His jaw practically unhinged. The crystal wine glass slipped from his relaxed fingers, shattering against the imported mahogany floor, the dark red vintage pooling around his expensive loafers like blood.
He had expected to see Katherine Sterling written in my neat, predictable handwriting. Instead, staring back at him in elegant, deliberate cursive was the name Evelyn Thorne.
“Evelyn…” he choked out, his charming, perfectly practiced facade crumbling into absolute terror. “How… how do you know that name?”
Evelyn Thorne was his first wife. The one who had mysteriously drowned on a secluded beach during their honeymoon ten years ago. The one whose massive life insurance policy had paid for his new identity, his tailored suits, and his flawless new life.
I took a slow, savoring sip of my Pinot Noir, enjoying the silence. “My father was a very thorough man, David. Or should I say, Thomas?”
He took a frantic step backward, his hip slamming into the edge of the marble island.
“Dad knew you were a parasite the moment you stepped into our home,” I continued, my voice steady, completely devoid of the fragile grief I had been feigning in Sarah’s office for the last month. “He hired the best private investigators money could buy. They found Evelyn’s sister. They found the glaring discrepancies in the old police reports. And most importantly, they found the offshore accounts where you’ve been stashing your life insurance payouts.”
“Katie, listen to me, you have to understand—” he stammered, raising his hands in a pathetic gesture of surrender.
“I understand perfectly,” I interrupted, gesturing with my glass toward the paperwork trembling in his hand. “That isn’t a power of attorney, Thomas. That’s a written summary of your fraud and Evelyn’s murder. And by holding it, you’ve just stamped your own fresh fingerprints all over a document tying you to your old aliases.”
His eyes darted wildly toward the patio doors, calculating the distance to the driveway.
“Don’t bother,” I said softly. “Sarah isn’t waiting for you to run away with her. My father’s lawyers paid her a visit an hour ago with a dossier outlining her complicity in your past cons. She’s a pragmatist, Thomas. She took an immunity deal. Right now, your ‘soulmate’ is sitting in a precinct, singing like a canary to the district attorney.”
The faint wail of sirens began to echo in the distance, a sound that grew rapidly louder, cutting through the quiet, isolated wealth of the estate grounds.
I walked around the counter, my heels clicking sharply against the wood, and delicately plucked the document from his frozen, bloodless grip.
“You thought you were playing a grieving, naive widow,” I whispered, smiling coldly as the flashing red and blue lights began to strobe through the sheer curtains of the front windows. “But you weren’t my husband anymore. You were just one last piece of trash my father left me to dispose of.”
