just close enough.”
“For your sake, I’m going to hope that’s true,” he said. “I know the past few years have held a few detours on things for us, but now is not the time to lose focus, Michael. We have a plan and we need to stick to it, until it’s one hundred percent complete.”
“How much do I owe you for this lecture? Do you accept cash or credit?”
He rolls his eyes, but he slowly backs down. “Now that I think about it, I’m kind of upset that I didn’t get an invitation to your wedding.”
“Would you have shown up?”
“I would’ve tasted the cake.”
I smile. “I thought it would be best if she doesn’t know about you.”
“Doesn’t or didn’t? Is she currently in past or present tense?”
I sigh and fold my newspaper. “Give me the next job and go get on someone else’s nerves.”
“There aren’t any for the next few weeks, since a certain someone completed them all early,” he says. “You can return to doing the ones on your personal list for a while. I’ll be doing some accounting for a few businesses that owe us some money.”
“Noted.”
“For what it’s worth,” he says, standing to his feet and placing a newspaper clipping of me and Meredith’s wedding photo onto the table. “I’ve never seen you happier than when you were stringing her along. By the way, there’s blood on your hands.”
“Literally or figuratively?”
“Both.”
I look down and see a dried streak of blood on the inner lining of my glove’s left finger. A small bit of Rio.
“Thank you.”
He nods and starts to walk away, but then he comes right back.
“In the off chance that you’re considering being with your wife for the long term and telling her everything…” he says, “Like, if you honestly think there’s a chance that she’ll be able to accept you for you once you bare your soul, I want to give you some advice.”
I don’t even pretend to deny his suspicions anymore.
“Don’t.” He glares at me. “You know it’s pointless and it’ll never last. You have far better things to do—An “all or nothing” promise that you owe yourself, and me. If you ever suspected me of doing what I’m suspecting you of doing, when it comes to a target, I would expect you to tell me the same goddamn thing.”
“Even if you love her?”
“Especially if you love her.” He steps back. “You can’t have her forever, and you know it. Get rid of her now, Michael. For real this time.”
Meredith
Now
I’m standing downstairs in the mansion’s basement. One of two places in this house where Michael’s cell phone gets reception. (The other is the living room, and I won’t dare risk doing this anywhere near Michael.)
It’s now or never. This man is going to kill me, and he’s left me in the dark this entire journey. Seeing that guy’s number on his phone let me know that Michael is a part of that “underground ecosystem” and I want to save myself from being a part of that food chain.
My fingers tremble with every digit of Gillian’s number I type onto the phone’s screen. I hit the green icon and hold the phone up to my ear, hoping like hell the call will go through.
Ring. Ring. Ring…
“Hello?” she answers, her voice soft.
“Gillian, it’s me. Meredith. Please don’t hang up. Please!”
The line remains quiet, and for a split second, I think that she believes me, but then she begins to yell. “Fuck you! I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but this shit is not funny! Stop playing your twisted fucking games with me and delete my number! Right now!”
“It’s really me, Gillian.” The words rush out of my mouth. “Michael has kidnapped me. You were right about me trusting him a little too easily, falling in love a little too fast. I’m not missing. I’m still alive, and I need you to call the police.”
I hear her sniffle, so I continue talking. “We played Russian Roulette with a toy gun in our old apartment one night when we both had horrible days at work, remember?” I try to say as much as I can to prove my point, to prevent her from hanging up. “You and Jake argued almost every day when you first started dating. You demanded more from him than any other woman had before. Even though I used to think that you two had the most toxic, up and down relationship ever, I told you that I couldn’t see you