Page 108 of The Bad Brother
“My mother was right,” Ethan says on an irritated tone. “I already had you. You’re from a good family. Did whatever I told you to—” The corner of his mouth lifts in a nasty smirk like he’s remembering something that would turn my stomach if I could see inside his head. “You signed the prenup without even asking me what was in it. It was a mistake to let you go.”
He's right I did.
When Ethan asked me to sign a prenup a few months after he proposed, I did it without even thinking twice. I make my own money. I had no want or use for his. I wasmarrying him because I was stupid enough to think he loved me, not for his bank account.
“What are you saying?” Tires rumbling over the cattle guard at the foot of the bridge, I feel that cold spike hammering into my spine again. Like before, I’m not sure I like the implications of what he’s telling me. Looking at him in the rearview again, I shake my head. “Where’s Amy?”
“Amy’s gone,” he says before turning away from the window to look at me while River starts to cry silently in her seat. “I made a mistake but I fixed it.” He’s looking at me the way he used to—like he loves me and if I could just be a little bit better, I’d be worthy of him—and I see that it wasn’t me. I wasn’t blind. Ethan is good at pretending. Good at making you see things that aren’t really there. “You don’t have to worry about her anymore. Neither of us do.”
“Oh my god...” River whispers in the seat beside me, face pale. Hands shaking. She’s just realized what I did a while ago. Ethan isn’t going to let either of us walk away from this.
“You killed her.” I say it quietly while River starts to sob in earnest. “You?—”
Pressing the barrel of the gun even harder into the back of River’s seat, Ethan aims a baleful glare in her direction. “Tell her to shut the fuck up or I’m going to kill her,” Ethan snarls at the back of her head, turning on a dime. In response, River lifts a hand to her face and clamps it over her mouth before I can say anything. As soon as she’s quiet, Ethan turns again. “She tricked me,” he says in a tone that pleads with me to see reason. “I never would’ve treated you so poorly if she hadn’t manipulated me—and you wouldn’t have been such a nasty little slut and fucked my brother ifhehadn’t manipulated you. The only way out of this for either of us is to forgive each other and start over.”
Fighting to control my breathing while River sobs silently next to me, I grip the steering wheel and try to comprehend what he’s telling me. Ethan doesn’t plan on killing me after all. “You expect me to marry you?”
“Youaregoing to marry me,” he says, his tone hardening slightly. “Mother has our plane waiting. She had one of the pilots ordained this morning. He’ll marry us as soon as we’re off the ground. There are just a few things I have to take care of first."
Ethan isn’t just crazy.
He’s completely insane.
Cresting the bridge, I can see the road in front of me. The turn off for The Mill is a few miles up ahead. There’s only one reason Ethan would want to take us there. “You’re going to kill Jensen?”
Ethan gives me another nasty little smirk, the mask he wears to cover up the ugliness inside rippling at the sound of his brother’s name. “He always thought he was better than me. He never let me have any fun, growing up. Always tried to tell me what to do.”
I remember the things Jensen told me that Ethan liked to do forfunwhen they were kids and I feel bile rise in the back of my throat. “You don’t have to kill him,” I say, suddenly desperate to find a way out of this—if not for myself, then for River and Jensen. “You don’t have to kill anyone. I’ll go with you. I’ll marry you.”
“You’d marry me to save him?” I can hear the nasty edge in his tone. The trap he’s trying to lay for me. If I sayyes, I’m disloyal. If I say no, I’m a liar. Instead of rushing into it, headlong, I circumvent it as carefully as I can.
“I’ll marry you to keep you from making another mistake. One that’ll follow us wherever we go.” When he doesn’t answer me, I flick a quick look through the windshield at the road in front of me. Rolling to a stop at the bottom of the bridge, I break for as long as I can without making him suspicious before slowly accelerating. “We can pull over. Leave River on the side of the road. We can justgo. Your mother has the plane waiting. You don’t have to?—”
“Kill your boyfriend?” That mask ripples again.
“Killanyone,” I say, willing myself to forget that it’s too late for that. That Amy is likely already dead. That Orion Redford is still fighting for his life. “You don’t have to kill anyone, Ethan.”
“Actually, I do.” He shows me that nasty smirk again. “Did you know our grandfather gave him more than me and he didn’t even have to find some dumb slut to marry him either—he just gave it to him.It’s not fair.” The muscle in his jaw tics, his flat, empty gaze narrowing slightly. “With my brother dead, his trust fund reverts back to the estate. If I kill him, Mother says I can have it.”
When Jensen told me that his mother hated him, a part of me thought he was exaggerating. Even after turning her back on him, and disowning him, I thought what he was feeling was just bitterness over the way she treated him, growing up. What she allowed to happen.
I can see now that I was wrong.
The Mill is less than a mile away. I can see the empty field across from its parking lot. The lone oak tree I parkedunder Friday night, standing guard between it and the road. “Your mother knows what you’re doing?”
“My mother knows everything.” He gives me another glimpse behind the mask before he looks out the window again. “Lyla was her idea.”
Oh my god.
Flicking a quick look at the speedometer, I feel the plan come together in a terrifying flash. Easing off the gas a bit, I watch the needle on the dash drop from thirty to twenty-five. It’s still too fast but any slower and I run the risk of Ethan noticing.
Watching River from the corner of my eye, I wait for her to look at me before sliding a hand off the steering wheel to grip it around my door handle. Looking back at me, her red-rimmed blue eyes follow the trajectory of my hand, widening even further when she understands what I’m saying.
What I’m asking her to do.
As terrified as I am, River drops her hand away from her face on a barely perceptible nod before latching it around her own door handle. She understands that we can’t let Ethan get to Jensen. That we have to do something before it’s too late.
We’re less than 100 yards from the turn off to the Mill.
