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“He was going to kill you. It was my only option.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “No, he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t!” Her voice gets louder as she stands up. “You were his best friend; he trusted you! How could you do this to him? To me?”
“I told you,” I say, keeping my voice calm and level. “He was going to kill you. What was I supposed to do? You saw the life insurance policies, Em. You know the parameters of your prenup. Your time was up.” I know I sound cold and heartless, but I don’t feel any pity for her mourning him. She’s naive if she thinks he wouldn’t have killed her without a second thought. I know she can’t comprehend that right now. She’s still holding on to the character he played, the person he pretended to be to her, but she has to see it with all this evidence she’s holding.
“Prenup? What does this have to do with the prenup? My parents had that drawn up before I was even born. I never read it.”
My eyebrows shoot upward. “You signed a prenup and didn’t read it? Jesus Christ, Em.” I reach for the pile of papers and sort through them until I find it. I flip it to the clause about inheritance and point to a paragraph. “Right there. It says that Dane gets nothing if you divorce, but if you die, he gets everything after five years of marriage.”
She reaches her hand out slowly, taking it from me and reading over it. “No,” she says, shaking her head furiously. “He wouldn’t kill me, Mads. You’re wrong.” I roll my eyes. “I know he hid things from me. He was a liar and a cheater. I can see that now, but I know that when he looked at me, he loved me. I’m not excusing his behavior, but he wouldn’t kill me. That’s bullshit and we both know that!”
She’s in denial. I didn’t want to do this, but I know it’s the only way she’s going to truly believe me. I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. I search through my recordings and find the one from the night of Dane’s death. “I’m sorry, Emery. I really am. But just remember that you came to me, asking for closure. If that’s what you want, then you need to listen to this.” I hit play, placing the phone on the table in front of her.
Dane’s voice breaks the silence.“I knew your dick would get in the way of any rational thinking.”Emery’s eyes widen, looking at the phone, then up at me.
She listens intently as Dane details how he’s going to force me to kill her, and if I don’t, he’ll kill me. I let it play until the end, Emery jumping when the gunshot rings out, then the recording stops.
Her entire body goes still. She falls forward onto her hands and knees as she begins to hyperventilate.
“Just breathe,” I say, crouching down beside her as I rub her back. “Breathe, Emery.”
Her breathing sounds labored, an animalistic groan of pain erupting from her chest as she crumples into my arms, sobs tearing through her. I wrap my arms around her, letting her cry. Finally, I pick her up and carry her upstairs to my bedroom. I grab a glass of water and a valium and take them up to her.
“Take this.” I hand it to her, and she does without resistance. She drinks the water, falling back onto the pillows. I brush her hair away from her face. She looks so broken, so dissociated as she curls into the fetal position. “I’ll come check on you later.” I close the bedroom door behind me and head downstairs to my office.
I try to focus on work, but I keep glancing at the clock, the seconds ticking by like hours. The sun has set and it’s pushing nine. I head to the kitchen to make a sandwich and head upstairs to my bedroom. I knock on the door softly, pushing it open. Emery is sitting up, her back toward me as she hugs her knees to her chest, facing the window.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, placing the sandwich on the bed next to her. She doesn’t respond. I walk over to the chair in the far corner of the room, grabbing it and walking it over to sit next to her.
“I’m done hiding things from you, Em. Whatever questions you have, I’ll answer them. It’s the least of what you deserve.”
Her head slowly turns to face me, her eyes swollen from hours of crying. Her cheeks are red and splotchy, her eyes hollow. She looks at me, then slowly turns away again, back toward the window. We sit like this in silence for several minutes.
“Why did you tell Dane to go after me? Why me?” she finally asks, her eyes still forward.
“You were young and beautiful and since your parents had just died, you were set to become the youngest, most eligible billionaire. It was merely a decision of convenience.” Her head turns and she looks at me.
“Convenience? Good to know. Being that I was young and dealing with unimaginable grief, I’m sure you just assumed a charming man like Dane could manipulate me without me even realizing it.” I nod my head in shame. “Well, it worked.”
“Dane’s charm worked on everyone. All throughout Yale, he had our friend group wrapped around his finger. You’d think being the outsider he’d fall to the wayside, but something about him captivated everyone, including me.”
“So what was the plan then? You both kill me after five years? How did it benefit you—you don’t need my money.”
“To get you to fall in love with him so he would have access to your name and money so that he could build his own empire. There was never a plan to kill you, Emery. Not from me. As far as I knew, Dane only wanted to use you for money, and I went along with it.”
“He couldn’t manage it on his own?”
I shake my head. “Not with his goals and aspirations. I mean, I guess he could, but it would take way more time and he would have to pitch to investors. He felt like he was too good for that even though he would have excelled at it. I told him that so many times over the years, that if he went about it the right way, raised capital and built connections, he would have been unstoppable, but he didn’t want to do that. He felt owed. He wanted everything we had now.”
“Why would he be owed anything?” I can hear the bitterness in her tone.
“He wasn’t but it was a narrative he preached and one he believed. His dad was one of the original right-hand men of Niles Piedmont, but he fucked around behind his back, defrauded the company and some investors, and got fired. Not only fired but Niles destroyed his reputation, made sure he’d never work in finance again. That’s why Dane’s father wasn’t in the picture. He became an alcoholic and abandoned the family when he was young.”
She nods. “I knew he left. I didn’t know why. Dane always made it seem like it was just a sad tale of his dad becoming an alcoholic.” She picks at the comforter. “Why didn’t you let him work for your company?”
“Wasn’t good enough for him. My father offered him an internship which he did take but refused to come on board. He laughed at the salary offered. He thought he’d come in and immediately be running a department. He also knew there was only so far he could go with my father and brother around. He’d never be able to take over and be a billionaire by working his way up.”
“I don’t understand.” She shakes her head. “I gave him everything. He built his company up; he was onForbes.”
