Page 55 of What the Wife Knew

“I didn’t think anyone would believe me.” I also thought I could handle the pressure. Like so much of my life, the plan was to get through the worst with as little damage as possible. I hadn’t counted on anyone moving security cameras and throwing me around like a rag doll.

Elias’s shoulders stiffened as the dark tension swirling around him ratcheted up again. “Who would do this?”

Blame the dizziness or the unexpected wave of vulnerability, but I answered honestly. “As far as I know, only one person in this world wanted me dead. He told me every day of our marriage... except on the day someone shoved him down the stairs.”

Richmond Fucking Dougherty.

Elias frowned. He’d been doing that nonstop for the last five minutes but this time showed more curiosity than concern. “Does not saying the words that day mean something?”

“I left the house and went to the diner because he was working, and I needed some air.” But that wasn’t all. There was the part I always left out of the story because I had to... until now. “And because his mood had changed. Overnight he switched from shitty to conciliatory. He made me coffee when I got up, which I didn’t drink because I’m not a dumbass. Even talked about us going for a ‘nice’ drive and enjoying dinner out at a restaurant near the water.”

“So?”

The potential for poisoning or drowning struck me as obvious, but the unexpected niceness was the true tip-off. All of a sudden the blackmail I had on him didn’t seem to matter. Hehad no way to win the battle. Despite that, until the very end, the sick little narcissist looked for a way to work around the evidence I hid. He never believed he’d fail. He didn’t think losing was a possible outcome for him. Ever.

On that last day something clicked in his warped brain. Between the rumors he’d planted and those “accidents” of his, he must have believed he’d flipped the advantage in his favor. He was wrong.

“Because I knew from the way he was acting that he planned to kill me and the countdown had started.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Him

Five Months Earlier

For an uneducated sewer rat, Addison could weave through the truth and issue warnings like a pro. She’d honed and targeted her skills, developing into a conniving monster in a very sexy wrapper. Long legs. Banging body. Knockout face that likely led more than one poor sap to his financial doom. Yeah, someone had trained her well.

Addison sat across from me in a dive bar in New Haven, Connecticut, about an hour outside Rye. The dark interior and scent of cheap beer fit her. Refusing to meet me alone, in private, showed her vulnerability. Behind all that tough talk lurked a woman—maybe five-six and sturdy—who jumped back and forth over a line she shouldn’t cross.

She slid her finger over the rim of her glass. Water. Smart move. Keeping control of her mind and the drink at all times—even smarter.

“This is not a negotiation, Richmond. I don’t care if you don’t like my marriage terms.” Her voice stayed steady. Clear. Forceful and commanding without yelling. “You only succeeded in selling your convoluted hero tale for this long because no one was alive to stop you.”

So confident but her sarcastic bullshit would stop when I choked the life out of her. Watching the light leave her eyes would be the best day I’d had in a long time. But it was imperative I find her supposed trove of evidence first. Neutralize her, then make her disappear. That meant outsmarting her, which would happen. I just needed to find the right pressure point to squeeze.

She brought this on herself. She was to blame.

I tried one last time to give her an ending that left her alive and mostly breathing. “Be reasonable. No one is going to believe you.”

“You do.”

That damn map. Seeing it clouded everything. I’d watched Cooper burn it decades ago on the night before the world went wild. Unless he didn’t really get rid of it because he wanted leverage. Not trusting me would have been out of character for Cooper. Wise, but not who he was, especially at the end when I had him turning in circles under a flurry of punishing verbal blows about Dad’s unreasonable demands and Mom’s refusal to forgive any slight.

I reached for the tone Kathryn once claimed to love because she said she’d found it reassuring. That was before she went to all those charity meetings and discovered the concept of gaslighting, a word she threw at me so often she acted like she’d invented it.

But the woman in front of me wasn’t easy-to-satisfy Kathryn. Addison was a completely different type of beast. Still a woman and easy to train, so I steered her where I needed her to go. “There’s a simple way out here, Addison. Let me help you find it.”

She snorted. “Does that condescending crap work on other women?”

The fact she’d followed me for months, studied me, sent afresh bolt of rage burning through me. “Women like money. You like money. It’s what motivates you.”

“Money is your thing. That’s what caused all of this. Your obsession with hoarding things and cash.” Addison sighed. One of those long, exaggerated sighs aimed at causing maximum annoyance. “Your mommy and daddy were loaded but they didn’t believe in handouts.”

I would not do this. “Don’t talk about my parents.”

But she pushed on in that singsong voice. “They weren’t impressed with your entitled behavior, so they cut you off. The plan was to teach you a lesson by making you get a job to cover your upcoming college expenses, even if that meant switching to what you considered to be a lesser school or attending part-time. Potentially, a huge embarrassment for you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

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