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“Walk out with me,” she said. “I want every chance I can have to talk with my future daughter in law!”
The second I got up, Stellan was on his feet too. He shook his head at me, but though he wound through tables, he didn’t manage to intercept us before we headed out of the back door of the tea shop to where the limo waited in the alley. Of course she’d taken a stretch limo to tea. If I had a limo, I’d probably take it everywhere. Starbucks drive through. Target. Burying people in the forest. There was room for a lot of bodies or a lot of shopping, either way.
“Some day you’ll understand why I made the decision I have, dear,” she told me. “I love Cain, so very much, but no one can be more precious to a woman than her husband. You have to prioritize your marriage over your children. It’s better for them—it’s unhealthy for them to be at the center of the family. And they grow up and leave! Look at how Cain is leaving us for you. But I’ll always have Alexander.”
Rebecca climbed into the limo.
“I don’t know how long you’ll have Alexander,” I disagreed.
Then I lunged for the first bodyguard’s gun.
He tried to stop me, but he was slow—must have been all those scones—and as I was pulling the gun out, I clicked off the safety. The second the gun cleared his holster, I angled the barrel up into his gut and pulled the trigger. He was going down as I spun to the second bodyguard, put two in his chest while he stared at me in stunned terror, then raised the gun and squeezed the last round off into his head before he could even fall. I spun back to the first bodyguard, who was on the ground, trying to get to a second gun in his boot.
But I squeezed the bullet into his head first.
Stellan had just slammed into the alleyway, and he gave me a wide-eyed look. It was not as surprised an expression as I might have expected, though.
Now Rebecca and I could really have a chat. I slid into the limo seat across from her, keeping the gun trained on the center of that white dress.
“Cain always deserved better than you.” I told the wide-eyed woman.
For the first time, her shiny façade cracked. “Aurora, be reasonable—”
“I don’t think I will,” I said. “There’s too much pressure on women to be reasonable when we should be fierce.”
“Aurora,” Stellan said quietly behind me. “We need to move.”
“I can help you,” she said desperately. “Alexander is going to come for Cain. And—”
“And he’ll regret it,” I promised. “But you won’t be here to see it. Because I know you’re not going to help us. You would never choose your son over your husband—you already made that clear.”
“Aurora—” she attempted.
“You said that if someone betrays their family, they deserve a bad end,” I said. “So here’s yours.”
She raised a hand, too late. I shot twice, and red bloomed across her front before she slumped to one side. Her eyes were still wide with her fake innocence.
“Well,” Stellan said evenly. “That just happened. We need to go.”
He grabbed the gun from me, wiping the prints clean, then offered me his hand out of the car.
“You didn’t try very hard to stop me,” I said.
“I wanted you to think twice about killing Cain’s mom,” he said. “But then I realized you needed it. So alright, go for it. But now, Aurora, let’s go.”
Hand in hand, we ran.
15
AURORA
“Did you see the look on her face?” I asked Stellan as we rode up in the elevator to our hotel room. “I was so sick of all her platitudes to make up for the fact she doesn’t have any personality except Alexander.”
He didn’t seem to know quite what to make of me. “I did, but I was pretty distracted at the time trying to figure out what the hell you were doing.”
“Did you figure it out?”
“Baby, I don’t know what you’re doing now,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around me. “You’re… a little bit of a manic pixie dream murderer lately.”
