Jealousy
A mistrial?
As the thought sank in, my stomach plunged.
I couldn’t go through it again. I buried my face in my hands, trying to settle my racing thoughts, but I couldn’t.
Frustrated and aching for fresh air, I stood, searching for Billy Ray.
He was talking with Colton by the bench, his expression wary, threatening.
His shoulders were hunched, fists clenched tight.
My brother was about to punch his best friend.
I pulled out my phone, finishing my search on Colton’s recent cases. The last one had been a murder trial, not commercial. He’d won, securing a not-guilty verdict for Benny DiMarco.
The name resonated in my mind like a thumping loudspeaker. Stunned, I kept scrolling through articles and looking at pictures. In one of them, taken when the defense team had been leaving the courthouse, Colton was handing some documents to another man.
That man was Frank Holford, whom I’d nicknamed Jack. The man my private investigator had said was a DiMarco family enforcer.
My head was spinning.
“Hello, Olivia,” Claire said, making me jump out of my skin.
I smiled nervously. “Hello, Claire. Your hair looks . . . interesting.”
She pulled me to the side and lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “If you’re going to repeat what I’m about to tell you, I’ll deny it.”
I nodded, surprised. “Oh?”
“You’re onto something with the lavender. Stick with that.” She patted me on the shoulder with a perfectly manicured hand, adorned with a ring that looked disturbingly like mine.
My smile widened. “And you’re telling me that to get yourself off the hook, of course. For Emelda, and for your husband. It’s quite convenient for you.” I looked straight into her eyes and saw nothing but ice in those dark irises—the type of coldness you see in the slit pupil of a venomous snake.
She chuckled and tilted her head, as if flirting with the idea.
“No. I’m saying it because it’s the truth.
” She opened her purse and pulled out her phone, then quickly displayed a security video taken in her backyard.
Distant and a bit blurry, the video showed the patio table, and the bottle of Visine with my fingerprints on it, right where I’d left it.
About twenty seconds into the video, a man snuck by quickly, took the bottle of Visine from the table, and then disappeared.
He was the same man I’d seen knocking on Winston’s door.
Black jacket with raised collar, ballcap, and sunglasses.
Now, I knew who that was.
Colton.
I gaped at her, speechless for a long moment. “I thought you killed him . . . and set me up.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, slipping her phone back into her purse. “I know that’s what you thought.” She threw me a crooked smile and left.
Still shaken, I walked over to Billy Ray and Colton. They were having a tense, whispered conversation that didn’t promise anything good.
“Billy Ray,” I said, touching my brother’s arm, “would you give me a few minutes alone with Colton? I’ll be right out.”
“You’re kidding me, right? C’mon, sis.”
He wasn’t happy about it, and made that quite clear with grumbling and a head shake, but eventually walked away. Colton and I were the last ones left in the courtroom.
He reached out to touch my face, and I pulled away. “No,” I said coldly. “Was it you?” Blinking away tears, I kept seeing Winston’s body in those crime scene photos. The blood on his face. His hand, reaching out for help that never came. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
Colton looked at me without saying a single word, his blue eyes clouded with darkness. The same darkness I’d seen before. The same darkness that had chilled my blood and haunted my days since this ordeal had started.
My chest swelled with anger and pain, and a sense of betrayal like I’d never felt before.
“You knew I was here in Vegas, didn’t you? You saw me in that newspaper, after Tony Vega’s article came out.”
He took a tentative step toward me. I stiffened and glared at him. “Hattie, you were the one for me,” he whispered. “You still are. I never gave up on you. On us.”
His words ignited rage inside me. “You framed me for murder, Colton! I could’ve been executed for something I didn’t do.”
“No . . . I would’ve never let that happen.” He took a step closer and put his hands on my shoulders, staring at me intensely, maniacally. “You see? I knew I could get you off the murder charge.”
I pulled away. “Don’t touch me, Colton.” I stared at him, my eyes pinned on his, wondering if he could tell what was going on in my mind. If he cared about all the pain he’d caused me.
He plunged his hands into his pockets. “I love you, Hattie.”
I clenched my fists, resisting the urge to pounce on him, to claw his eyes out. “Tell me what happened. From the beginning. How did you find out I was here, in Vegas?”
He looked away for a moment. “It was that article, the one you paid Vega to do. But I didn’t know for sure it was you. I didn’t know an Olivia Taylor, and she looked like you, but I hadn’t seen you in ten years.” A sad smile fluttered on his lips. “I needed to be sure.”
“So, instead of calling me and leaving a message at my hotel, like everyone else was doing, you sent Jack?”
“Who?”
I frowned, frustrated. “Frank the Tank, remember him? Your enforcer?” Surprise widened his eyes. “Don’t worry, I know who you work for.”
The lines on his forehead deepened into a frown. “Yes, I sent my investigator to find out about you. To get me some pictures. And, after I’d realized it was you, to keep you safe.”
“Why not call me? Why not come to see me? Jack knew where I was, all the bloody time.”
“I wanted to, but he said you were meeting with a man. Dating him. Winston Donovan, no less.” His eyes veered away from me.
“He told me things were getting serious between you and this man. This married man.” His jaw tightened for a moment.
“Then one day Frankie called me to say Donovan was planning to propose to you. Another guy had followed Donovan, tracked his movements, and learned about the engagement lunch reservation with the entire restaurant blocked and the fountains show and all that. It destroyed me.”
He stopped talking, staring into thin air. I waited awhile, then pressed on.
“What did you do, Colton? When your investigator told you I was getting engaged?”
“I drove there myself and watched it happen. I was inside the restaurant, on my way to talk to you, to stop you, when he proposed.” He ran his hand over his face as if trying to rip a veil of darkness into shreds.
“You lit up, Hattie! When he put that ring on your finger, you lit up. It ripped the heart out of my chest.” He shuddered and looked away.
“You used to smile at me like that. You lit up like there was a fire inside you.”
He turned away from me, as if unable to look at me anymore. He seemed deeply distraught, but I felt no empathy . . . nothing but seething rage for what he’d done. I got in front of him, searching his eyes.
“Then what did you do, Colton?” I asked in a tense, fearful whisper.
His eyes glistened, his jaw tightened. “I followed you, thinking you were going home, and I could talk to you. But no. You met with a private eye, and that threw me off. Then with that man’s wife.
I snuck along the wall of the house and listened in on your conversation, hidden behind the lemongrass shrubs. ”
My hand flew to my mouth. “You were there?” He must’ve been only a few feet away while I’d waited for Claire to return with the money.
“I was there the entire time. Earlier, in the hotel garage, when he gave you his suite card and told you the room number. In the backyard, where I knew Claire was going to set you up. After you left, I took the eye drops. They had your fingerprints on them.” He paused for a beat.
“Then I went to talk to him. To beg him to let you go, to break it off.”
“You’re lying!” I snapped, still clinging to some irrational hope that the man I’d seen on video wasn’t him. “He would’ve never opened the door to you.”
“I mentioned your name. I said you’d sent me.”
I put my hand on my chest to soothe my aching heart. I could barely breathe anymore. “What did he say?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“He kicked me out. Threatened to call security. I fought back . . . I punched him, and he fell. I knew I could never compete with him. Not when you lit up like that in his arms.”
“Tell me how you did it,” I hissed, grabbing his lapel and twisting it into my trembling hands, wishing I had the strength to slam him against the wall.
“I had some meth on me because of a client.” He made a swatting gesture.
“Long story. That’s when I got the idea, digging into my pocket for the eight ball of meth to shove down Donovan’s throat, and finding the eye drops.
I thought if I could save your life, you’d see me again. You’d love me again.”
I didn’t believe him. If he hadn’t planned to set me up, why would he have taken the eye dropper in the first place? I looked into his eyes and realized what that darkness had been, filling my heart with dread each time I’d seen it.
Insanity.
That’s why Jack—a.k.a. Frank the enforcer—had been telling me to leave Vegas and never come back. He knew his boss was a dangerous man. Insane. Homicidal. A killer with a fixation on me.
Slowly, I let go of his lapel, stepping back. “They’ll throw you in jail for the rest of your life, Colton.”
Distant clamoring caught my attention, and I thought I’d heard Billy Ray’s voice, but I stared at Colton, holding my breath.
He seemed strangely resigned. “They don’t have enough. And witnesses . . . they’ll think twice before testifying against me.”
Because he was the “connected” lawyer, working for the DiMarco family. Because he was a ruthless killer.
The door squeaked loudly in the silent courtroom. Detective Stanek walked in with a couple of uniformed officers in tow.
“Colton Blake? You’re under arrest.”
Compliant, Colton held his hands behind his back, all the time looking straight at me. Then they took him away, and I found myself alone in the courtroom, immersed in a haunted silence.
I sat on the edge of the defense table, lightheaded and feeling sick. Grief tore through my chest, making me double over with gasping, quiet, tearless wails.
That’s how Billy Ray found me.
“Come on, sis. Let’s go home.”