Chapter 15
Tyler
Stella leapt from the vehicle before I’d even pulled to a stop.
I climbed out, tossing my keys to a waiting valet, and jogged to catch up with her.
“Stella.”
She ignored me and kept on walking toward her great-aunt’s absolutely monstrous brick manor house. Thank god there wasn’t anyone out here to witness this scene but the valets. From the number of cars lining the driveway, we must have been some of the last guests to arrive.
“Stella,” I said again, louder. She picked up speed, almost running.
Fucking hell, this was not the way we should be walking in, but I had no one to blame but myself.
Talking about my childhood always left me so angry, and Stella was such an easy target.
Not just because of her proximity to Richard, but because she had become something akin to the embodiment of everything wrong with the wealthy.
So I’d lashed out and gone too far. And while I wouldn’t say I was sorry for what I’d done, I wasn’t entirely immune to regret.
Why couldn’t I remember that in order to pull this off, Stella had to be willing to work with me? Hell, if she were telling the truth, that’s what she’d been trying to do tonight. And I’d gone and fucked it up because I couldn’t keep a lid on my goddamn temper.
I put on a final burst of speed and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her off her feet and hauling her toward a screen of evergreen shrubs.
“Let me go!” she yelled, thrashing.
One of the valets stepped forward.
I pointed a finger at him in warning. “A hundred bucks to each of you who minds their fucking business.”
He stepped back, miming zipping his lips shut. The others followed suit.
I shook my head and stalked into the shadows, disgusted that that had worked so easily. They didn’t know me. There was nothing to say I wasn’t about to assault the woman in my arms. And yet all it had taken was money to corrupt them.
We rounded the side of the house, where I dropped Stella to her feet, pinning her to the wall by her shoulders before she could escape. “What do you mean, you weren’t driving? You were the only one at the scene.”
Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. She shook her head. “I’m not doing this with you. I don’t owe you shit.”
“I’ll become an even bigger bastard if you don’t tell me.”
“Do it,” she spat. “What do I care?” Her lower lip trembled, and she bit it like she was trying to keep me from noticing.
My heart kicked against my ribcage. I hated this. Hated seeing her vulnerability. I’d much rather she were still screaming at me. I dropped my voice. “No. Tell me what you mean. From all the documents I read, it was clear you were driving.”
“How?” she asked, voice cracking. “My fingerprints were nowhere on the driver’s side of the car.”
“You wiped them off.”
“Then why were Maddie’s still there?”
I blinked. “That wasn’t in the court transcripts.”
“Yeah, thanks to her lawyers.”
I loosened my hold on her shoulders. Was she .
. . telling the truth? Had Stella really not been driving?
Goddamn it, I was going to ream out my private detective.
I paid him too much for him to miss shit like this.
He was supposed to dig until all the bodies were unearthed, and then keep on digging until he found the ones no one else knew about.
He’d never failed me before, but if Stella was being truthful, clearly he’d fucked up.
She must have sensed my distraction, because she managed to duck out of my grip before I realized she was moving. This time when I rushed after her, there was an older couple ambling up the driveway, so I couldn’t drag her back into the shadows.
Stella nodded toward them. “Mr. and Mrs. Ashley. Nice to see you again.”
“Miss McCormick,” the man replied.
The woman said nothing, and I shot her a censorious look before catching up with Stella, careful not to touch her this time because she looked about ready to scream.
“Don’t do anything to ruin this,” I warned, my voice low as we approached the front door.
“I won’t,” she snapped.
And then we were inside, accepting glasses of champagne from a server posted up in the entryway.
My gaze rose to the grand, spiraling staircase, which climbed several stories up to a stained-glass skylight high overhead.
The hanging art looked like it belonged under bulletproof glass, and I didn’t even want to know the cost of the ancient statue currently operating as a coat rack.
Had she truly not been driving the car? I wondered, my mind stuck in a loop.
“Stella?”
We turned, and there were her parents marching toward us with twin looks of surprise.
“I didn’t know you would be here,” her mother said.
“You invited me,” Stella said, her tone sharp.
Georgie raised her brows. “And you’re what? Here to make me regret it?”
Stella sighed. “Sorry. Long day.”
I grinned, forcing levity into my voice. “It’s my fault we’re late. Couldn’t find my cufflinks.” I lifted my wrists in demonstration.
Her father shook his head. “You should have called. I would have let you borrow a pair of mine.”
“Next time,” I said.
Georgie stepped closer to Stella and dropped her voice. “How was Runa when you visited?”
I had to work to keep myself from reacting. Runa was the name of the woman Stella—or Maddie?—hit with the car.
Beside me, Stella stiffened, very carefully keeping her eyes trained on her mother as she responded. “She was good.”
“Do we know if the surgery was successful?” Phil asked.
“It’s still too early to tell,” Stella said. “Can we please talk about something else?”
Georgie frowned. “Darling, I wish you would let us cover some of the cost.”
“Mom,” Stella bit out. “Not here.”
My head spun. What the fuck were they talking about? Was Stella somehow responsible for Runa’s medical expenses? That couldn’t be right. She’d been found not guilty on all charges.
I fought to keep the confusion off my face as I stared down at her. Was this why her inheritance was “tied up”?
Movement caught the corner of my eye. People were casting glances toward our group, or more specifically, toward my fake girlfriend.
She was easy to spot, standing out like a sore thumb because she was the only one with tattoos and piercings, the only one with such dramatic makeup—full contour, false lashes, matte purple lipstick.Her dress was another focal point: black, diaphanous, with a deep V in the front that was much more suited to a red carpet than this stuffy gathering.
Stella had to notice the extra attention, but from the way she twirled her untouched champagne glass, she appeared completely unaffected. Still, I took a step closer to her and put a hand on her lower back in a silent act of support.
Yeah, I made fun of her style choices, but there weren’t any teeth in my remarks. I did it for the sick thrill of knowing I’d gotten under her skin. But these motherfuckers were vindictive in their criticism. Even though I hated Stella, it pissed me off to see her as the target of their censure.
“Oh, thank god,” a masculine voice said. Richard. My mood plummeted straight to hell.
He stopped next to Stella’s dad. “Phil, this is the last one of these I’m coming to. Dennis is already drunk and won’t shut up about the time he came in under par on the Ocean Course in 2015.”
Phil grinned good-naturedly. “To be fair, if I pulled that off, I’d probably never shut up about it either.”
Georgie cast the pair a confused look.
“It’s the hardest golf course in the country,” Phil explained.
She rolled her eyes. “Dennis cheats at backgammon and gets winded walking up stairs, so excuse me if I have a hard time believing he didn’t shank his way through all eighteen holes.”
Richard chortled. Phil shook his head, looking both amused by and deeply in love with his wife. Beside me, Stella stood stock-still with almost no expression, as if she hadn’t even heard them.
I followed her gaze toward a familiar-looking petite woman with a button nose and big blue eyes. Her blond hair was curled into loose waves, and paired with her dewy makeup and baby-pink gown, she looked like she was trying to appear younger than she was.
Maddie.
Fuck.
“What is she doing here?” Stella croaked.
“Who?” Phil said, craning his head around. His gaze landed on the woman, and for the first time since I’d met him, his calm, affable demeanor disintegrated, replaced by something raw and angry.
I returned my focus to Maddie and her cute little innocent blond act. It was devious, really, knowing what I already did about her. Even if Stella were lying, and Maddie hadn’t been the one to hit Runa, her list of sins was extensive.
Stella swore and lurched away from our group, beelining toward a side hall. Heads rotated to follow her departure, and that was enough to draw the notice of the very woman she was attempting to avoid.
Maddie caught sight of her through the crowd, a determined expression taking over her face as she excused herself from the people she stood with and headed after Stella. Because of Stella’s angle, she wouldn’t even see Maddie coming.
“Oh, no,” Georgie said, noticing the same thing.
Phil turned to intervene, but I stopped him. “I’ve got it,” I said, following Stella, my strides elongating to catch up to her without appearing like I was rushing. I didn’t want to draw any more attention to their collision course.
Unfortunately, Maddie had no such compunction, rushing straight at Stella.
Shit. More people were noticing. Conversations were starting to falter, and heads were twisting toward the pair.
These people obviously knew about the women’s history and could sense an impending scene.
The hungry looks on their faces turned my stomach, reminded me of a flock of vultures getting ready to descend on a fresh corpse.
I abandoned my attempt to act casual and caught up to Stella with a final burst of speed.
“Go,” I said, my hand on her back to propel her forward.
We cleared the edge of the crowd and reached the mouth of a hallway.