Page 70 of I'm Not Done with You Yet

She rolls her eyes and takes another big swig. “Yeah. Misogyny in da house!” she crows. God, I hate her. And I know it’s hate, not fear or anxiety, Kathryn. “Yeah, my parents are total fucking misogynists. Didn’t think I could handle it. But I’m showing them. They’re pretty fucking impressed with me right now, I can tell you that.”

“I’m sure they are.” I laugh along with her, then widen my eyes so I look impressed. “How are you managing everything? It must be so tough jumping in when you know nothing about the company. I mean, I don’t even know the first thing about running a company, and with one as large as yours—”

“Girl, I’ve been preparing for this moment for all of my fucking life!” she hoots.

My heart stutters, screeching to a halt. Oh god. I try not to show it, try to recover. “Um, what do you mean? Preparing for what?” Quickly, I lean forward and refill her drink. She’s almost finished the whole bottle. Two whole Ambiens plus wine. This is it.

“Every goddamned day I go to the office. He thought I was just there to gossip with the employees.” She snorts. “Like I would ever be friends with those nobodies. I went in for years, learning as much as I could. Taking control of projects behind his back. Did he notice?” Another swallow of wine. “Fuck no. My idiot brother. He thought he was soooo great. Didn’t even know his own fucking wife was poisoning him.” She laughs, an ugly, jagged sound.

I frown. This isn’t what I came here for. Thalia, were you lying after all? The thought is a cold one. I flinch away from it. Ani’s lying. But she can’t be, not when she’s this drunk. This drugged. She can barely even keep her eyes open. Only the adrenaline of finally telling her story to someone is keeping her awake. “What do you mean, poisoning him?” I say in as calm a voice as I can muster. Mustn’t alarm her now.

She gives me a cunning sideways glance. “Jane, Jane, keep up,” she says in a singsong voice. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t we go over this already? Caffeine, Jane!” she cries at my blank face. “Remember?”

My stomach plummets. Thalia was lying. She’d sent me out on a wild-goose chase, and for what? Just for fun, I guess. One last practical joke from prison. Ha, very funny. I’m ready to call it a night. I put my glass down and start fiddling with my purse.

“So I just gave the final push,” Ani says.

My head shoots up, my breath caught in my throat. “What?”

She gave a sloppy shrug. “She was taking so. Fucking. Long. I had known from, like, a year ago what she was doing, and I kept waiting for her to seal the deal, but she never did. What the fuck, right?” she says angrily. “So I got a bit impatient—you get it, don’t you? She was just stringing me along, teasing me the way she loved to tease those guys in Oxford. Do you remember those days? God, she was such a slut.”

“Stringing you along? Did she—did you two plan this?”

“God no. But part of her must have known that I knew. It wasn’t like she was being that subtle about it. She always thought she was so smart.” In a high-pitched, squeaky voice, Ani says, “Look at me, I’m Thalia, I’m Miss Perfect!” She laughs again and drains her glass.

“So you—you killed—you, uh—”

“I gave him an extra big dose of caffeine, right before Thalia left for her stupid writers retreat. He had his heart attack pretty quickly after that. Went into a coma, blah, blah, blah. Well, you know the rest. RIP Koko.”

I can hardly believe what I’m hearing, the words are so horrifying, coming out of her lipsticked mouth so casually. She’s sick, her mind nothing but a twist of vipers. I can’t get away fast enough. But somehow, I manage to make myself stay, gripping the stem of my wineglass so hard that my skin is stretched taut over my knuckles. I nod and smile, smile and nod as though she hasn’t just admitted to murdering her own blood, her only brother.

Then I think about the other beautiful monster, the one who is currently behind bars, the one I’ve been obsessed with for so long. I think about how Thalia has played me, pulling my strings so expertly, a puppet master putting on a show for everybody. I should hate her, and part of me does, but the other part of me can’t deny how alive she makes me feel. Even when she’s using me and discarding me like an old toy, the nearness of her alone is enough to ignite something inside me. I think about what I wrote that day in Montauk, after just a couple of days of being near Thalia. I’d read the words over and over again, and I can’t believe that they were written by me. So powerful and incisive. Not the writings of a midlist author.

No, this situation isn’t as straightforward as I had thought, and my opponents are both deadly and probably slightly insane in their own ways. But, with a start, I realize that I have something over both of them.

All my life, I’ve grappled with my identity. Always different. Never fitting in, not even into my own skin. But maybe that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I’m not my mother nor my father.I am neither like Thalia, nor am I like Ani. In this deadly game of cat and mouse, I am neither cat nor mouse, but something else entirely. Something unexpected. My own person. I feel the change spreading over me like warm honey, settling my bones into my new skin. I look down and gently swirl the wine in my glass.

And I think hard about my next move.

32

Thalia

Jane came through. I can’t quite believe it myself, and I’m still not sure how she did it, but there you go. Sometimes, old dogs can learn new tricks. The moment I’m freed, I slip back into my old clothes with a sigh of relief—there is no silk or cotton in prison wear—and order an Uber back to the penthouse. I’m already imagining a long, hot shower with the most luxurious soaps and ultra-moisturizing conditioners, but when I get there, I’m faced with Mama and Papa, tearstained and shaking with rage.

“What have you done?” Mama shrieks the moment I walk out of the private elevator. Behind her, two men in bespoke suits start forward. Mama and Papa’s lawyers, I guess.

I stand there and frown at her. As I expected, they rush to fill the lack of response.

“You,” Papa thunders, pointing a stubby finger at me, “you framed her. You framed our only daughter.”

At this, I raise my hands and twist my expression into amixture of hurt and horror. “I didn’t. I’m sorry, Papa, Mama, I know this is hard for you, but the truth is that Ani poisoned Ivan. Your daughter killed your only son.” I know I didn’t have to say it quite like that, but it’s honestly a treat to be able to spell it out for them, to twist that knife in their chests. And the look on their faces at those words... chef’s kiss.

“You framed her. You killed our son and then you framed our daughter!” Papa says. He is very repetitive, which bores me. Now that I’ve dealt the final blow, I’m ready for them to be out of my sight.

“Please don’t fling around such accusations,” I say. “I understand you’re hurting right now, but I must protect myself.” I glance at their lawyers, who catch my drift and whisper urgently in their ears. That’s right, motherfuckers, I can be a litigious bastard, too, now that I’m about to inherit Ivan’s massive wealth.

Mama scoffs and shoots her lawyer a murderous glare before turning her fiery gaze back to me. “You are not getting a single cent of Ivan’s money.”

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