56. Chapter 56
Chapter fifty-six
Gabe
W hat doesn’t she know?
Much.
There is much she doesn’t know and she won’t know. Ever.
That question hangs in the cold night air that shifts with a gust of wind. Abbie shivers and I let go of the blanket that I’ve wrapped around her. “I’ll turn on the fireplace.” I don’t wait for her reply. I walk to the wall by the sliding door and flip on the outdoor fireplace I should’ve turned on when I exited in the first place.
Abbie follows me, steps to me again in front of the fireplace. “What don’t I know Gabe?” Her eyes narrow on me. “Oh God. Tell me you didn’t—”
“I didn’t what, Abbie?”
“Hire the assassin. You didn’t, right?”
That question punches me in the chest. "I answered that question for Reese."
“Answer it for me. Just me. Did you have Kenneth killed?”
Did I have her ex-husband killed?
And there it is. A question I created by making her prior question of “what don’t I know” become more complicated than it had to be, by making it about everything, not one thing. Not one fucking thing, as it was intended.
“No. I didn’t hire a hitman to kill your ex-husband and can I say, just using the word ‘husband’ where you’re concerned pisses me the fuck off. After knowing you, and knowing him, I don’t understand how you ended up with him.”
Her eyes widen and she tries to turn away. “Fuck,” I murmur, and catch her arm, pulling her back to me. “That wasn’t about you.”
“It sounded like it was about me.” She hangs onto the blanket but doesn’t touch me. “It sounded judgmental and pompous and—”
“All of those things. Yes. But it wasn’t about you.” My jaw sets hard and I look at the flames now flickering in the fireplace, old demons clawing at me, and it’s pissing me off. The past doesn’t get to have that kind of control over me. I step closer to Abbie. “Look, I’m all too aware of the fact that I just responded to you based on my past, not the present. And you’re the present. My present.”
“You do know that I have plenty of reasons to judge you by my past, right? My very recent, extremely raw past.”
“No,” I say rejecting that idea, but choosing my words cautiously. “You don’t. I haven’t given you any reason to believe that I’m going to let you down the way your ex let you down.”
“And I have you?” she demands. “Because that’s what this is about, right? An ex?” She tilts her head. “Is KM an ex?”
It’s an inevitable question I don’t intend to answer. “What this is,” I say, directing us away from KM, making this about Abbie, which is safer than making it about me, “is me asking what the police will ask. How did someone like you end up with that asshole?”
“I didn’t choose to be with an asshole. He didn’t seem like an asshole at the time.”
“How did you meet him?”
“A charity event, which obviously contributed to me feeling like he was a good guy. He donated big that night. He asked me to dinner. He wined and dined me.”
“And you fell in love.” The idea grinds through me with ridiculous amounts of jealousy. I didn’t know her then.
“I think it was more infatuation,” she replies. “He seemed to have the world in his hands and it was powerful. It was interesting. And yet, he seemed so kind.”
“When did you discover the real man?”
“Six months after I married him, he changed. Or rather, he showed his true colors.”
“Why did he go to that kind of effort to convince you that he was what he wasn’t?”
She laughs bitterly. “Right. Because he couldn’t possibly have been in love with me?”
I scrub my jaw and drag her to me. “You could make any man fall in love with you, Abbie,” I say, aware that it’s exposing me. That I’m standing on a limb for this woman, waiting for it to break. “Anyone human, that is,” I add. “He wasn’t human, any more than my father is human. What did he want from you?”
“He was going to run for office. I think he thought me and my charity work looked good by his side.” Her voice cracks. “I don’t think he ever loved me.”
But I could , I think. Holy hell, I could.
“Why didn’t he run for office?”
“A financial scandal. I don’t know much about it.”
A reason for someone to kill him . “Tell the police. Tell Reese.”
“Yes. Of course. I will.” She grabs my shirt, letting the blanket fall. “You aren’t going to tell me about KM, are you?”
Those demons claw at me again, and again. And fucking again. They will always claw at me. “KM was a business associate who tried to fuck me,” I say, and it’s not a lie. Kendall and I worked together. We also fucked. And she tried to fuck me in a way few could imagine possible.
“And you won?”
“No. No, I didn’t win, which is exactly why my father likes to taunt me with it.”
She studies me a moment, intelligent eyes, sizing me up and well. “None of that is a real answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
“It’s half-truths,” she accuses.
My jaw clenches. “Everything I said was true.”
“Sorry,” she says. “Bad wording. I meant it’s half the story.” Her hand goes to my face. “Don’t talk about it. I get it. Some things are difficult. Some things cut to relive.”
“You mean his abuse,” I say, and it’s not a question. “Your abuse.”
“It’s not the abuse that gets me. It’s the way I handled it. It’s the way I became his puppet. Maybe had I gotten out sooner, it wouldn’t have gotten so hard to get out. Once we owned that shelter, once my mother and all the animals were depending on it, I felt trapped. He’d threaten her and the shelter.”
“And yet he let you keep it.”
“I think in the end, he was just damn glad to keep his money. That’s why him wanting the shelter makes no sense. Maybe it was vindictive. Maybe it’s over, but that is going to look like a motive.”
“We’ll know soon,” I say. “If Jean Claude wants the property, he’ll come at you right away. There will be no mourning process. He doesn’t have a heart.”
“And I told him about my ex stealing from him. He had to have killed him.”
This is the moment when I could tell her what I did. When I could give her the relief of knowing that I may well have caused Kenneth’s death, but I believe it would be more cold comfort. She’d blame herself for my actions. Because that’s who she is. She takes things on herself. She blames herself while I feel no guilt over assholes who get what they deserve. A part of me my clients appreciate, but Abbie will not.
I pull her flush against me, my body hard, hers soft. I want her. I think I might even need her. That means that while I won’t lie to her, I have to keep secrets. I have to keep my past, my past. I have to keep what I did to protect her buried. And I will. She will never know what I did. She will never know about KM.