11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
“There you are,” Nico growls from behind me. “What are you doing up here? I told you never to come here. I strictly forbade it.” He grabs me by the wrist harshly, twisting it to the point of pain.
“I saw her.”
“You saw who?”
“Catherine. She was singing a lullaby, and she went out the window, and I watched her jump.”
Thwack . Nico slaps me. My palm goes straight to the burning sting of my cheek as tears flood me. “Who told you that?”
“Catherine showed me. I saw her.”
Nico grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me. “What are you playing at?”
“I’m telling the truth. I know what I saw.”
He fists his dark hair as I shrink away from him. “I heard you with Marco and Frankie. I know about Lynette and how I’m a distraction.”
“You can’t pay attention to Marco.”
“You didn’t kill Catherine,” I whisper. “She killed herself.”
He nods. “We found out that a baby wasn’t possible for us.
” He drops to the floor, and I don’t know why, but I go to him.
“She lost her mind. Accused me of cheating all the time. I started losing money. Getting into fights. Drinking. Eventually, I did turn to other women. I was lonely, and my wife had gone mad. I tried doctors. Medications. Nothing could save her from herself. After she passed, I got drunk and set this tower on fire.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. I should have told you. I shouldn’t have slapped you. You really saw Catherine?”
“I think so.”
A loud scream sounds from outside, and Nico rushes to the window. He looks down, and I follow his gaze to the body sprawled across the driveway and the pool of blood coming from her head.
I press my hand to my mouth.
Nico runs off, and I chase after him.
A crowd surrounds the woman. The young maid. Not Catherine.
“Why would she do that?” I ask Lynette as she hands me a mug of tea.
“I don’t know. Why does anyone do anything?”
I offer her a weak smile and take a drink.
Nico had to go to the police station to answer questions about why a second woman had jumped off his roof.
My mind goes back to the conversation I overheard between Frankie, Marco, and Nico.
I guess Marco was trying to protect his brother.
I can understand that. But none of that explains the maid and why she lured me to the tower. Why she jumped.
Lynette eventually goes up to her room, but I can’t sleep. Not until my husband comes home. I have too many questions. A shadow falls across the doorway of the library. Marco.
“Weird night, huh?” I tell him.
He doesn’t answer.
“Did you know her? The maid?” I press.
“Not well.”
“Had she been here long?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because she threw herself off the roof in front of me. Just like Catherine. Only Catherine didn’t jump. You pushed her.” My words slice across his face, surprising us both. I didn’t mean to voice them aloud. And now that I have there is no taking them back.
“Is that what you think?”
“It’s what I know.”
He smiles as he walks toward me. “You think you’re so smart. A clever little cunt.”
“You’re sick. You know that. This obsession with your brother is fucked up. He’s never going to love you. He’s never going to fuck you, Marco.”
“You stupid bitch.” He lunges, wrapping his hands around my throat. I stare up at him, fully prepared to meet my end at his hands, but his mouth opens, and a fire poker comes out as blood spurts onto my face, and I scream.
Marco’s body rolls to the floor with a sickening thud, and I stare at Ms. Bentley.
“I always hated that bastard,” she says, then spits on his body before she also shoots him in the back.
Sometime later
“Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust…”
I stare off into the distance as the casket is lowered into the ground. Ms. Bentley passed away peacefully in her sleep before she could ever be charged with murder.
I thought she hated me, but in the end, she saved my life.
Nico’s hand curls around mine. He’s not fooling me. I know he’s heartbroken. Ms. Bentley practically raised him and was like a second mother to him.
“I only wish she could have been here when the baby is born,” he tells me.
I glance down at my baby bump. “Me too. She would have loved him.”
After the funeral, we return to the house to give the keys to the new owners. My sister and Frankie. Nico and I are moving to the apartment in the city. He wants to keep the manor in the family, but it holds too many bad memories for both of us.
I never told Lynette about Frankie.
He seems to love her despite their deceitful beginnings.
As for the young maid who threw herself off the tower, no one knows what was going through her mind, but she was under the influence of hallucinogens. Maybe Marco was hoping she’d push me like he had Catherine. We’ll never know why people do the wicked things that they do.
“Ready?” Nico questions as he turns out of the driveway for what I hope is the last time I will ever come here.
“As ready as I can be.”
Whatever the future holds, we’ll face it together.
The End