Chapter 43
EVIE
“Ow, dammit!” Spike heels and crunchy gravel are a recipe for a rolled ankle or a skinned knee, I decide, as I clutch the edge of a stone urn for the second time in as many minutes. As my phone begins to ring, I slip it out from my purse, half expecting it to be Oliver wondering where I am.
“Hello.” The line crackles, so I repeat my greeting. “Hello?”
“It’s him!” The words burst down the line. “I told you it was him—he did this to me.”
“Nora? Are you okay?” The line hisses ominously again. I really wish she’d get a better phone. I might have to buy her one and disguise it as my old one. “Hello?”
“I said it’s him!” Her voice is so shrill, I pull the phone away from my ear with a wince. “I told you he was up to no good, sneaking around the place, taking pictures.”
My heart sinks, my will along with it. “We’ve been over this, Nora.” After the fence went up, I explained that I had a friend looking into things. I told her not to worry, and I meant it, because I’ll fight tooth and nail for her. “Oliver doesn’t own the company who put that fence up.” The company name didn’t register with Fin as familiar. Besides, Oliver wouldn’t do that. I hope. Things have just been busy, and that’s why I hadn’t mentioned it to him. “We’ll know who’s responsible soon.”
“I know it’s him, and whatever that fifty grand was for, I hope it was worth it.”
She got the money? Strange that he never mentioned it, that he didn’t wait until the sale was complete. But I guess there’s no point in denying it now.
“Nora, please. Listen to yourself. It was a gift, not a conspiracy.” Wouldn’t I have gotten the fifty grand in that case? Maybe the worry of the money has pushed her over the edge. Maybe I should call Yara.
“I don’t want his filthy money!”
“Then take that up with him,” I say, stalling. She deserves it, and I’d do it again—I’d do it for me, and I’d do it for her. I’d do it for Oliver. Haven’t we all benefited from those strange beginnings?
“Talk to him when he’s trying to get me shut down? Are you having a fucking laugh?”
I am so very far from laughing. I’m more like exhausted with this.
“You’re not getting closed down.” My tone is sunnier than I feel. “Like I said, I’ve got a friend looking into it.”
“Yeah, nice friends you’ve got,” she jeers. “Not sure I’d accept their help.”
This is getting ridiculous. “Listen, Nora, I haven’t got long. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“Are your ears painted on? We can’t talk about this tomorrow because everything is not all right. That is what I’m trying to tell you. That ... that man . Strutting around like the cock of the walk, well he can take a running jump if he thinks he’s kicking me and my dogs out of this place. I’ll do for him! You see if I don’t.”
“Then who’ll look after the sanctuary?” I ask evenly, wondering if she’s in the middle of a mental break. “Let me call Yara, sweetie. I can’t come around right now.” She sounds so distressed, maybe I can swing by later, when we’re done here. Leave early, maybe?
“You can’t come ’round here no more,” she says, the words spilling with force. “Not when you’re with the enemy.”
This seems worse than I thought. Should I call an ambulance?
“You remember Duggan?” she demands.
“The skinny kid with the bad skin?” He’d recently been sent to help as part of a community service order or something.
“That’s him. He hacked the school’s computer, that’s why they sent him here. I saw him yesterday, told him about the fences. He said he’d help me look into it.”
“Nora, that kid is fourteen. Please don’t say you encouraged him to break the law.”
“You’re not listening. He said he’d help, and he did.” The accusation stings. “And what he’s found out doesn’t surprise me one bit because that ... that bastard you’re with is at the end of the daisy chain of fucking companies, and he’s trying to steal this place from under my feet!”
“Nora, that’s not true.” It can’t be.
“I’ll go to the council—the newspapers. You see if I don’t! I’ll tell them about the man who gave me fifty grand for God knows what, and I’ll tell them that you brought him ’ere.”
I know she’s scared, but this is really too much.
“That is unfair, Nora. I’ve only ever helped you. Oliver isn’t behind this.” He can’t be. Can he? Not after everything we’ve been through.
“I knew she wouldn’t believe me.” Nora’s words turn distant, like she’s moved her mouth from the phone to speak to someone else.
“Is Duggan there with you?”
“He is,” she retorts pointedly.
I take a deep, calming breath and push away her angry vibe. “Let me speak to him.”
“No, I won’t. But he says he’ll send you a screen thingy with the proof.”
“Okay, whatever.” This is ridiculous. I’m tired, and I don’t want to believe this, yet there’s a tiny part of me that says I’ve been in this place before. Like the flicker of a flame, I know it’s there. That I should heed it. But I know it might hurt.
“Then you’ll see,” Nora states with satisfaction.
“Yeah, I guess I will.”
As an autumnal breeze picks up, I shiver and rub my arms. The sensible thing would be to move indoors, but I refuse to take this ... whatever inside the house. I need to know what she’s talking about before I see Oliver, because I don’t have what you might call a workable poker face. I do a pretty good line in Drop dead and an excellent Go fuck yourself when I’m feeling it. But what I’m feeling right now is uneasiness.
I stare at my phone again, swiping my thumb across the screen. If Nora’s little juvie pal has been lying to her, I will, in her words, do for him—I’ll throw him to the macaques and let them teach him some fucking manners!
His text doesn’t arrive after five minutes, so I make the decision to take my gooseflesh inside and call her back, when the weight of a jacket suddenly drops onto my shoulders.
I’m far from thrilled.
“Give me a break,” I mutter, recognizing the scent of infidelity. It could easily be the name of his cologne.
“I remember the first time I slid my jacket onto your shoulders,” Mitchell says. “Remember? We were coming back from—”
“What do you want, Mitchell?” Memory lane isn’t a place I’m visiting with him.
“You weren’t always so prickly.” His words are softer than his expression.
“Wish I could say the same for you,” I mutter, yanking at the fabric and thrusting his jacket back at him. “Wait. Sorry. I just confused prickly with prick .”
“Evie.” He shakes his head slowly, as though I’ve said something funny. His smile used to make me feel noticed. Now it makes me feel nauseous.
“Go away, Mitchell. I have nothing nice to say to you.” Understatement of the year. I’d rather wrestle a tiger with catnip tied to my nipples than have any kind of discourse with him.
He catches my arm as I make to brush past him. I flinch, hating that tiny tell.
“Evie, please.”
“Let go of me,” I grate out, relieved when his hand retracts.
“I’m sorry about last time, at the palace. I’d been drinking, and I was just so angry. I’m not proud of what I said or did.”
I blink, momentarily stunned. This isn’t the direction I was expecting him to take, not that I accept his apology. He can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.
“I should’ve told you about the business, about the building being mine.”
I huff an unhappy laugh at where he chooses to start.
“I just wanted to give you the chance to like me for me.” His words fall quickly, like a train speeding up. “But then you said all that shit about wealth, so, well, I didn’t say.”
What the hell? “As if that’s a valid excuse, or even the most hurtful thing you’ve done.”
“No, but it’s where it all started.”
“Yeah, your line of fuckups is pretty long.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t treat you the way you deserved. I really loved—”
“No.” I point my finger in his face, and it takes everything within me not to poke it right in his eye. “I don’t want your apology. We were getting married, Mitch! Making promises, all the while you were lying, screwing women behind my back.”
“But you weren’t living in London when it started.”
I actually laugh. “Are you for real?”
“That didn’t come out the way I meant it to.”
“No shit. Maybe you should’ve written it down. It might’ve helped to stick to a script.”
“What?”
“This is all such bullshit. But I really don’t care anymore.” All things considered, I think I’m being quite restrained. I haven’t once mentioned peanut butter, his EpiPen, or the wooden onesie I sometimes dream of putting him in. “What you did was lowest of the low.”
“No, not the lowest.” The words are expelled on a burst of ugly laughter. “Not by a fucking mile. I know I was wrong. I screwed up—didn’t tell you the truth.”
“Stop. I don’t care!”
“Evie, fucking Deubel?” He shoves his hand violently through his hair. “I’m nowhere near as bad as him .”
What is it with this pair?
“I’m leaving.” Done with this. I push past him—properly this time, hating how my bare shoulder brushes against him.
“What did he tell you about me and Lucy?”
“Urgh.” With a harsh shake of my head, I keep moving. It always comes back to frickin’ Lucy!
“But I bet he didn’t tell you his part—I know he didn’t say who she was.”
Every atom of my being revolts at his words. I know I should push on, that no good can come from hearing this, yet my steps begin to slow, like I can’t help myself.
“Spit it out,” I demand, canting my head over my shoulder. “What are you trying to tell me? Did she die?” Could this be why Oliver is so cut up?
In the darkness, Mitchell shakes his head. “No, she didn’t. Not that she didn’t try.”
“How do you try to die?” I throw my arm out in a careless gesture as I turn, my brain catching up a split second too late. “You’re full of shit,” I say, my blood turning icy cold as I pivot away.
“I fucked her, and I shouldn’t have. I lied to her. Pretended I was into her more than I was. I got her to tell me about his business, then I screwed him over, snatched the land out from under him. It was just business.”
“Unbelievable,” I whisper, horrified anew. I almost married this man.
“I was wrong, and I own up to that, but don’t tell me he’s done the same. I don’t know how he can sleep at night.”
“Go away, Mitch,” I yell, but the gravel behind me crunches anyway.
“He told her he’d never forgive her.” His hand grips my shoulder, and he spins me to face him. “He said things he couldn’t take back. I made her cry, but his rejection made her want to die.”
But that’s not how a mental break works. Besides: “You can’t even admit your own part in it.”
“Because it wasn’t my fault!”
I blink, disbelief echoing through me. Whatever Oliver did, maybe he pegged Mitch right. Maybe he is a narcissist.
“I wasn’t meant to look out for her—she’s not my fucking sister.”
Like a clunk of gears, everything suddenly drops into place. Lucy wasn’t just his employee. “My God. His sister? No wonder he hates you.”
“Not as much as he hates himself. I might’ve fucked her, but he was the one who fucked her over.”
I turn away. I’m not cold anymore. I’m numb but for the swirl of sickness in my belly. Why didn’t Oliver tell me?
“He disowned his own sister,” he calls after me, his poison continuing to pour out. “Sent her packing because she made a mistake. Because she had a relationship with me behind his back.”
I spin around to face him. “His back? What about mine?” A slight overlap, so Mitch had said last time. But this right here is a different tack, so what does he hope to achieve this time around? Make me run from Oliver like I ran from him? A huff leaves my throat. This isn’t the same. It hurts that Oliver didn’t tell me—that maybe he felt he couldn’t trust me at one point. Maybe it hurts him to remember. Whatever the reason, we’ll talk it over. Because his heart chooses mine.
“It just sort of happened.”
My laughter rings through the night air. “Give me a break. You planned it. Just like you planned to use me. You strung us both along—her for some land, me for this fucking house!” I shout, glancing up at the ancient stone. This place, I bet it’s witnessed some scenes over its long years, but nothing as bizarre as this.
“Yeah, for this house—the one you’re lying for right now. Why, Evie? Why him?”
“Make up your mind. Last time, you accused me of sleeping with him while planning our marriage. Which is it, huh?”
“I don’t fucking know!” he yells. “I can’t make it out, but what I do know is I’m not the one who drove his sister to try to kill herself.”
“Nothing is ever your fault, is it?”
“It’s not like I gave her the pills!”
As I reach the door, I push my way inside the grand hall, not caring about the crush of people or whether Mitchell follows me.
How can he not see his part in this? He treated me like he treated Lucy. When I turned to Oliver on our wedding day, he helped me when he could’ve kicked me out of the car! I pushed at the hotel elevator when he would have left me alone.
He must’ve thought I deserved it.
I’m no longer jealous of Lucy. It’s no comfort when I feel hurt, when I see this for what it is. What happened with his sister must’ve crushed him, whether he sent her away or not. But people who try to end their own lives aren’t in their right state of mind—it’s called a crisis for a reason. Oliver isn’t to blame. Except maybe in his own mind. I have to find him—tell him I know. That I understand, and that it changes nothing.
My phone vibrates, and I look down, realizing it’s still in my hand. The number is unfamiliar but brings my mind back to Nora. My stomach coils tightly as I make my way to the side of the room to open it. I thought the last few minutes were a lot to take in, to process, but this makes my head hurt . Makes my heart feel chilled. Screenshot after screenshot, some with notes scrawled in a childish hand, others with roughly drawn arrows and highlighted text.
As the party swirls on around me, as people drink, and eat, and laugh, I stare at my phone until I’m sure of what I’m seeing. A web of offshore holding companies with assets valued at over three hundred million, largely in real estate, ultimately own Atterir Limited. The same company who fenced off Nora’s place. From reams of documents, with lawyers, accountants, and corporate entities named, to what looks like information pulled from a data leak, I find the answer I most dread. The ultimate owner’s name.
No. No.
This isn’t the man my heart softened for.