Twenty-Six
DASHIELL OWENS’S SECOND WIFE, MY STEPMOTHER FOR ELEVEN long months, the woman who ended my parents’ marriage, stands in front of me in a dark red gown.
Lexi.
She wasn’t invited to the wedding.
She definitely isn’t supposed to be in Dash’s office.
And she absolutely should not be standing next to the open safe.
Impossibly, Lexi grins. She gives me a playful wave, like we’re downstairs during cocktail hour. Her whole vibe is enviable, honestly. Her makeup is bold, her dark hair perfectly curled. Everything from her red lip to the thigh slit in her dress to my father’s most personal documents in her hands is screaming revenge.
There is no way my dad ever gave her the combination to the safe. If he had, he would have changed it the second Lexi was legally no longer Mrs. Dashiell Owens.
“How—” I start, then whirl.
Kevin steps out from behind the door I just opened. “I told you I was a good businessman,” he says, far too smug even for Kevin Webber. “You didn’t want to work with me. She did.”
I dig my nails into my palms, furious with myself. I should have had McCoy make the ransom call in the other room—or pulled Kevin away, distracted him, done anything to ensure he didn’t overhear the combination to the safe. Clearly, he memorized it, which, yes, I did not think Kevin Webber and his 2.0 GPA paid for by Daddy was capable of.
If I’m going to save today, I chastise myself harshly, I need to stop underestimating Kevin.
What a horrific realization.
I face Lexi, deciding I’ll handle Kevin later. “Lexi. What are you doing here?” I keep my voice even, as if I have all the time in the world and not eighteen minutes now.
“Such a funny little mix-up. I think my invitation got lost in the mail,” she says sweetly. “I simply had to come and give my blessing to the happy couple.”
“In Dash’s office,” I reply flatly.
She tosses her hair over her shoulder, unfazed. “The night is long, Olivia.”
No, it’s not. I have one window of opportunity, and Lexi is in my way. I don’t know how she managed to get into this wedding without an invite or how she got past the guards. Did she call the paparazzi to clear her escape route?
There’s no denying she’s done some planning of her own.
Planning what, though? If I can answer that question, I’ll have the upper hand on her.
While the race to the bottom in my bracket for worst stepmother is quite competitive, if I had to choose a winner, it would be Lexi. Maureen is young, naive, and marrying Dash for his money. While it’s gross, it’s at least understandable. Lexi actually loved him. She’s a monster, obviously.
It offers the first hint of explanation into why she’s here, or one possible reason. While Dash may have cheated on my mom, I know part of him did love her. No part of him loved Lexi. She was face-saving for him, pure and simple. He wanted his circle to consider him the winner instead of the divorcé—wanted everyone to know he could replace the job of “wife” as easily as he could replace anyone on his payroll.
With characteristic lack of restraint, he made his absence of genuine affection for her evident. It was startling to notice him apply to someone else the deliberate disregard he’d started directing at me—the refusal to ask questions, the quickness to frustration, the looking past you or scanning his phone when you were speaking. For Dash Owens, it was a marriage of inconvenience. It lasted eleven months.
Those eleven months were… war.
I didn’t care how my dad regarded Lexi. I was hurt, and I was furious. I did everything in my power to make her uncomfortable in the house she stole from me and my mom. I undermined her at every dinner, spoke ill of her whenever I could. Dash never once reprimanded me. Which is how I know Lexi was no one to him.
The split was almost as acrimonious as my parents’. Lexi did not go quietly. One time I came over for dinner to find she had put one of my dad’s suits in the oven, destroying the suit, almost starting a fire, and ruining the twenty-thousand-dollar Wolf French Top. If I didn’t hate her, I would admire the vigor of her vengefulness.
I step forward, summoning some self-assured swagger. “What do you want, Lexi?” I ask. “Come to steal the marriage license so my dad can’t officially replace you? What sad and pathetic plan have you gotten Kevin”—I glance at her annoying accomplice out of the corner of my eye—“to help you carry out?”
Lexi’s mouth flattens.
I prepare myself. I haven’t spoken to Lexi in a year. She has no reason to meet me with charity or cooperation. Whatever she’s up to, I’m probably inconveniencing her as much as she is me.
“We could have been friends,” she says instead, her eyes wistful. “Livy and Lexi. Dash’s girls.”
I gag. Lexi doesn’t notice, or pretends she doesn’t, occupied with her domestic fantasy.
“No one calls me Livy,” I inform her. “And no, we couldn’t have been friends. You literally helped my dad cheat on my mom. The only thing we have in common is we both used to live here.”
Warning fire flashes in Lexi’s expression.
“Well,” she says sharply, “and we both want something in this room.”
The change in the register of the conversation is palpable. We’re not running into each other. We’re facing off. I hold my ex-stepmother’s gaze until I hear Tom shift on his feet. The meaning in his movement is clear. Our window is closing.
The safe isn’t. It waits, inviting me like no pretty foil on cardstock ever could.
So I gamble. High risk, high reward.
I walk past Lexi to the open safe, my heels clicking on the hardwood. “Excuse me,” I dare to say.
Lexi’s eyebrows rise. She watches me in undisguised curiosity.
I’m wrestling with curiosity of my own. “How were you going to get into the safe without Kevin?” I ask casually. It’s just… extracting the combination to my very own father’s safe cost me months of planning. If Lexi had her own means of infiltrating the lock—well, I consider the point one of professional interest.
“I figured I would be able to guess the combination,” she replies innocently, evidently delighted with her own confidence. “I know every important date in Dash’s life. All his lucky numbers. I wasn’t sure I could crack it in the time it took him to marry that girl outside, but I knew I had a chance. Still”—she smiles—“it was fortuitous when I found this young man lurking downstairs. Waiting for you, he said.”
I purse my lips while I peruse the safe. Lexi probably didn’t know Dash’s phone would receive a notification if the safe was opened. In dousing Quinn, I unintentionally helped Lexi.
Great.
Fending off frustration, I focus on my search. In seventeen years, I’ve never observed the contents of my father’s safe up close. It’s full of obvious valuables—watches of ludicrous size with interchangeable European names, jewelry dripping with gems, crystal figurines. Handcuffs, which is weird. Heirloom-looking pieces whose discoloration doesn’t detract from the intricacy of their old craftsmanship.
Realistically, I could probably smuggle one out in my clutch and sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I’m not here for hundreds of thousands, though.
Under the luxury items, I find something more promising—paperwork. Physical stock certificates of shares in the Owens media companies, trust documentation with pages initialed in unassuming pen ink. I rearrange the pile, sifting around, searching for what I need.
It isn’t here.
“I believe you’re looking for this,” Lexi says.
I round on her, dread forming in my stomach. She pulls a folded piece of paper from her dress.
“The passcodes to his offshore accounts, right?” Lexi preempts me. “I know you and your mom have stumbled upon rough times. Medical debt, not to mention single parenting with no résumé. That little two-bedroom, one-bathroom must be cramped.”
Her every pretense of friendliness for her former stepdaughter has vanished, spiked in the heart under her stilettos.
I keep my face impassive, straightening up. Inside, I’m the opposite. I’m flat-out panicking.
“I’d be happy to give it to you, Livy,” Lexi drawls, “if you do something for me first.”