Page 52 of Final Cost

Lucien sadly shakes his head. “Ravenna was her own person. You don’t know anything about her if you don’t know that. She never did anything in her life that she didn’t want to do. If she didn’t want you…”

“You could have taken better care of her.” Daniel’s voice grows steadily louder. “You could have recognized how special she was.Youdidn’t treat her like a queen.Iwould have. If she’d given me the chance.”

“You could’ve tried,” Lucien says, shrugging. “But she was a bottomless pit. Nothing was ever enough. I doubt you would have been. But we’re getting off track. I assume you’re the one who contacted her in New Zealand and told her that I was with Tamsyn? And the two of you decided it was a good time for her resurrection?”

Daniel pauses. “Yes.”

“And you ‘found’ her down on the beach. After picking up from the airport, I assume,” Lucien says.

“Yes.”

“Because if I’d found someone else to be with, that was the perfect time for her to come back and stick it to me again, right?”

“Yes.”

I want to know something,” I say. I stood quietly for as long as I could, but now I have a serious question. “She turned up with a concussion. How did she get that?”

Daniel stares at me. “She did it to herself.”

“What?”Lucien and I both say.

“She wanted me to do it,” Daniel says. “I refused. I wasn’t going to hurt her. So she found a rock. Hit herself on the head. The rest is history.”

Lucien and I exchange an astonished look. If we ever needed additional evidence of how psychopathic Ravenna was, this is surely it.

“I still don’t get it,” Lucien says. “What was her game plan?”

Bitter laugh from Daniel. “Funny you should ask. Ravenna’s game plans were like the weather. You get something else every couple of days or so. Withyou? She wanted to win. To ruin you however she could. To make sure you didn’t live happily ever after with some other woman. Withme? She pretended that her game plan was to come back and finally get a divorce. Get as much money from you as possible. So that she and I could finally be together.”

Lucien can’t hold back a startled laugh. “You believed that? I’m sure she wanted to ruin me if all else failed. But she was scheming hard to get back with me the whole time she was here.”

Daniel’s ugly smile stretches. “That became evident.”

“So she strung you along,” Lucien says. “I’m not surprised. She was good at that. Until…?”

Daniel’s expression closes off. His eyes go flat again. Dead. It’s like someone siphoned a man’s soul from his body. “Until the night I met her on the beach to confront her about setting the fire.”

“Wait,” Lucien says. “Where did she go when she disappeared after the fire and the police were looking for her?”

“She stayed in the house my grandmother left me when she died last year. It’s about ten minutes away,” Daniel says. “We used burner phones.”

Lucien seems startled. “I didn’t know you had a grandmother nearby. Or that she’d died.”

Daniel shoots him a scathing look. “So much for me being like family, eh?”

Lucien’s face floods with color.

“Shall I continue?” Daniel says. “I had no idea Ravenna was going to try to kill Tamsyn when I let her back onto the estate. I thought she just wanted to talk to you. Anyway, that night on the beach, I pressed her about when she and I were finally going to be together.”

“And…?” Lucien prompts.

“And she laughed at me.Laughed.”

Daniel’s face crumples. He suddenly seems so bewildered and looks so heartsick. Ravenna took his mind and well and truly fucked it. Under other circumstances, I’d probably feel sorry for this man who wasted years of his life worshiping a woman who turned out to be a monster. But now I find myself experiencing a perverse feeling of satisfaction. This ungrateful SOB thought he could smile in Lucien’s face, stab him in the back by running off with his wife and live happily ever after? Only to realize, far too late, that Ravenna made a fool of him?Good. It’s a pleasure to see the scales fall from his eyes. This is exactly what he deserves.

“What happened then?” Lucien says.

Daniel shakes his head, his unfocused gaze resting on the floor as he absently taps the pistol against his thigh. “She told me she’d fucked Winwood. And that I was the last man on earth she’d ever have sex with.Me.” He uses the gun to tap his chest, looking more and more unhinged. “After she told me I was the best friend she’d ever had. After she promised we’d betogether.”

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