethany pressed against Stephen Lund. Her entire body shakes with supposed sobs. He’s holding her and stroking her hair, as if he’s comforting her.
Is any of it real? Or has she conned this poor sap, too? After all, why take the money from the Caymans and split it with a lover when she can have it all to herself?
Vaguely, I wonder why she even bothered to make this pit stop in Hawaii and why she worked in this nowhere bar doing this dead-end job if she had nearly a billion dollars waiting for her in the Caribbean. Some part of her cover? An elaborate ploy to keep the feds off her trail? But doesn’t she already have the perfect get-out-of-jail card with that video? James Braden won’t want to lose his position of power. I’m sure he’d do almost anything to keep this secret buried.
Whatever. I’m done trying to figure out how Bethany’s mind works. Time to confront her and end this.
“Hey,” I call out to them.
She wrenches out of his embrace, nose red, cheeks wet with tears—and eyes blazing with betrayal. “Clint Dietrich, huh? How long were you going to feed me that bullshit, you son of a bitch?”
So she knows my identity? A glance over at Lund, sharp brow raised, tells me he’s the snitch.
“Until I got the truth, which I apparently never did,” I spit back. “But congratulations. Now you have the real name of the latest guy you fucked over so you can add me to your long and distinguished list.”
Gaping, she lunges my way. “What the hell are you talking about? I believed in you. I told you some of the ugliest, most shameful details about my past. Things I’ve never really told any other human being because I loved you—”
“Aww, my heart is bleeding.”
Her eyes flash rage, but her sniffles offset the menace in her expression. “And you never even told me your real fucking name. When you came on strong day one, hot and gorgeous and so focused on me, I should have known it was too good to be true, that all your talk about wanting to get to know me was just lies. You only wanted information. You wanted to use me.” She shakes her head in self-recrimination. “I was the idiot who fell for how caring you seemed, how perfect we felt together. I’m genuinely sorry about your father, Mr. Holmes. I really liked your dad a lot. He was one of my favorite clients, one of the few who knew who my father really was. He told you, didn’t he? You came here knowing. And you blamed me, like all the others, because I was the face of Reed Financial.”
Is she really going to play the victim until the bitter end? “I watched my father die on my living room floor because you didn’t call him back when the news broke.”
Bethany recoils. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. I feel terrible about his passing—”
“Save your empty platitudes, Beth. You were never going to call because you were complicit in stealing the money he’d earned with his life’s work.” It feels both good and horrible to finally say that. The rage growing and growling inside me pats me on the back for laying that at her feet.
But my stupid heart is still breaking.
“What? No! I couldn’t call your dad—or anyone—back that day. The FBI was interrogating me. They thought I was complicit, too. I eventually proved them wrong.”
“No, you proved calculating and cunning after you fucked the federal prosecutor. Congratulations. Did you do it to save your dad’s miserable ass? Or were you planning all along to take the money and run by yourself?”
Bethany’s jaw drops. She blinks, seems to reel, then shakes her head, looking beyond hurt. “Is that what you really think of me?”
I’ve got to hand it to her. If I didn’t know the circumstances and hadn’t seen the evidence, her crushed expression would convince me that I’ve got everything wrong and that my lack of faith is breaking her heart.
“That’s what I know. And don’t think I won’t use it against you.”
“Then we have nothing left to say. For the record, I slept with James Braden at my father’s request—something I hadn’t done to help him in over four years. Something I’d told him I would never do again. But I demeaned myself because, at the time, I thought Barclay was innocent. He’d convinced me the feds were on a witch hunt at Douglas Lund’s request because the man knows big people in high places. The father I’d looked up to my whole life was seemingly being framed for a crime he didn’t commit. His business—hell, my business—would undoubtedly crash down. Everything I’d ever poured my energy or soul into would be gone. First, I tried to talk to Braden, convince him using every other method I could. In the end, he told me he would look the other way, but only if I fucked him. You see, he was six weeks post-divorce after his wife left him for another man, and he was looking for revenge sex. He said I would do. So I let him use me. I wanted to cry the whole time. But what choice did I have? What would you have done, if you could, to save your dad?”
