“Other than give her forty grand so she could tell you Lola’s name during one of your therapy sessions? No. And you really shouldn’t have stopped seeing her. She was good for you.”
My eyes stretch and my heart sinks. So that’s why Marriot hasn’t responded or shown up. She was bought . . . just like everyone else. Marriott didn’t show up to my trial to speak up for me when I requested it—didn’t even so much as check in on me. Now I knew why. I knew she was too good to be true. And all this time I thought Georgia had killed her too. I was worried.
“Let’s not pretend you had a conscience when it came to ruining Lola’s life, Ivy. You wanted her dead. She took your parents from you.”
“Why would you do something like this? I barely even knew you and now I’m in here for life! And for what?” I look her over in her fancy attire. “So you could get some of Lola’s money? Wasn’t she paying you enough?”
“Lola ruined my goddamn life, the same way she did yours. But unlike you, I took some initiative.”
“By framing me?”
She makes a tsk-tsk noise through her teeth. “The people in this world can make it a selfish place, Ivy. I thought you’d have figured that out by now. Believe me, you would have ended up in here one way or another. I just did you a favor and got it over with.”
“Why?” I ask, my voice breaking. “Why did you do it? Why me? Don’t you think I’ve lost enough?” I want to cry.
Georgia studies the ring on her middle finger, a red ruby on a thin gold band. “Because, just like me, you were angry. You wanted revenge, but you got stupid and lazy with it. You fell for a man who wasn’t going to love you back. I had to make my move before you got carried away with your own plan to run off with him and the money owed to me. I know girls like you. You don’t share. You think the world owes you. You would have gotten all that money through Corey if he and Lola had divorced and run off with it. You would have left me in a pit—with nothing. I couldn’t have that. Not after all I’d been through.”
It feels as if something has been lodged in my throat. “What are you even talking about?”
“Oh, what the hell? It isn’t like anyone is listening on these crappy two-way phones anyway. I dealt with the Maxwells for fourteen years,” Georgia whispers into the receiver. “I was the one who cleaned up their shit, planned their dinners, and made sure their house was an actual home, but they never appreciated that. Rich people never appreciate anything.” She studies her manicured cuticles. “To put it simply, I asked Lola to rewrite my contract as her household manager and told her I wanted ten million dollars at the end of my ten-year term. I knew her dirty little secret about your parents that she so sloppily covered up and tried to blackmail her with it for the ten million, but it backfired on me. She rewrote the contract and gave me a nondisclosure to sign, but she wasn’t fair with it. In order for me to receive the ten million she knew I deserved, I had to work for her for another ten years. That would have been twenty years too long working for Lola and I just couldn’t do it. After everything she’d put me through, I simply refused, and hell, going four years into the second term was brutal.
“But one thing Lola always did was underestimate me, and we all know with every contract, there has to be some kind of way out, even if it’s nearly impossible to make happen.” Her throat bobs. “There was a clause in my new contract. It stated that if, in the unlikely event something was to happen to both Lola and Corey, my contract would be null and I’d receive my ten million dollars immediately. An executor handled their will and all of their assets. I ran my contract by him and the money was deposited into my account. But you have to realize that in order for that to happen, both of them had to be gone so I could get the money right away or I had to wait the ten more years and continue dealing with her shit. I wasn’t about to wait.”
I draw in a breath. This couldn’t be real. What I was hearing couldn’t be true.
“So . . . anyway, I did some digging. Sought you out. Spoke with Marriott about two years ago to get the ball rolling. . . and from there, everything just sort of pieced itself together. Lola had ruined my life, so I ruined hers.” She pauses, inhales, and then exhales and looks me in the eye. She really has the nerve to pretend to be sympathetic. “I feel bad for you, I really do, but I couldn’t have any of this circling back to me. Lola and Corey needed to go, and you had the perfect motive I could use. Kill the woman who’d taken everything from you. Then kill the man who’d broken your heart. Technically, he was never supposed to break your heart because you were never supposed to fall for him. An affair? Yes, but not fall in love. But it worked out. In all reality, you brought this upon yourself, Ivy.”