Chapter Sixty-Nine Stella
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Stella
Rain hammered against the glass. I concentrated on the steady beat of the storm while my insides shriveled. Hope vanished
along with my prospects for an accomplished future. As I stood there, bleeding and dying while the parts still beating and
pulsing with a hint of life disintegrated into tiny slips of nothing, that talk with Mom ran through my head.
“I saw them together in one of Xavier’s extra bedrooms. The door wasn’t quite closed.
She was hanging all over him, but you can’t blame him.
She wore those tiny bathing suits. Men are weak and you were always complaining.
So prickly and demanding. He had so much stress and you piled on by insisting he be perfect.
His parents did that, too. I tried to warn you to be careful, but you kept pretending to be Aubrey’s therapist. Letting her come around.
I warned Xavier that his granddaughter was manipulative and dangerous, and he got furious.
That’s why I didn’t tell him about Aubrey and Lukas. I was afraid he’d wrongly blame Lukas.”
Lukas’s twisted behavior. My mom’s complicity. He’d destroyed everything and still held a knife. Wielded it with ease as he
pressed it against Hanna’s skin. He preached about decency as he cut a path of destruction through the ragged remains of my
life and my family.
Survive this and get to Everly. I repeated the refrain, not thinking about what would happen after that.
I tapped into the deep well of indifference I’d constructed years ago to get through life without him. Pretended I felt nothing.
Putting the pieces back together, recovering and moving forward, would be impossible. I was a therapist who missed her husband’s
debauchery. A counselor so obsessed with shoring up her career that I broke the rules I vowed to protect. From here, I’d live
for Everly and shielding her from the public battering to come.
I skipped over panic and moved right to orders. “Let Hanna go.”
“Stella, listen to me.” Lukas fell back on his usual silky-smooth placating. “None of this is what it looks like. You have
to believe me.”
Never again.
The man I loved, sickeningly enough still did, had turned out to be a dangerous sham. Liar. Pervert. Creep. The descriptions
piled up in my mind. My pain festered and anger burned the entire drive over. By the time I turned off the car lights and
glided in neutral down the street on the far side of the pond, I’d slipped from rational thought to a venomous killing rage.
Through a haze of panic and confusion, Mom had filled me in on the passageways in Xavier’s house.
The library. The primary bedroom. The back of the kitchen.
A direct line behind the wall mirrors connecting the guest rooms on the third floor.
The tunnel that led from a shed on the far side of the property behind the pond directly to the garage.
She told me and I filled in Marni and Hanna as Hanna hatched her plan.
That’s how I got in the big house without alerting the police patrol and why I stood here now, hearing the disgusting words
that crashed into the foundations of who I thought Lukas and I had been as a couple. He’d let me think I dragged him into
the Tanner family mess when in reality he acted as a driving force behind the downfall.
“What is wrong with you? You forced yourself on Aubrey. A young, mixed-up girl.” I gagged as I said the shocking words.
Aubrey held up her hand. “For the record, I prefer the term complicated.”
I didn’t give Aubrey the attention she craved. She was a victim here but I had one target and if he moved, gave me an inch
of space, I’d push Hanna to safety and stab him with his own knife. “You assaulted Aubrey in her house?”
“And yours.” Aubrey shrugged. “Sorry.”
“You know me better than that. I would never touch her. She’s a liar.” Lukas sounded so reasonable and clear. He acted like
convincing me would be easy, probably because it always had been. “You know who and what she is. Hell, you know that better
than most people.”
Aubrey sighed. “Then drop the knife.”
“I’m trying to de-escalate the situation.” He delivered the comment despite how ridiculous it sounded in the moment.
Hanna struggled under Lukas’s hold. She grabbed on to his arm, trying to pull it away from her throat. “By threatening me?”
“I didn’t . . .” He seemed to ease up on his grip, but he still didn’t let Hanna go. “Look, no one is listening. I need you all to pay attention. To understand what Aubrey is so we can end her dangerous behavior once and for all.”
“You were so stressed back then. The promotion. The political bullshit in the office. Was it all too much? Did I add too much
pressure with the talk about kids and a future?” None of those were excuses but I expected him to grab on to one. “Was that
why or did you just enjoy doing something so horrible and wrong for a change? Was Aubrey your chance to finally break the
rules?” As sick as that sounded.
“Listen, Aubrey has you all riled up with her stories. She’s a killer. We all know that. She took out her parents. She came
back into town and went after Jeremy.”
“A fascinating tale.” Aubrey made a humming sound. Made it clear she didn’t take any of this seriously. “Why would I do any
of that?”
Lukas looked at me, ignoring Aubrey’s snide question and Hanna fidgeting in front of him. “Aubrey needed to remove Jeremy,
the named heir, so she could move in and make a claim as the only living grandchild. We’re talking about an estate worth almost
forty million dollars.”
Amazing how he knew the amount. How he followed every step of the Tanner saga so closely, even after our divorce, and remained
intimately involved. I used to think his interest grew out of old feelings and a still-thriving need to protect me.
God, Stella. Why did you think it was okay to counsel Aubrey and report to her father and grandfather? How do I live with
this? How do we survive what you did?
Now I knew the truth. He’d had a despicable secret to hide. One that should land him in a sturdy jail cell with any hope of political fame sacrificed to a dying fire inside him.
“That’s not how the law works. The terms of the family trust were clear.” Aubrey smiled. A gesture only she would find appropriate
under the circumstances. “I’d think you, Mr. Super Lawyer, would know that. My attorney explained estate law to me. I can
call him if you want.”
Aubrey’s dismissive attitude chipped away at the last of my control. The stranglehold of tension pounding through the room
touched everyone but her. “I came here because of Mom. She was questioned by the police. She’s unraveling . . . because of
you, Lukas. How could you drag her into something so vile?”
“Hon, come on.” That innocent head tilt. The lift of his voice. He’d moved on to charm. He clearly thought he could weasel
out of this, using the same old tricks. “Your mom’s struggling and has been for a long time. It’s sad but it’s not new. Xavier’s
death likely sped up the process.”
I held up my cell phone. Pressed play on the audio I had of Mom. The admission I hoped would show her diminished capacity
and lessen her culpability while it confirmed his.
“I had no idea that woman would be in the café. It’s Hanna’s fault. She’s so much like Aubrey. But we needed the boy. Lukas
told me I needed to set another fire. Not as a diversion like last time. We needed the flames to destroy the evidence.”
Aubrey whistled. “Younger me had terrible taste in men.”
Hanna’s nails bit into the arm around her neck. “You tried to kill my son.”
Lukas’s deceptive fingerprints were all over this. I knew that now. “You must have been pretty desperate to include Mom in your plan. She said you promised to get Xavier’s estate transferred to her. Once the two of you took care of Aubrey and Jeremy.”
He used Isabel. Isabel used him. They both screwed the rest of us.
He shook his head as if I were overreacting. As if he hadn’t heard the damn recording. “Stella, come on. This is ridiculous.”
Everyone was sick and wrong and confused but him. I’d never noticed the steady thump of only I can save you underlying Lukas’s words and actions.
Now it was all I heard.