Chapter Ninety Holly
Chapter ninety
HOLLY
The revelation of Adrianna’s self-kidnap ripples through the small wedding party, like a detonating grenade.
Mark’s face explodes in wide-eyed disbelief.
Georgia takes an audible gasp of air, stepping back, the bouquet lifting defensively to her chest. Ophelia looks devastated.
Heart-broken, even. Leopold flows through a full spectrum of anger and panic, settling on menacing calculation.
‘There never was a kidnap,’ I tell Mark.
‘It was a set-up all along. Twenty-year-old Adrianna knew she needed a big splash to break into the media world. She’d been raised to it, after all.
And Adrianna was smart enough to know how much attention stalker and kidnapping cases got.
Her first move was to send herself a threatening birthday invitation, signed by Trinity.
But the spread of the fingerprints didn’t just match the pattern of someone opening an invitation and reading it.
There are extra prints, right where you’d expect the person who wrote the name on to make them. ’
Petra snaps away, adjusting her lens to capture Adrianna’s mortified face.
‘It was easy to lock herself in the family panic room.’ I pause. ‘The simplicity of the plan was what made it so brilliant. But Adrianna messed up. Used the manacles she’d seen around the island, and didn’t realize they rusted shut on closing.’
Adrianna swallows heavily. Something awful twists on her face, like she wants to hurt me.
‘Was it the court case against the school you wanted to detract attention from?’ I ask her. ‘Or did you just realize how much money your story could make the family nightclubs, after Leopold sunk every cent into construction work on the Kensington graveyard?’
She shakes her head.
‘Your masked captor’s persona was an amalgamation of all the terrors you had suppressed from boarding school,’ I say. ‘The stories you so desperately wanted to tell.’
I look into Adrianna’s famous sapphire eyes.
‘Because I think you do care,’ I tell her, simply, ‘that the legacy of your ancestor’s cruelty is still hurting girls sixty years later, at Kensington Manor School. If you didn’t care, how could you have dreamed up a kidnapper like Trinity?’
‘I couldn’t,’ whispers Adrianna, her voice choked. ‘Silky wanted me to testify against the school. I couldn’t.’ Her eyes are pleading.
Petra snaps a picture.
‘Put the camera down,’ Adrianna hisses. ‘Put the fucking camera down.’
Petra hesitates. She looks as if she’s considering the next angle to snap from.
In one quick movement, Adrianna dives toward Leopold, and pulls a gun from his waistband.
‘No!’ Leopold acts on instinct, snatching for it. He’s too late. Adrianna points the gun toward Petra.
Petra actually laughs. ‘What are you going to do, Adrianna?’ she says. ‘Shoot me? You always were a coward.’ The gun wavers in Adrianna’s hand. Her jaw tightens and untightens.
Ophelia steps smoothly forward. She wraps her hand around the gun, enfolding Adrianna’s grip. She turns her face up, and their eyes meet.
‘Don’t let her win,’ says Ophelia, holding her gaze. Something childlike and tragic flares in Adrianna’s cobalt eyes.
‘You think you’re her savior?’ demands Petra, outraged. Her angular face twists in hurt.
‘I was your protector,’ says Petra. ‘I protected all of you. What I did was for your own good —’
It all happens in seconds. The gun fires as Leopold steps in front of Petra. He jerks back like he’s been hit. But it’s Petra who the bullet catches, square in the chest.
There’s a look of disbelief on her face, followed by shock. She brings a hand to the flowering patch of blood on her silk-clad chest, then collapses to the ground.
‘Petra!’ Leopold’s face is stricken as he kneels by her side.
‘That was for Silky,’ says Adrianna quietly. ‘And all of us girls who survived. I should have done it a long time ago.’
Mark takes a step back, eyes wide. ‘Dri …’ he whispers. ‘What did you do?’
‘Fuck,’ Adrianna ignores him, ripping off her veil and throwing it to the ground. She addresses her father: ‘How are we going to fix this fucking mess?’
Leopold stands, his face unreadable, and takes the gun from Adrianna’s unresisting hand.
He takes a long steadying breath, then turns it on me.
‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘We have a forensic expert. Holly and I are going to have a meeting. Work out how she can fix this for us. She’ll make it look exactly how we want, when the police arrive.’
Leopold grabs my arm. His eyes land on Fitzwilliam.
‘No one try to follow us,’ he adds, pulling me away from the wedding party at gun-point. ‘Or Holly dies.’