Page 39 of Web of Lies
The way I'm tied to the chair doesn't give me much freedom of movement, but it gives me just enough to reach forward and pinch the inside of Shaun's thigh. The harder I pinch him the tighter he twists my hair and neither of us looks away, each of us refusing to even blink. By the time Wyatt stomps over to end our battle of wills, my eyes are burning and beginning to water and I'm sure my blush is a deeper red than it was when Shaun first started this.
Wyatt wraps his hand around my wrist but addresses Shaun. “Take your hand out of her hair. Now.”
A tense moment stretches between the three of us, but Shaun laughs and releases his hold on my hair so fast that I gasp again. I twist my fingers a little before I let go of his thigh, causing Wyatt to glance down at me. “Was that necessary?”
“Yes,” I pull against his hold on my wrist. “Let me go.”
Wyatt watches my face as he slowly releases my wrist.
“What happens if Adrian doesn't have the money?” I ask. “Actually, never mind. What happens if he somehow manages to come up with that ridiculous amount of money?”
“Shouldn't you be more concerned about what we'll do to you if he doesn't come through?” Wyatt counters, curiosity pulling at his expression.
I shouldn't answer him. I shouldn't give them any more leverage against me than they already have. But I'm so tired. I have spent months trying to protect what little sanity I was able to hold on to. Trying to weave my way through all the obstacles Adrian threw at me. Trying to defend my every thought and word against the onslaught of lies and deceptions. Trying to keep the facts straight through my forced isolation. Trying to grieve for my father.
I've been so alone.
And I'm so tired.
“I won't go back.” I whisper the words but they still sound thick as they leave my mouth. “I won't. Nothing you could do would be worse than going back to him.”
“Did he beat you?” Shaun asks quietly.
I shake my head. “No. Adrian wouldn't do that, but sometimes I think it would have been better than what he did do.”
“He starved you?” Shaun asks, sitting down on the couch to face me.
I shake my head again. “I couldn't eat anything. They were drugging me. It took me too long to figure it out.”
“They?” Wyatt asks, going to sit next to Shaun.
“Adrian hired a nurse to take care of me because I was,” I bring up my hands to put air quotes around the words, “too unstable. He made me unstable. He made me crazy. I almost believed him. I think I did believe him for a while. Whatever drugs he was giving me in my food and those damn smoothies made me dizzy. I kept falling down. I could barely walk down the hall. I was terrified to go down the stairs. And that nurse was going to push me down them. I know she was going to push me down them.”
Wyatt and Shaun look at each other and then at me. I can't read their expressions, especially Wyatt's, but I can tell that Shaun isn't taking any joy in this confession.
“Why?” Wyatt asks.
I shake my head slowly. “The only reason there could be is the company and the money that comes with it.”
“He's your husband,” Wyatt says. “Why would he need to drug you to gain access to any of it?”
“It's something my father put into place. Everything went to me after he died and I have to sign off on every major decision concerning the company, literally. It has to bemysignature or nothing happens. It can't be a stamp or a print or a sticker. It has to be my own signature from my own hand.”
“Why not just kill you?” Shaun asks. “Wouldn't that be so much easier than all that.”
I shake my head again. “In the event of my death, everything goes to charity. The company gets parted out and all the money gets distributed to the organizations my father chose. There's a much more detailed way to explain that with a lot of legal jargon, but that's the general idea.”
Shaun looks at Wyatt. “That's why he wants her back.”
“He'll find the money,” Wyatt says, then rubs across his eyebrow as he moves his eyes to me. “What can he access?”
“His own personal accounts. Our joint account.”
“But not the company account or your personal accounts?”
I shake my head.
Neither of them say anything else, both of them staring at me like I hold the deepest secrets of the world. I don't care what they're thinking. I don't care what plans they've got spinning around in their heads. I'm not going back. Lifting my chin, I give each of them a hard stare. “I'm not going back.”
