Chapter Fifty-Five Hanna
Chapter Fifty-Five
Hanna
I sat with Daniela, willing her to wake up. The doctors said it could happen at any time. She was breathing on her own. She’d
opened her eyes once, then drifted off again.
Relief soared through her family at the good news. Everyone involved with her care relaxed and enjoyed a bit of lightness.
For me, it was a case of relief tempered with guilt. She’d been in peril because she worked for me. Because I’d been a crap
boss and friend ever since we buried Xavier. The weight of so many secrets and so much danger pushed down on me.
The other reason I needed her to be okay, to be awake and talking, was Jeremy. She might be the one person who could tell
us where he was and what happened to him.
Her family understood my panic. They’d taken a break to find decent coffee and give me a few minutes to breathe. I sat with
her, exhausted from the lack of sleep and dearth of answers. Facts ran through my head, tumbling over each other as I searched
for connections.
The uncomfortable chair made my back ache as I mentally walked through what I knew.
The way Aubrey kept popping up at the “right” time.
The odd conversation about house keys or not needing them, or whatever she’d said when she showed up at the house, ticked off a memory.
One I’d been fighting and ignoring because it featured Xavier at his most frightening and combative, with his gaslighting and deception on full display. His words floated to the surface now.
I can see everything. Be everywhere.
The night started with the surprise pregnancy news, then veered off in ways I never saw coming. Xavier turned my nightmare
into gloating. He ignored my panic and joked about how Patrick had made a pass at me the day before. True, Patrick unexpectedly
had been handsy. The whole scene had been a fumbled, unwanted mess but private. Xavier hadn’t been there when I smacked Patrick
down. No one had.
Do you really think I wouldn’t know he touched you? That he wouldn’t come running to me, insisting he’d beaten me? But I’d
seen it all before he said a word. I knew the truth. I’d already won.
The damn bet about which one of them would sleep with me first. Xavier hid the sick wager until I talked about possibly ending
the pregnancy. Gone was the attentive, charming man I knew. Replaced with the man the public feared. He outlined his elaborate,
monthslong scheme to continue his bloodline with a handpicked mother for his precious heir. A better heir than Patrick.
Xavier had chosen me and trapped me. He wanted the pregnancy. He planned it even as I planned for it not to happen. That damn trip to Maine. Six days. The caddy with my birth control pills. The tampering that connected us together forever.
But the tumultuous end started earlier than that. A week before everything fell apart I’d found the file filled with old articles
and clippings about Dea’s murder, including information about a man I’d never heard of. A guy who’d gotten in trouble a year
before the murder for stealing from houses he was hired to paint.
Xavier shared that the man in the articles was the man he said killed Dea. It made sense that he’d be researching potential
suspects. I felt sick for all he’d lost and guilty that I copied the file. I couldn’t explain why. Something tugged at me
to do it.
I bought his excuse for collecting information on the potential suspect until I studied the pages. I saw the dates, including
the pages he’d printed off about the man’s past. Xavier was a smart businessman, but not hugely tech savvy outside of the
usual word processing and Excel skills. He signed papers. He didn’t usually print them off or make files. That might be why
he missed the date stamp from the printer on a page about one of the supposed killer’s previous thefts.
In the heat of the pregnancy battle, Xavier proposed. He didn’t mean it and I didn’t want it, so I said no. Then I dared to
list our other options, and he lost it. That’s when I reminded him about the file and asked how he knew to print off information
about the man who he thought killed his wife before anything ever happened to Dea.
Everything changed. The man the whole town talked about appeared. The threats started.
If you think I killed my beloved wife, then imagine what I could do to you.
Xavier’s most sinister lie unmasked by a combination of hubris, rage, and an overabundance of his precious bourbon. He spoke
in hypotheticals, but even then waited until after he threw me on the bed and ran his hands over me, accusing me of recording
him.
He talked about a man so powerful, so above the law, that he forced his sad wife to their island home, then paid a man to
murder her. In a final act, he set up a meeting during a visit to the island and ran the killer down. A much younger Xavier,
still vibrant and fueled by his overactive ego, dumped the man’s body in the water. Job done.
If I had done it I’d make sure there was no one left to talk. Of course, I’d regret not being clearer about killing my wife outright without
additional unnecessary violence, but that would have been a small, almost insignificant mistake in an otherwise grand plan
to stop her threats about ruining my reputation and taking the estate. See, this is the sort of risk that comes with earning
a fortune after you’ve already been married. No prenuptial agreement.
I hid those copies in a place at school where he’d never think to look. He hadn’t counted on that. I also lied and insisted
my relationship with him wasn’t a secret because I’d bragged to people. People he didn’t know. Fellow students. People who
would raise questions if a second woman intimately connected with Xavier died a horrible death.
I had leverage but in Xavier’s twisted world my holding the secret of his role in his wife’s murder started an intoxicating game.
He talked about my ingenuity. He also insisted my knowledge of what he was capable of increased his power.
He kept me from bludgeoning him with the truth by playing on my fear of being next.
I have the power and the resources. Dea would have been easy, had I done it, but plotting your end would be a masterpiece.
After the baby is born, of course.
His confidence increased my paranoia. If I went to the police, he would know. He owned them, or so he claimed. He would have
me followed until I showed him where I kept the file or revealed the other people who might know about us. He would kill Irene,
the woman who offered me a lifeline and a part-time job when I desperately needed both. He made it clear he would savor every
move and every step he made to minimize the danger I posed.
I feared for the safety of everyone around me, including my unborn baby.
Blocking the lies, separating them out from all the threats about how he could lock me in his house until I had Jeremy and
no one would know, I cut a deal I feared daily he’d renege on. He could bask in fatherhood joy from a distance. Not risk his
reputation or worry about a wife number two sweeping in and taking even a cent of his money. I didn’t want a single thing
from him except peace.
To survive the back-and-forth and all the games, I mentally downplayed Xavier’s comments about being able to watch me and
see what I did when he wasn’t there and his threats about holding me hostage. I convinced myself he’d been flexing muscles.
Desperate and lashing out. But had he?
You can’t hide from me. Hanna, do you understand what I’m saying? I can come and go at will and you can’t stop me. If I wanted Jeremy, I could take him. Hanna? Hanna . . .
“Hanna?”
I jumped at the sound of a soft voice. Not Xavier’s cold, vicious one in my head. The one in the room. Daniela. Her eyes were
open. Her frail body sank into the crisp white sheets. The dark circles under her eyes, her tiny wrist. How limp her hand
felt in mine.
“Daniela! I’m so sorry.” I said the words over and over, begging for her to believe me. “I didn’t know you were there. You
shouldn’t have been in the café that late.” The comment sounded like I blamed her, but I only blamed myself.
Her hand squeezed mine or tried to. “Halloween. The busy time . . .”
Her words trailed off, but I heard them. “You worked long hours to help me?”
“I had to go back and get caught up.” She closed her eyes. “But Jeremy . . .”
“Do you know what happened to him?” Panic crested, forcing my voice higher and louder than I intended. A decent person would
have let her rest but the dread swirling inside me demanded I at least try. “Did you see Jeremy in the café? Was he okay?”
The questions ran together. I had more. So many more.
Her eyes opened again, looking solemn and sad. “I heard his voice. Then a figure . . . and movement.” Her tears fell between
clipped comments. “The room went dark. The smoke . . .”
Her agitation increased. Color moved into her cheeks and her heart monitor beeped faster.
She grabbed my sleeve. Her gaze searched mine. “I didn’t see her. The rest is hazy but definitely a woman. Did she hit him, too?”
She?
A nurse rushed in, but Daniela ignored her. “Jeremy?”
I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t say anything. Rage, pulsing and fiery, rushed through me. Every nerve ending flashed to homicidal
life.
The crescendo of noise building in my head blinked out. The ball of pain that rolled and grew and plowed over every part of
me stopped. One word cleared everything else out of my head—she. “A woman hit you?”
I knew one woman who would want to hurt Jeremy. Aubrey.
I was going to fucking kill her.