Chapter 35 #2
“No? What about this then? ‘Poor, stupid Fiona. She trusted me enough to drink the tea, to let me run her a bath, to close her eyes while I watched her sink beneath the water.’”
“I never wrote that. It isn’t my handwriting.”
Wow. She really is planning to deny it until the bitter end.
“If that’s true,” Dad says, speaking for the first time since he told Alice to sit, “then it’s easily disproven.”
He gets to his feet and crosses to the other side of the room. Opening one of the sideboard drawers, he rifles through, returning with a Christmas card. I smile. Smart, my father.
“This was the Christmas card you gave me last year. I always keep my Christmas cards. Have done for years. I like looking back on them sometimes.” He opens the card and shows it to Xan, who scans it, looks at the diary, then nods.
“I could have a handwriting expert brought here if you’d rather.”
Alice’s pretense splinters. She crumbles before our eyes, quiet sobs hitching her chest. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t lose George. I couldn’t. You don’t understand.”
Xan moves. It’s abrupt enough that Alice flinches, her hands flying up to protect her face as though she expects him to strike her. He doesn’t. He wouldn’t. Protecting women is what we do, but when one of those women is the villain in our story… what then?
His fists are clenched so tightly, they’re porcelain white, and his breathing is harsh, uneven. He’s struggling to maintain control. We all are.
He moves behind her chair, gripping it as though he needs it to anchor him. Alice sits rooted to the spot like a cornered animal who’s trying to appear invisible to avoid catching the predator’s attention.
Too late.
“You murdered our sister,” he says, each word regulated with visible effort.
“You murdered our mother. You shattered our family and stood on the sidelines for two fucking decades, watching while we mourned them. While we found a way through the horror. Tell me, Alice… did you get off on that? On our pain and suffering?”
“No,” she exclaims. “I never wanted to do any of it. I was forced to.”
Xan laughs, the kind of sound that would make grown men tremble in their shoes and brace for what’s coming.
“Liar. It’s all in here.” He tosses the diary over her head.
It lands on the table with a loud crack.
Alice jumps. “You knew exactly what you were doing, and you know what I think?” He leans over her chair until he’s in her peripheral vision.
“You enjoyed it. You enjoyed the power, the grief. The winning.”
“No. No.” Alice breaks down, sobbing uncontrollably. “George loved her. He loved her more than me. When he told me we were moving back here, I knew I had to do something. If he’d found out you were his, the children he desperately wanted that I couldn’t give him, I’d lose him. I’d lose everything.”
“So, you thought kidnapping children, having my sister raped and murdered, was the answer? That taking away a mother from her grieving kids was the right fucking thing to do?”
“They weren’t supposed to rape her. I never sanctioned that.”
“Oh, well, that’s okay then,” Nicholas erupts, shaking with rage. “You fucking evil bitch!”
“How did you know?” Saskia’s question is uttered so quietly, I wonder if she meant to say it aloud at all. “How did you know George was their father?”
“I always suspected it. I met George in a bar only a few days after he fled to Japan. We got to talking, drank too much, and he confessed how he’d…
what he’d done to Fiona the night before your wedding.
He regretted it, I could tell. It haunted him for years, but the twins births nine months after your wedding was too coincidental.
After he insisted on moving back here, I had a DNA test done.
When the results came back, I knew what I had to do. ”
“Murder a child and take away their mother for your own selfish needs?” I bite out.
“If you want to put it like that.” She shrugs, matter-of-factly, like she’s confessing she swapped out chocolate biscuits for shortbread. Her eyes travel to Dad. “What are you going to do with me?”
“I’m not going to do anything.” For a split second, hope lights up Alice’s face, until Dad adds, “Alexander is.”
The evil way my brother smiles, I know, I just know he’s planning something truly awful. He takes out his phone and taps on it, then lifts it to his ear.
“Anatoly,” he says. “It’s Alexander De Vil. I’m calling in that favor you owe me.”
“No!” Alice launches to her feet and sprints to the door like she has a hope of escaping.
Alan steps to one side, allowing Alice space to wrench the door open. Outside is a wall of bodyguards. I guess Xan called for them, although I’ve no idea when.
She spins back around. “Alexander, please, no. Not this. I’m begging you.”
“Throw her in the cell with him,” Xan orders. “Then have them both transported to Southampton on Tuesday and put on the Volkov Imperiya. They’re expected.”
Out of all The Consortium members, the Volkovs have the most vicious streak. Anatoly will see to it that George and Alice suffer far more than killing them would achieve.
“You can’t do this,” Alice screams. “Not the Volkovs, not Russia.”
“Xan’s lips peel back in a half-snarl, half-smirk. “Siberia.”
“Charles, please,” Alice cries.
Dad gets to his feet and walks over to the fireplace, his back to her. Taking his lead, we all stand beside him, an impenetrable wall.
Alice’s screams fade as she’s hauled away and out of our lives forever.