Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Simon moves quickly, dragging me up the stairs and down the hall, checking over his shoulder every few seconds.
Though he doesn’t know what happened, he senses it wasn’t good. He understands what I can’t bring myself to tell him—we’re not safe here. Not around these people. Not ever again.
There will come a moment when he’ll have to choose, and I can only hope he’ll choose me.
Pierce’s words echo in my ears: Family first before everything else.
But I am Simon’s family now. He’ll choose me. I know he will.
His grip is too tight—almost painful—but I cling to it with all my might without complaint. He’s all I have left in this house. He will be the one to decide if I make it out.
We’re halfway to our bedroom when voices rise from the staircase.
My chest seizes.
Preston. Pierce.
Rachelle.
“Simon, wait!”
“Hey, hold on, guys!”
“Honey!”
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Simon,” Preston calls. “What she’s going to do to us.”
Simon freezes. His whole body stiffens at that last sentence, shoulders locking. The floor falls out from under my feet.
This is it.
He turns to me, cups my face, and whispers, “Stay behind me.” His voice has a tremble I’ve never heard before. Fear and rage, all tangled like cords.
We wait for the family to appear, and they do. Together. A solid unit.
Pierce and Rachelle locked together arm in arm, Preston just in front of them. He folds his arms over his chest, studying us with a grimace.
Preston’s mouth twists. “Can we all talk like adults, then? Rather than running away?”
As if we’re the unreasonable ones.
Simon steps forward in between them and me. “I’d love to talk, brother. About what the hell is going on. About why the hell you locked my wife up and lied to me about it. So, I guess, you first.”
Preston opens his mouth to speak, but Pierce holds up a hand to stop him, walking into his line of vision. “We needed the truth,” he says simply. “Something you well know she has been unwilling to give us.”
“The truth?” Simon snaps, eyes wide. “What are you talking about? What the fuck are either of you talking about? This is…this is an Agatha Christie plot. Not real life. Jesus Christ. Where did that room even come from? And the TVs? Are you…Bond villains? Were those cameras? What the fuck?”
Pierce folds his hands together in front of him as if preparing to lead a meeting. He takes a deep, calming breath. In the background, Rachelle paces nervously, wringing her hands.
No one is looking at me. I’m invisible here. Simon is the only thing that matters to either of us.
Pierce studies his son, his face pure stone, gaze shifting rapidly between Simon’s eyes. “We’ll tell you everything. Of course we will. But you deserve to know the truth about the woman you’re planning to start a family with. Your prenup won’t stand a chance against child support.”
Simon’s entire body goes ruler straight. “Are you insane? She’s done nothing. You’ve all lost your fucking minds.”
Pierce lifts another hand. “That isn’t true.”
“Really? What has she done?” Simon asks, shaking his head.
“What, Dad? What is so bad she deserves to be thrown in a room? Locked away like a…like an animal?” He’s pacing now.
Panicking. “Jesus Christ, you made me think she was leaving me. You made me think… What were you planning to do? What was going to happen to her?”
“We’d never hurt her,” Rachelle rushes to say, her voice butter-smooth.
“They were going to send me away to a psychiatric facility,” I tell him, my voice shaking.
Not a single eye moves my way. I might as well have not spoken.
“She wants to hurt our family,” Preston tells him. “First the files back then, and now, the police.”
“The police?” Simon’s face wrinkles with confusion, his voice breathless.
Preston’s head tilts slightly to the side, jaw tight, clearly annoyed by the interruption.
“She called the police, tried to make them think we’d, what?
Kidnapped some kid? And even before that, she asked you if we were hiding something.
She accused us the second she had the chance. That’s not loyalty.”
“I…I never accused you, I…” I lick my lips, turning to look at Simon. “She was real. The girl. It was them. They were the ones talking to me on the radio. It was all them. They took my things. They wanted to make you think I was imagining things.”
“So we could test you,” Rachelle says gently, as if that’s better. “We needed to know if you’d stand with this family.” She moves to stand next to Pierce, taking his hand. “Or against us.”
“I had no idea calling the police would hurt you. I’d never do that. I was…I was only trying to help.” My voice is small, childlike. I’m six years old again, forced to stand in a corner and think about what I’ve done.
“We asked you not to,” Pierce says simply. “And you chose to ignore it.”
“You had no right to test her.” Simon’s voice is stone.
“No right?” Pierce juts a finger at him, at us both. It’s the angriest I’ve ever seen him. “We had every right. You think I built this company from the ground up, this family from the ground up, this life from the ground up, so some little nobody could come and take it all away?”
Rachelle puts a hand on his arm in warning. He’s gone too far, even for her. Simon leans back, away from his father and toward me.
“She is my wife,” Simon says, the words barely escaping his gritted teeth. “And you will speak to her with respect, or you will speak to neither of us at all.”
“We all know how this came to be,” Preston says. “You only met her because she had information we needed.”
Simon gives me a guilty look, gauging my reaction, perhaps to see if this is new information.
His eyes hold mine. “That all changed very early on.” He looks back at his family.
“I love her. We got the computer like you wanted. There was nothing else. She’d never even heard of our family when we met. ”
“So she says,” Preston mutters.
“The long con, hmm?” Simon jokes bitterly.
“You think she’s taken two years to finally set it into motion?
My god, she’d be the most inefficient undercover detective ever.
We found her, as you so rightly pointed out.
We took her laptop, and she didn’t blink.
She’s here—every holiday, every event, every birthday.
Helping Mom with meals, shopping with the wives, babysitting the kids, cleaning the fucking guest house.
My god, what do you people want? Not everyone can marry an heiress just to cheat on her with our sister-in-law, now can we?
Seems like a one-per-household sort of thing. ”
I flinch. My stomach roils.
Whatever air was left in the room is now gone. No one moves. No one breathes. No one blinks.
Seconds stretch on forever.
Down the hall, a door opens. Every head turns to see Polly appear, her eyes locked forward, steps quick. At first, I think she’s going to Preston’s side, but instead, she keeps going, down the stairs without a word.
Preston turns back to Simon. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Simon doesn’t back down. His jaw clenches so tight I hear the grind of his teeth. “Maybe you should worry about the secrets in your own home before you come for mine.” He turns to me then. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
Preston steps forward too quickly, like he plans to stop us. I flinch, but Pierce blocks him with a single outstretched hand. “Let them go. We’ll find another way to get what we need.”
A long, tense silence hangs between us, the brothers’ eyes locked.
Finally, Preston looks away. Steps back.
Like that, it’s over. The snap of fingers, the flick of a wrist.
Simon pulls me close, guiding me away and into our room without another word. I don’t dare look back at the family I just lost, the family I wanted so badly I gave up everything for it.
My old life. My job. My family. Every piece of who I was before Simon.
He collapses onto the edge of the bed like he’s lost all strength in his legs, eyes wide, searching for answers I don’t have.
I don’t sit. I can’t.
I pace. Breathe. Stop. Begin packing. Pace again.
Simon leans forward, head in hands. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t…I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t. I never thought they’d— Please, please believe me. The computer, yes. They asked me to meet you, to install some software, and to replace it. I thought it was harmless, and…I mean, I didn’t know you.”
His words wash over me, reasoning for his actions, however horrible.
“But that was it. What we have…” He stands, gesturing from me to him in the space between us. “It’s real. God, Astrid, it’s so real. I’d never let them hurt you. I swear it. Please believe me.”
And the truth is, I do. Even if I shouldn’t, I do.
But even that doesn’t fix the hollow ache in my chest, or the fact that my life has cracks running through it now—cracks that I fear will never close, even with the most expensive glue.
I turn away from him because if I meet his eyes for a second longer, I know I’ll break. “We should pack,” I whisper, my voice shaking. “We’ll talk about this once we’re home.”
There’s a long beat before he brushes past me, one hand on my shoulder on his way to the bathroom. I glance over my shoulder once as I hear the door to the bathroom shut.
I think. Quickly. My phone is dead, so I plug it in with trembling fingers, tapping anxiously on the screen until it comes on. The second the screen comes to life, I turn on the hotspot, counting the seconds that have elapsed. My laptop is on the desk, and I don’t have much time.
I try not to think about the camera watching me.
My hands shake as I open the laptop and connect to my hotspot. I can’t take any chances. I don’t hesitate or overthink. I log into my email, heart pounding, fingers flying over the keyboard.
I craft the email I hoped I’d never need to send. Grab the flash drive from my bag. Attach the file. I read over it, the cursor blinking at the bottom of the screen.
My finger hovers over send as I hear the toilet flush.
I tap. It’s done. Over.
The email disappears, and my heart shatters all at once.