Page 35 of Final Cost

“Yeah.” Tight smile. “They like to come and watch the main suspect in homicide cases like these. See if he acts suspicious. So that was fun.”

“I had no idea.”

He resumes tapping on the keyboard, looking bored now. “Oh, and I’ve got protesters now. Did you hear about that? They’ve even shown up outside our offices in the city. So that’s fun. If there’s nothing else…? I’ve got a lot of work to do. My personal drama is threatening to tank my family business. The company was worth just over a billion when our parents died. Roman and I worked our asses off. Now it’s worth just over nineteen billion. Well, itwas. Before the stock market opened today. Now it’s on a trajectory to be sold at five cents a share by the end of the week. So I’ve got a long night ahead of me. I still need to speak to Seoul.”

“Okay.”

“Sorry I don’t have time for a quick fuck tonight. I know you hate to go to bed without it. But don’t forget your nightcap. You can take it with you. But do come back if you ever want to discuss why I did what I did or if I killed my wife. The important things that we need to talk about. I’ll be sure to make time forthat.”

15

Tamsyn

I stiffen andwhip back around to face him. “Excuse me?”

“I’m hoping that one day soon you’ll get tired of hiding in your room and pretending you don’t still love me,” he says, staring me hard in the face.

So there they all are at long last. All the elephants I’ve been ignoring. Crowded into the room with us, waving their trunks around and ready to trample us with an enthusiastic rampage.

I’m too shocked to speak for a moment. Too undone by his gall. Until sudden rage consumes me in a white-hot flame and makes my voice shake as I discover that I want this talk and this fight. Ineedthem. And I’m sick of myself. I never dreamed I was such a coward.

“What’s the puzzle, Lucien? What’s to discuss, Mister We Need to Talk? I already know why you did what you did — because you’re as cruel as that psycho wife you just buried.” I almost stop there, but I can’t slow myself down now that I’ve started. The genie is out of the bottle andhe’sthe one who lifted the lid. Lethimdeal with it. “The only difference is that Ravenna was kind enough to try to kill me physically. You tried to kill me emotionally. Which was amilliontimes worse.”

He surges to his feet and hurries around the desk, arms outstretched. “I did what I had to do to protect you.”

I bark out a laugh. “You ripped my heart out to protect me? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to hire those secret security guards of yours?”

“No. Because when she set that fire, Ravenna showed herself to be as dangerous as I always feared she was. But it wasn’t directed atme. It was directed atyou. And I can’t have that.”

I almost choke on the bitterness of my laugh. “Oh, you can’t have that. That explains it all.”

“Have you spend your life as the target of my psychopathic wife? A woman who was capable of faking her own death and sneaking onto my property despiteallthe measures I put in place to keep her away?” A new stillness comes over him, absolute and impenetrable. And suddenly the pyramids in Egypt are more movable than he is.“No. I’mnothaving that. Better for you to hate me but be free to live your life and letmedeal with Ravenna. She wasmyburden to bear. Not yours. Never yours.”

“Well, thank you for all that nobility on my behalf.” I lace the words with all the venom inside me and hurl them at him. “I’ve beenreallyfree as I cry myself to sleep every night thinking about the look on your face when you smashed me like a bug and then threw me away.”

His expression softens as he comes closer, reaching for me. “Tamsyn…”

“And you want to know the funny thing? Well,twofunny things, actually. I knew you were lying when you sat there and told me you didn’t love me.”

“I know you did.” He looks so stricken at the memory that I almost feel sorry for him. “I could barely force myself to get it out.”

“But I also knew— from the second we danced together on the cruise— that you would break my heart one way or the other. I just never imagined how painful it would be.” My voice cracks. I hate myself for it. But I need to get it all out. “In my wildest dreams, I never imagined that anything other than someone dying could make me feel this shitty.”

“I didn’t know what else to do, Tamsyn. I wanted to keep you safe.”

“And I wanted to be with you no matter what!”

“How long were you going to be with me if I couldn’t stop Ravenna from taking another crack at you and maybe finishing you off that time? You think it was easy to do the right thing?”

A new wave of rage makes me shout. Who knows. Maybe the next one will make me pick up a lamp and throw it across the room. “I don’t care about your moral dilemmas. Do you know what a mind fuck it was for me to know you love me but were still willing to stab me in the heart like that? What was I supposed to do with that? And Iknewyou were lying. Iknewit!”

“I know.” His mouth twists until he can barely get any words out. “That’s why I had to tell you that I followed you to Europe. Maybe if you knew what kind of man I really am, that would make it easier for you to leave.”

God. There are so many twisted layers to this pile of elephant shit between us. I want to ask, but it’s like English is no longer my first language and I don’t know what to do with words. “So that was true?”

A sharp nod. “Yes,” he says, staring me in the face.

I don’t know what to do with this information. Any of it. “Well. I don’t know what to say. Other than congratulations on a perfectly executed plan.”

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