“Tragic things happen all the time. It was a precaution.”
“Did you take a policy out on yourself while you were . . . indemnifying our family?”
“Of course,” he says. “We’re all covered. You’re blowing this out of proportion. It’s smart financial planning. You’re letting that stupid bitch fill your head with lies.”
I tilt my head, frowning. She’s not as dumb as one might think if she pieced together our entire plan after being back in our lives for less than a month . . .
“How’d she know where we were? You told me you wanted to bring us here to get away from her. What were you planning?” I examine the shiny blade of the knife in the dull lamplight. It’s rust spotted, overused, but sharp enough.
“I’ve been wondering the same thing.” He speaks through gritted teeth as if that might make any of this more convincing—and then he makes a grave mistake. For a fraction of a second, his soulless gaze snaps to his phone on the nightstand.
“Luca . . .” I feign a dramatic gasp. “Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did . . .”
He thrashes, tugging against the zip ties, and then the asshole has the audacity to try to kick me when I snatch his phone.
I tap in his code—our meaningless wedding anniversary—and pull up his messages, weeding through them until I find the last one he sent to Lydia: GPS coordinates along with the words “for your fresh start.”
“You told her to come here?” I slam the phone down so hard the screen cracks in the corner. “Why? Why the hell would you do that?”
“I was going to finish the job.” He tries to sit up, but he can’t. I imagine he’s extremely uncomfortable in this position and his back is probably screaming in pain, but his comfort is the least of my concerns. “I was going to get her out here, finish her off, and bury her under the barn or burn her . . . I don’t know . . . The nearest neighbor is ten miles from here. No one would hear a thing, no one would see a thing. And as long as we keep the property in our name, no one will ever find her.”
“Oh. My. God.” I suck in a breath. “Is that what you were going to do with us?”
“No.” His brows meet and his white tee rides up, exposing his softening gut. When did he stop taking care of himself? When he realized he no longer needed to impress me because I’d soon be dead?
“You were going to kill us all, weren’t you?” I walk to the other side of the bed, pacing next to the window. “You were going to kill off all your problems—literally—and walk away a free and wealthy man.”
I perch on the foot of the bed, mentally playing out this sick fantasy of his, imagining him driving down to the police station in a few days to report his wife had murder-suicided herself and the kids. He’d tell them I’d been hallucinating. He’d spin it like I was suffering postpartum psychosis and everything happened so quickly he didn’t have time to get me the help I needed.
That poor widowed man, everyone would say. And then they’d focus on the dead babies. Because that’s what people always think about in those situations. It tugs at their heartstrings as they imagine what it must have been like for the kids, to die at the hand of their own mother. And then they find it in their heart to have compassion for me because motherhood is hard. Especially new motherhood.
And Luca—he’d play the role of the mourning husband, a man twice struck by unthinkable tragedies. But as soon as that five mil hit landed in his hands, he’d be gone.
“Maybe you’re not as stupid as I thought you were.” I study him for the last time. And then I think of Lydia. He was supposed to kill her that first week. Make it quick. Instead he dragged it out for years as I turned a blind eye, my gift to him. And he screwed her—while he was screwing me, while he was planning a future with me, while he was loving me. While I played the role of his perfect wife, she filled his cup. She was always his satisfaction. “The joke’s been on me this whole time, hasn’t it?”
He stops squirming, his attention landing on the knife in my white-knuckled hand.
“Don’t do this . . . think of the kids.” He swallows, but all I can look at is the pulsing vein in his neck.
“The kids are all I think about.” I inch closer. “Wish you could say the same.”
“Where are they?”
I find it impossible to believe he cares about their whereabouts. He’s trying to distract me, that’s all.
“They’re safe,” I say. Though the car isn’t running, I made sure they were wrapped in blankets before I sent Lydia down with them. They might be cold, but they’re not freezing. And I’ll be with them soon enough. “Not that you care. I mean, you were going to murder them . . .”
“That’s not true. I swear on my life.”
“I honestly thought you loved me.” I roll my eyes at myself. “God, what an idiot I was. The player got played. Serves me right, I guess.”
“I do love you.” He writhes. “I love you more than anything. You and the kids. You’re my world . . . the only thing that matters to me.”
“Please.” I yawn. “Save your tired greeting-card sentiments. Nothing you say is going to change any of this. It’s too late to rewrite your future. And honestly, the one I wrote for you the first time around was pretty damn amazing. I’m sorry you couldn’t see that.”
This is his fault: the struggling businesses no one will buy, the mess we’re in now, the fatherless childhood our children are about to know.
He opens his mouth to refute, but I’m tired. I can’t subject myself to another miserable second of his voice, and my babies are getting cold.
Without warning, I plunge the butcher knife into the tender bend of his neck, and I climb off the bed before any of the gushing blood spills onto my nightgown.
Luca tries to speak, but his voice is gurgled.
Murder weapon in hand, I filch the extra zip ties off the nightstand—displeased at the thought of Lydia tying me up in this scenario. I close the door behind me, leaving my husband to choke to death on his own blood.
Honestly, he did this to himself.
All he had to do was listen to me, respect me, trust that I had all our best interests at heart. Lydia was a nuisance, yes, but I would’ve made it all go away had he kept me in the goddamned loop and not treated me like the Golden Globe–worthy character I played.
The elfin woman hasn’t moved an inch, still lying in a heap by the stairs. I check her breath again. Unfortunately still alive. Exhaling, I yank the god-awful necklace from around her neck and wrap it twice around my wrist like a makeshift bracelet.
A last-minute souvenir, something I can pull out of a drawer someday when life is excruciatingly hard and I need a reminder of the mountain I scaled to get there.
Gripping the handrail, I make my way downstairs—to the fireplace. I strike a match from the box on the mantel and toss it into the log pile in the firebox, along with the remaining zip ties and the blood-soaked butcher knife. Tiny flames curl around a small piece of firewood, slowly wrapping the length before spreading to the one above.
I light four more matches, throw them all in, and grab the fire stoker. A minute later, I’ve arranged enough of the kindling outside the firebox to help it spread beyond the brick surround before it crawls toward a nearby children’s book, then to a blanket and a throw pillow next to the sofa.