Final Cost (The Winter Trilogy #3)

20. Tamsyn

20

Tamsyn

All the color leaches from Lucien’s face as he swiftly scans the scene, his expression cycling through disbelief, sudden comprehension and veiled alarm. Anger comes last. His attention lingers on Winwood, the gun and the distance between me and each of them. Then he flashes a warning look at me— Do nothing; let me handle this— and reins in his temper as he faces Daniel. I see the effort it takes for Lucien to control his rage in the straining cords of his neck as he swallows hard and in the muscle that pulses in his temple.

“What’s going on here, Daniel?” he says, his voice perfectly calm. Perfectly reasonable.

“We’re having a discussion, Lucien.” Daniel matches his tone, but there’s a hint of a nasty smile hovering around his mouth. Of triumph. “We’re clearing a few things up. Evidently, Winwood reappeared with some theories that he was happy to share with Tamsyn. I happened to overhear the tail end of their theories. Now here we are.”

“Okay,” Lucien says. “What happened to Winwood? You skipped over that part.”

Daniel shoots a disinterested glance at Winwood. “I decided it was best if I neutralized Winwood before he caused me any more problems. He’s not the kind of guy you want coming after you.”

“Indeed,” says Lucien. “You seem like a man with a lot on your mind. I’m back now. Why don’t we let Tamsyn go and you and I can talk and clear things up.”

A brief sneer from Daniel. “This is the problem with you, Lucien. You think you’re the Lord of the Universe, but you’re not. There is no we . You’re not in charge of the situation. I am. Let’s get that straight.”

“Fine,” Lucien says with an easy shrug. “Why don’t you let Tamsyn go.” He pauses. “Please.”

A hearty laugh from Daniel. “Full marks for manners. But Tamsyn’s not going anywhere. I have the feeling you’ll be much more cooperative while she’s in the room. No one quite holds your attention like Tamsyn does, do they? Not even your late wife.”

Lucien’s mouth twists. I get the feeling he’s waging another epic battle with his temper. “You want to talk? Let’s talk. Why don’t you bring me up to speed?”

Daniel looks at me. There’s no humanity in his expression. He’s at absolute zero. The realization makes my stomach clench with fear. “Why don’t you start, Tamsyn. Tell Lucien why Winwood showed up tonight. I wasn’t here for that part.”

I take a deep breath, but my voice still shakes. “Winwood admitted to having sex with Ravenna the night you kicked her out of Ackerley. He’d planned to review the security tapes to see what they revealed about her activities, then hand them over to the police. But when he realized the tapes had been doctored, he stole them and disappeared because he didn’t want to take the fall for murdering Ravenna. He’s been hiding in a neighbor’s house nearby while he recovered the lost footage.” I pause, shooting a wary glance at Daniel. I don’t want to piss him off with this recitation. He’s clearly capable of things I never imagined. But he’s watching me with all the patience in the world. So I continue. “The missing footage showed that Daniel was the one who let Ravenna onto the estate the night of the fire. And it also showed them kissing.”

A bark of derisive laughter from Lucien. “I see.”

“When I saw the footage of Daniel’s car, I realized that I’d seen a car like it before,” I continue. “I saw it on the footage of the gas station from you driving near the beach, the night Ravenna was killed. Daniel’s car also drove in that direction.”

Lucien’s shocked to gaze swings back to Daniel, who raises his shoulders in a what can you do shrug. Then Lucien looks back at me. “Got it. Anything else?”

“Yes. I found a picture of Ravenna with one of her dresses upstairs. It was from three years ago. Daniel was in the background looking at her as if he wanted to swallow her whole.” Some wicked impulse prompts me to poke the bear. Just a little. “But it didn’t seem like Ravenna noticed him at all.”

Daniel’s mouth spasms. “There you go, Lucien. You’re up to speed.”

Lucien stares at him long and hard, making no attempt to hide his dawning horror. “Is this true?”

Daniel widens his stance, tapping the gun against his thigh, his finger on the trigger. “That I loved your wife? Yes.”

A wave of revulsion knocks the shock off Lucien’s expression. “Since when?”

“Since the second I saw her when you brought her home to Ackerley,” Daniel replies, and he doesn’t say it so much as he hurls it.

Lucien nods as though he knew it all along. I get the feeling a lot of puzzle pieces are dropping into place for him. I know they are for me. “So you were, what? Having an affair with her? My whole marriage?”

Daniel’s expression sours. “No. We were never intimate.”

“Why not?” Lucien says, scoffing. “She fucked everyone else.”

I shoot Lucien a warning look. Neither one of us should be taunting Daniel now. No matter how tempting it is. We need to say or do anything we can to stay alive. But neither man is looking at me. They’re locked in on each other with mutual malice.

“I was her best friend,” Daniel says with the kind of pride you’d expect him to use if the title was Global Superhero or Supreme Emperor of the Universe. “Her closest confidant. I was her person. She told me that. All the time. She didn’t want to take the chance of ruining our relationship by making it sexual.”

A flash of amusement from Lucien. He quickly represses it, to my great relief. “That must’ve been tough. With you loving her so much and all.”

Daniel nods. He seems too choked up to speak. And I may be wrong, but I think I see a shimmer of tears in his bright blue eyes.

“So… You, what? Helped her fake her own death?” Lucien says.

Daniel clears his throat. Shrugs. “Why not? It wasn’t hard to capsize the boat. I helped her get a fake passport. She already had money offshore. It was easy.”

“Except the part about me and the police going nuts trying to find her,” Lucien says. “Why did she do it? What was her game plan?”

Scathing look from Daniel. “To get the fuck away from you. What else?”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Lucien says. “I offered her a fortune to agree to a divorce. She could have gotten the fuck away from me all she wanted.”

A shout of bitter laughter from Daniel. “This is why you never deserved her. Because you never understood her. Not like I did. You didn’t love her for who she was. I did.”

One of Lucien’s brows goes up. “Okay. I’ll bite. What am I not getting?”

“Ravenna didn’t just want to get away from you,” Daniel says, his voice now thick with what sounds like righteous anger. “She wanted to stick it to you. To win . On her terms. She wanted to let you know that you may own the earth, but you didn’t own her. And you don’t own me.”

“I see,” Lucien says, and he seems sad now. “ You thought I owned you. I thought we were friends.”

“ Friends?” Daniel’s voice booms through the room. “How can you be friends with someone you regard as your inferior?”

Lucien looks stung. “ Inferior ? We grew up together. You, me and Roman. We did everything together —”

“No. You gave me handouts. And you never let me forget it.”

“Handouts?” Lucien says.

“Do you think I wanted to be reminded that you lived in the big house and I lived in the caretaker’s cottage? You think I wanted to wear your old clothes and ride your horse and swim in your pool? You think I wanted to go to the local public school when you and Roman went off to boarding school? Or maybe you think it was cool for me to work my ass off and buy my own first car at the age of 20 when your father gave you and Roman BMWs the second you turned sixteen.”

An incoherent sound of outrage from Lucien. “You were part of the family !”

Daniel sneers and lashes out, raising the pistol and connecting it with Lucien’s jaw hard enough to make Lucien’s head whip around and a shot ring out. The sound is nerve shredding, like cannon fire. Plaster explodes from the far wall. Lucien shouts with pain. I shriek, involuntarily reaching for him before a warning look from Daniel freezes me in my spot.

“Never say that again!” Daniel roars, wild-eyed now. Worse, his voice is guttural and chilling, the kind of thing that belongs in a movie about demonic possession.” “Do you understand me?”

Lucien spits blood and swivels his lower jaw back and forth, probably making sure it’s still attached to his body. Then, unbelievably, he checks to make sure I’m okay. How he’s still standing after a blow like that, I’ll never know. I nod. Try to smile. Then he turns to Daniel. “I understand. No need to get excited.”

Daniel’s inner gargoyle and burgeoning insanity slowly retreat until his eyes merely gleam with malice rather than flashing with it. He checks his collar with his free hand. Tugs the bottom of his suit jacket to straighten it out. Clears his throat and bows his head. “Apologies for my bad manners,” he says, and his voice is gruff but otherwise normal again. “Your mother would not appreciate the damage to her wall.”

Lucien starts to smile, then grimaces from the pain and raises a hand to his face. “No worries. It’s been that kind of day.”

“I was not part of the Winter family,” Daniel says, enunciating his words with great care.“That’s the kind of nonsense the rich tell each other to feel better about themselves. They talk about how well they treat their staff members while they’re always keeping a foot on their necks.”

In a night full of shocking events, this unleashed violence and vitriol from Daniel may be the worst of all. And if it hits me this hard, I’m sure it’s gotta be killing Lucien.

“I see,” Lucien says quietly, looking pale around the livid red mark now blossoming over half his face. “What should I have done for you that I didn’t do, pray tell?”

“You could let me have Ravenna,” Daniel says.

Lucien sadly shakes his head. “Ravenna was her own person. You don’t know anything about her if you don’t know that. She never did anything in her life that she didn’t want to do. If she didn’t want you…”

“You could have taken better care of her.” Daniel’s voice grows steadily louder. “You could have recognized how special she was. You didn’t treat her like a queen. I would have. If she’d given me the chance.”

“You could’ve tried,” Lucien says, shrugging. “But she was a bottomless pit. Nothing was ever enough. I doubt you would have been. But we’re getting off track. I assume you’re the one who contacted her in New Zealand and told her that I was with Tamsyn? And the two of you decided it was a good time for her resurrection?”

Daniel pauses. “Yes.”

“And you ‘found’ her down on the beach. After picking up from the airport, I assume,” Lucien says.

“Yes.”

“Because if I’d found someone else to be with, that was the perfect time for her to come back and stick it to me again, right?”

“Yes.”

I want to know something,” I say. I stood quietly for as long as I could, but now I have a serious question. “She turned up with a concussion. How did she get that?”

Daniel stares at me. “She did it to herself.”

“What?” Lucien and I both say.

“She wanted me to do it,” Daniel says. “I refused. I wasn’t going to hurt her. So she found a rock. Hit herself on the head. The rest is history.”

Lucien and I exchange an astonished look. If we ever needed additional evidence of how psychopathic Ravenna was, this is surely it.

“I still don’t get it,” Lucien says. “What was her game plan?”

Bitter laugh from Daniel. “Funny you should ask. Ravenna’s game plans were like the weather. You get something else every couple of days or so. With you ? She wanted to win. To ruin you however she could. To make sure you didn’t live happily ever after with some other woman. With me ? She pretended that her game plan was to come back and finally get a divorce. Get as much money from you as possible. So that she and I could finally be together.”

Lucien can’t hold back a startled laugh. “You believed that? I’m sure she wanted to ruin me if all else failed. But she was scheming hard to get back with me the whole time she was here.”

Daniel’s ugly smile stretches. “That became evident.”

“So she strung you along,” Lucien says. “I’m not surprised. She was good at that. Until…?”

Daniel’s expression closes off. His eyes go flat again. Dead. It’s like someone siphoned a man’s soul from his body. “Until the night I met her on the beach to confront her about setting the fire.”

“Wait,” Lucien says. “Where did she go when she disappeared after the fire and the police were looking for her?”

“She stayed in the house my grandmother left me when she died last year. It’s about ten minutes away,” Daniel says. “We used burner phones.”

Lucien seems startled. “I didn’t know you had a grandmother nearby. Or that she’d died.”

Daniel shoots him a scathing look. “So much for me being like family, eh?”

Lucien’s face floods with color.

“Shall I continue?” Daniel says. “I had no idea Ravenna was going to try to kill Tamsyn when I let her back onto the estate. I thought she just wanted to talk to you. Anyway, that night on the beach, I pressed her about when she and I were finally going to be together.”

“And…?” Lucien prompts.

“And she laughed at me. Laughed .”

Daniel’s face crumples. He suddenly seems so bewildered and looks so heartsick. Ravenna took his mind and well and truly fucked it. Under other circumstances, I’d probably feel sorry for this man who wasted years of his life worshiping a woman who turned out to be a monster. But now I find myself experiencing a perverse feeling of satisfaction. This ungrateful SOB thought he could smile in Lucien’s face, stab him in the back by running off with his wife and live happily ever after? Only to realize, far too late, that Ravenna made a fool of him? Good . It’s a pleasure to see the scales fall from his eyes. This is exactly what he deserves.

“What happened then?” Lucien says.

Daniel shakes his head, his unfocused gaze resting on the floor as he absently taps the pistol against his thigh. “She told me she’d fucked Winwood. And that I was the last man on earth she’d ever have sex with. Me .” He uses the gun to tap his chest, looking more and more unhinged. “After she told me I was the best friend she’d ever had. After she promised we’d be together .”

Lucien reaches out, his attention centered on the gun. “Daniel. Give me the gun.”

“She told me I disgusted her,” Daniel says. “She said she screamed and came over and over again when Winwood fucked her. She said the two of them laughed at me.” Daniel can barely get the words out. “She. Broke. My. Heart.”

“That sounds like Ravenna,” Lucien says. “So that’s why you killed her.”

Daniel frowns, looking startled by the suggestion. “I never wanted to hurt her.”

“But you did.” Lucien’s voice is quiet but firm. “You picked up a rock and bashed her on the back of the head. Didn’t you, Daniel?”

Daniel shakes his head, using both his free hand and his gun hand to press the sides of his head. “She was still laughing when she turned her back on me and walked away. She said she was going to use her fake passport and go to Bali. She said she hoped she never laid eyes on me again.”

“So you killed her,” Lucien says.

“I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to stop her laughing. I couldn’t stand the sound.” Daniel lowers his hands and stares down at them, looking bewildered. “But then there was blood. A lot of blood.”

“Where?” Lucien asks sharply.

“On my hands.” Daniel blinks several times, nostrils flaring. “On a rock.”

“And Ravenna…?” Lucien says.

“She was …she was face down on the stand.” Daniel now has his fingers flexed as though he’s holding the rock in question. “And her head was smashed in somehow.”

Lucien scoffs. “Not somehow . It was smashed in because you killed her.”

A chilling half smile from Daniel. “It was smashed in because she deserved it. She won’t laugh at me again.” His satisfaction slowly fades away to bleak nothingness. “It’s her own fault. She pushed me too far. She knew how much I loved her.”

I stand there watching this whole exchange, frozen with revulsion. I’d thought I’d learned all about the face of madness the night Lucien kicked Ravenna out and she glared at me with evil intent behind those livid eyes. But this . It’s another master class on insanity.

“Thank you for telling us,” Lucien says. “Now you’ve got to tell the police. We’ve got to straighten this out.”

Daniel’s head snaps up, and there’s nothing teary or heartbroken about his gaze now as he levels it on Lucien. Just pure hatred. “Why would I do that? So you can win again? So you can live happily ever after with your little empty doll and your billions while I rot in prison for the rest of my life?”

“Because it’s the truth. Because the police will figure it out eventually.”

“Will they?” Daniel says, his attention shifting to me. It wasn’t a thrill to hear him call me a pretty little empty doll, but it was much better than the raw malevolence in his narrowed gaze now. “You should have stayed away, little doll. I warned you that it wasn’t safe here. Didn’t I?”

“Leave her alone, Daniel.” Lucien’s voice sounds rougher and less controlled now as he edges closer to me. “Deal with me . I’m the one you have a problem with. Not Tamsyn.”

Daniel laughs, the sound harsh and ugly. “Oh, I have a problem with you, Tamsyn, and Winwood. I have enough problems to go around. More than enough. My biggest problem is deciding which of you I want to kill first.”

“You don’t need to kill anyone, Daniel.” I try to smile. Try to keep my voice audible. Try to make it sound as though he’s got a way out when we all know he doesn’t. “You’ll only make things worse for yourself if you hurt anyone else when you don’t need to. And Lucien will let you go, won’t you, Lucien? You can take one of his cars and go.”

“Absolutely,” Lucien says, still easing closer to me.

Another laugh from Daniel. It sounds like a bark of hysteria. “Go where?” He gesticulates with the gun. “Do what? With what money?

“I’m happy to give you money, Daniel,” Lucien says. “Whatever you need.”

“I need Ravenna back. But since your money can’t do that for me, I need to put myself out of this misery,” Daniel says, his face spasming as he taps the barrel to his temple.

Oh, God. I exchange a swift look with Lucien, heart stopping and blood running cold.

“Slow down,” Lucien says. “We can figure this out. No one else needs to get hurt.”

Daniel stares at him for the longest several beats of my life. “I disagree,” he says, now pointing the pistol at Lucien, who raises his hands.

“No!” I scream. I step sideways, determined to shield Lucien.

“Stupid doll,” Daniel says, swinging the gun around and aiming it directly at my torso. “I’m happy to take care of you first.”

I don’t know what happens next. There’s a flurry of movement. A shout. A shot. A grunt of pain. All of it happens together. And then I’m landing on my back on the floor with a hard thud, a wild-eyed Lucien on top of me. I hit my head hard, so I’m a little dazed as Lucien withdraws. I rub my eyes and try to sit up when a war cry rings out. I get my eyes focused enough to see Lucien spring from his crouch next to me just as Daniel raises the gun again.

“No!” I yell again as another shot rings out.

Lucien connects with Daniel, catching him around the waist and knocking him to the floor. Daniel tries to raise the gun again, but Lucien is too quick for him, catching his wrist and repeatedly slamming his hand against the floor, forcing Daniel to drop the gun. By now, Lucien has straddled him and lets loose with a flurry of punches to his face. Once again, Daniel is too slow and can’t get his hands up fast enough. Lucien lands blow after blow in an endless volley of hits that would put vintage Iron Mike Tyson to shame.

“Don’t you touch her,” Lucien bellows between blows. “Don’t you ever fucking touch her!”

I recover enough of my wits to lever up to all fours and scramble for the loose gun. Meanwhile, there’s other activity in the room.

“Lucien.” The craggy new voice startles me. I glance around and discover, to my joyous relief, Winwood conscious and on his feet, staggering over to Lucien and trying to intervene.

But Lucien isn’t done. “Don’t you ever touch her!”

“Lucien.” Winwood catches Lucien around the waist and hauls him to his feet and off Daniel, whose pulverized face now resembles several pounds of raw hamburger. “Stop.”

“Here’s the gun,” I say, hastily standing and passing it to Lucien, who seems to be coming out of his murderous rage.

But there’s no need for the gun now. Daniel groans and rolls onto his side, but he’s clearly down for the count. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.

“You’re alive,” I say to Winwood, who’s gingerly rubbing the back of his head.

“Barely,” Winwood says with a fleeting smile.

“You okay?” Lucien sets the gun on his desk and reaches for me, his hands rough and urgent as he grabs me by the arm and pulls me in for a thorough once over. “He didn’t hurt you? You’re not shot?”

“No,” I say, laughing with relief. “I banged my head, but I’m okay.”

A smile of blinding joy from Lucien. “Good,” he says, pulling me in for a hard kiss.

“Are you okay?” I say, when he lets me up for air.

That’s when Lucien starts to look funny. His face, I notice with dawning horror, is the stark white of bleached hospital sheets. He frowns, looking bewildered. “I don’t know.”

Then he sinks to the floor with the dead weight of a two hundred pound bag of grain, slipping right through my outstretched arms as I watch him with utter astonishment.

“Lucien!” I scream, dropping to my knees on one side of him while Winwood drops on his other side. I go straight into nurse mode, noting his glazed gaze fixed on the ceiling and — oh, God — the widening circle of blood ruining the starched perfection of his white dress shirt low on his abdomen.

“What is it?” Lucien says, his voice thready now.

“You got shot,” I say, trying to sound upbeat about it. “Can you roll to the side for me? I need to see the back. Winwood, call 911. Now . Wait, no. Toss me that throw from the sofa first. Thanks.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Winwood says, hurrying off.

Lucien manages to roll on his side, and I do a quick assessment, noting the small exit wound in back.

“Is it bad?” Lucien asks.

“Nope.” I settle him on his back again and throw the blanket over his wound, then lean into it, pressing hard with my palms to slow down the bleeding. He groans with pain. “It’s through and through. You’ll be just fine. I’ve seen worse.”

“I don’t know,” he says, sounding loopy now, his eyes rolling back. “It feels pretty bad to me.”

That gets a smile out of me. “I’m sure it does,” I say, kissing his forehead. “Sorry about that. But don’t you dare pass out on me.”

“Why not?” he says, his voice now fainter than ever.

“Remember when you asked me to marry you?”

He manages to raise his heavy lids. “Yeah?”

“The answer is yes . And don’t give me any bullshit about withdrawing the question.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, and we share a fleeting smile before his eyes roll closed again. “Pocket.”

“What?” I say.

“The ring. In my pocket.”

“You’re still carrying that around?”

“Put it on. My mother’s diamond studs are in there, too,” he says, as commanding as ever as he passes out.