Tempting Perfection

Owed her the baby? No. Mattie’s death had been a tragic accident, but Adriane was insane. I was done. Any shred of human decency she’d ever possessed was gone.

I wanted Adriane to never get out. If there was something else to lock her away indefinitely, I wanted it. I tried to change tactics. “Why did Mom and Dad help you? They hired Jim Santoro. Why would they do that? It was too risky for them. Faking your death, hiding Mattie, none of it makes sense. This is your chance to show me how much better you are than me. Your only shot. After that, I’m leaving and never coming back.”

The dead eyes of a sister I never thought I would see again stared at me, assessing me. It hurt knowing we could have been close like Cameron and I were. I went to stand when I saw the evil glint she gave me. This had always been Adriane’s weakness, the need to gloat her intelligence. “All those years they thought I was reading, I was actually listening. I gathered evidence. I knew one day I would need it.”

“You blackmailed our parents?”

She laughed, leaving me uneasy. “When you’ve helped a notorious mobster do unimaginable things and he dies, leaving you exposed, it makes you an easy target.”

Unimaginable things. My parents had been criminals. All those years I had no idea. The thickness in my throat grew, but I pushed through the emotion. “What about Jennifer and Amanda?”

Sitting back, Adriane cocked her dark eyebrow. “They were easy targets. I preyed on those poor fools obsessed with Kurt. It wasn’t hard to convince them what needed to be done for them to have a relationship with him. Stupid bitches didn’t follow the simple instructions. Jennifer had to be eliminated. Amanda was a crazy bystander that led nowhere.”

She was right. We hadn’t found Adriane because of Amanda. It had been because of our security team.

This was the genius side of Adriane coming out. All those years, she’d been plotting, waiting for the chance to take control.

“Why me?”

Her lip snarled. “Regardless of what happened to you, how much they ignored you, you were still happy. Cameron loved you. Nan loved you. It’s why I had to kill her. Then I saw you that day with Kurt. You were happy. I wanted to take it all away. Between our parents and social media, it wasn’t hard to keep tabs on you. I wanted to take your baby and leave you brokenhearted for the rest of your life, wondering what happened to Dylan. Mom and Dad only care about themselves.”

I gasped as a tear formed. The thought of losing Dylan nearly crippled me. “You were going to take Dylan. You killed Nan?” The words were barely audible. Cameron stiffened beside me and grabbed my hand. He was about to speak when I squeezed it, stopping him. Adriane was going to confess to more. And Nan deserved to be vindicated.

“I put a heavy dose of phenylpropanolamine in her drink. It brought the stroke on. End of story. You should have seen how sad you were. Then you bounced back. Stupid bitch. But taking your child would have ruined you forever.”

Cameron cursed beside me as I held onto the table and took a deep breath. He demanded, “Why?”

“Because she loved you guys. I wanted Sawyer to feel pain. I wanted to deprive her of happiness.”

Adriane was an evil person. I was speechless, trying to form something coherent. “I…you…”

Victory was hers. “Do you want to see all the terrible things Mom and Dad did? How they helped hide people Navarro killed? How they killed Mattie’s father?”

I shook my head. This was too much. I never wanted the details. Information like that could eat at a person’s soul. Cameron interjected. “You have all that information somewhere?”

She huffed. “Oh, I do. In a PO box under the name of my first victim.”

“Nan,” I whispered. Her gloating smile confirmed it. This had to be enough for the police to move forward with. I wasn’t able to stomach anything more.

I stood. “Good-bye, Adriane. You have no power over me anymore. I mourn Mattie every day, and I will for the rest of my life, but it wasn’t my fault. You did take a lot from me. More than I probably know. But you still lost. I’m happy now. Deliriously so.” I nodded at Cameron and stepped away from the table.

“Come back here! We’re not done!”

With that, I turned and walked out the door. This was the closure I needed. And I had taken the control away from Adriane. She yelled and screamed for me to come back as I closed the door.

Kurt met me in the hallway. “You okay?”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Not entirely, but I will be.”

There was so much to process. Nan. My heart ached. My entire childhood was a lie. Adriane’s piercing screams filled the hallway as Cameron emerged, and the guards went in.

I couldn’t tell what Cameron was feeling, so I asked, “You okay?”

“No, not at all.” He put his arm around Monica and said, “I will be. I’m not going to see Mom and Dad. There’s nothing left I want to know.”

“I agree. Let the prosecutors take it from here.”

It would take time for us to completely heal from this, but we would. As we were saying our good-byes, I felt the emotion I had pushed aside bubbling to the surface. But I kept a brave smile on my face so Cameron wouldn’t worry. There was already enough for him to sort through.