Page 64 of I Would Die for You

“I don’t care whose fault it is. I only care about keeping Hannah out of harm’s way and it seems I can’t do that here.”

A wave of paranoia suddenly overwhelms me, its current dragging me into a bottomless vortex. “Is this all part of the plan?” I ask.

His brow furrows. “What?”

“Is this what you intended all along? To make me look like an unfit mother so you could take Hannah away from me?”

He looks at me wide-eyed. “Are you completelyinsane?”

“Well, it would make sense,” I say, no longer able to control my rambling thoughts. “Maybe you’re in this together, you and this woman…”

“Can you hear yourself right now?” he says, throwing his hands onto his head. “This is utter madness.”

“I won’t allow you to take my daughter and play happy families with another woman,” I cry. “You’re not going to use my past as an excuse to justify what you’re doing.”

“If you’d been honest about your past, then perhaps none of this would be happening,” he barks.

There it is.All the proof I needed to know how far my husband will go to exonerate his own actions. “So, youdidset this all up?” I accuse. “You dug around and found out what you could use on me to make me believe that I was being punished by my past.”

His eyes stare straight through me, as if I’m nothing more than a stranger.

“Did you think you could unsettle me enough by sending someone to my door—our home—sniffing around for information under the guise of writing a book? Or were you hoping that our daughter being taken by someone claiming to be her aunt would send me over the edge?” I glare at him, digging my fingernails into my palms to stop me from lashing out. “How long have you been sitting on this minefield of information? You and your fancy woman must have been delighted to know you had so much ammunition to use against me. Have you had fun, the pair of you, watching my life fall apart?”

I will him to give me something,anything, but he stands there open-mouthed, caught out.

“You should have got out while you could,” I go on. “Cut your losses and ridden off into the sunset together. But you wanted it all, didn’t you, and you thought by taking me down—ruining my reputation, my standing in this community, bringing into question my ability to be a mother—you’d take my daughter with you…”

He turns and moves toward the door, wordlessly picking up Hannah’s Rapunzel backpack from the kitchen island as he goes.

“Put that backright now.”

He freezes, holding it in mid-air.

“I swear to god, if you go anywherenearHannah, I will track you down and make your life a living hell.”

He turns painfully slowly to face me; his skin ashen-white. “Is this therealNicole Alderton I’m seeing now? Is this who you’ve been hiding for all these years?”

My jaw spasms, fighting to stop the truth from coming out.

He nods, as if he’s finally seen the light into my past. “Maybe the media had every reason not to believe your version of events.”

I fix him with a steely glare. Maybe they had.

31

LONDON, 1986

Cassie’s sure she can feel the tip of the knife in her rucksack as she’s pressed back against the doors of the Tube carriage. She looks through her fringe at the evening commuters jostling for position as they make their way home, none of them aware of what she’s about to do—and, if she goes through with it, how close they are to the story on tomorrow’s front pages.

She’s practically lifted off her feet in the mêlée at Oxford Circus, her feet scrabbling for purchase as she’s carried into the passageway, shoulder to shoulder with the other passengers. Most of the bodies veer off to the Central Line, but Cassie follows the welcome draft up the escalators and out into the open air.

Even though she’s been here several times before, once she’s at street level she’s momentarily disoriented by the chaos of London’s busiest junction. A kaleidoscope of brightly colored cars veer in front of one another, double-decker buses battle it out with black taxis and hundreds of heads bob along the pavement, marching toward her in C-3PO fashion.

“Excuse me,” she says to the news vendor on the corner, trying to catch him between his indecipherable hollers. “Do you know where the Langham hotel is?”

“Two minutes up there, darling, on the left.”

Cassie walks through the opulent hotel lobby as if she’s been there a million times before, her eyes furtively scanning for the ladies’. Once inside, she puts her bag onto the countertop and carefully takes out her Afro comb, working its teeth through her curls. She’s forgotten her blusher, so pinches her cheeks to give them an instant boost of color and coats her lips with a metallic pink gloss that makes her eyes pop.

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