You Know I Need You (You Are Mine #4) - Willow Winters Page 0,18
her head.
“No,” she says and her voice cracks. “He didn’t really kill him, did he?”
“The coke was laced with enough fentanyl to kill an elephant and the cops are convinced it was intentional,” I tell her.
“I would say I don’t think James is capable of that,” Sam murmurs with sad eyes. As she speaks, her breath turns to fog. “But he’s done things before …”
“Things like what?”
“He’s choked me, thrown me against the wall. He’s threatened me in the past. But he’s never …” Her eyes become glossy as she says, “I didn’t think he would ever do it.”
“You think he killed Tony? Do you think the threat was a real one?”
She nods her head once, a frown marring her face as she gets choked up. “He said it was for you,” she speaks softly, her eyes flicking from me to the cars passing behind us. The chill of the breeze bites down to my bones as her words sink in.
It was James, and the coke was intended to kill me, not his client.
I don’t give her a response in the least, hiding the anger as my heart thuds hard in my chest at the confirmation of what I already suspected.
“What did I do?” I ask her.
“It’s because of me,” she says and her voice cracks.
“You didn’t do this.”
“You don’t understand,” she says, gaining more composure and wiping under her eyes as the wind whips between us and forces her hair behind her. “He wants me to give him everything in the divorce. The properties, our investments, the business, he’s not budging on any of it.”
“I thought it was finalized?”
She shakes her head and says, “I pushed back.” Her words come out hard. “He’s pushed me around for so long and he thought he could just get rid of me and throw me away like he did his first wife. But I made the company what it is today.”
“So why go after me?”
“To prove a point.”
“And what point is that?” I ask her.
“That he could eliminate whomever he wants.”
Anger narrows my gaze as I tell her, “He missed his shot.”
“He’ll do it again,” she says, “and I’m scared.”
“It’ll be all right,” I tell her although I’m not sure it will be. I’m already trying to figure out how to end this. All roads lead back to James and the only thing I need to know is the fastest and safest way to put that asshole six feet in the ground.
“Please help me, Evan,” she begs, and her voice is rife with agony. “I don’t know where to go or what to do.”
“The police,” I tell her and it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever thought of going to them. “You can tell them everything. Tell them he threatened you with that.”
“He has them in his back pocket,” she says bitterly then adds, “You know that. Did they tell you anything?”
I shake my head and say, “Only that the coke was laced enough to kill. It was made into a murder weapon.”
“Oh, God,” Samantha says then lets out a gasp and hunches forward slightly. I feel the need to put my arm out to steady her and she clings to me.
A moment passes in the wintry cold, where I think back to a few times we’ve gotten out of tight spaces. I thought a client here and there would go to trial, but they never did. I didn’t think it was because of James, though. I thought they didn’t have enough evidence.
“He’ll go down for what he did,” I assure her as one name and one face come to mind. Mason. Jules’s husband. He’s gotten off for murder, just last month. There’s more corruption in this city than there are tourists. Mason knows it as much as I do and I can trust him.
He killed his father, and everyone knows it. Well, the whispers in certain circles are sure of it.
He’s from a different world than me, but I know him from back in the day. Back when both of us were a little too eager to cut loose. I helped him out back then and never called in the favor I’m owed. I haven’t spoken to him since I split up a fight a few months ago.
He owes me for that too. And Mason’s the type of man who pays his dues.
“What are you going to do?” she asks. Samantha scoots closer to me, almost too close, and I take a step back.