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“What was that?” I look up at her.
“Your niece.” She smiles through her tears. “Her name is Olivia.”
I don’t move. I don’t speak. I’m still trying to process what she just said when she slides a photo across the table, leaving it in front of me. I don’t want to look because that will make it real, but my eyes drift toward the little girl in the picture, and it steals the oxygen from my lungs. The face staring back at me looks so familiar it sends a chill up my spine.
“I know,” Tori whispers. “Every day, she looks a little more like him. And God, I love her, but sometimes, it’s like a knife to the heart. There are still times when I look at her, and I can’t fucking breathe. The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that I know she’s nothing like him. Her heart is as pure as they come.”
I scoop the photo up to examine it. My fingers move over the little girl’s face, and my chest caves in. She couldn’t belong to anyone else but Adam. Even if I didn’t already know it, Tori cements it with her next words.
“After he died, I tried to find a way to reach out to you, but I hit roadblocks at every turn. Your lawyer thought I was just some crazed fan, and he hung up on me. The letters I sent you were returned. So in desperation, I finally contacted your parents.”
“You did?” My eyes snap to hers.
“Yes.” She frowns. “I went home for a visit, and I introduced them to Olivia. I don’t know what I was thinking. I just figured… maybe if they heard my story, they’d realize Adam probably had a lot more enemies than they knew. In some fucked-up way, I thought it might help your case.”
“What did they say?” I ask, regretting it when she grimaces.
“Stefan ordered a DNA test on Olivia to prove I wasn’t a liar, and when they realized I wasn’t, they gave me a check and told me to go away. They thought I was just after money. They didn’t want to hear anything I said about you.”
The vein in my neck pulses with latent rage. “That sounds about right.”
Tori’s quiet for a moment, giving me time to organize my thoughts before she drops another bombshell.
“I have a theory about what happened.”
I roll my neck to the side, trying to release some tension. “Okay.”
“The thing I keep coming back to is Bianca,” she says. “I know how crazy that sounds, but I’ve been in her shoes. I know how he was, and how insane he could make me. And I keep wondering if he pushed her over the edge and she snapped.”
I don’t respond because I don’t want to give anything away. Tori couldn’t know that I’ve considered this exact thought. There were things that came up in the trial that left me with questions I couldn’t answer. Like the fact my pistol killed Adam, and Bianca had taken it from me. Or the police reports he’d filed against her, claiming she was violent. The records of her being shuttled to different treatment centers throughout their relationship. He’d established in everyone’s eyes that she was the one with problems, and he was the saint for loving her anyway. These are the very same reasons I convinced myself she was responsible when I saw her—alive and on the run. Those factors drove me to punish Bianca. To torment her. And it’s only now that I recognize the true gravity of those decisions.
“I’m not proud of this.” Tori lowers her voice. “But when Adam first left me for Bianca, I hated her for it. He kept stringing me along, using me when he pleased, and I was still holding onto something… God knows what. I’d wait for him in the pool house sometimes. But every once in a while, he’d show up with her, and I’d have to hide. I’d sit there and quietly listen to their conversations, and the longer things went on, the more I realized something wasn’t right about them being together.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard them arguing a lot,” she explains. “About him trapping her in a relationship. I always thought it was weird because from the very beginning, it never seemed like she wanted to be with him. He took it as a challenge, and he wasn’t the type of guy to back down. Her rejection only made him more determined.”
“What did you hear that made you think he trapped her?” I ask.
“I don’t know exactly how it all went down,” Tori says. “But I got the impression her family talked her into the relationship. One night, Bianca was begging Adam to call it off, and he threatened to end a deal between her parents and TCA. She broke down crying, and he told her he could destroy her family’s entire business with a few phone calls. In the end, she caved to him because it sounded like she had no other choice.”
