“You didn’t run a check on him?” Noah asks.
“Actually, no. Why would I? I don’t run a background check on everyone I meet.”
He just nods and crosses his arms over that chest of his, waiting for me to go on.
“We went on a few dates. He showed an interest in me and my family, his grandfather was even friends with mine. He seemed like he wanted to get to know me.”
“You slept with him?”
“No.” I look away for a second. “He seemed too good to be true. Caring, considerate and interested, but he didn’t seem interested in me that way.”
“And that wasn’t a red flag?”
“Why would it be? Unlike my sister, men don’t …” I close my eyes as mortification climbs up my spine.
“Men don’t, what? If you say don’t want to have sex with you, I call bullshit.”
My eyes widen, and I pull my knees in closer to my body. “They don’t. I’ve never been the one to attract attention. That’s fine with me. I know I’m not Seffi or Ivy.”
Noah shakes his head and looks away. “Go on.”
“We dated for a few months. I genuinely liked him and thought he felt the same way about me. He even came to Aunt Eleanor’s funeral with his grandfather. But then things started to change. He began to tell me more about his own family. His struggles. How his family has been shunned and cut off from what was rightly theirs.”
“You felt sorry for him.”
“Well, yes. They’ve struggled for years, needlessly. All to protect a lie and a corrupt family.”
“Your family,” Noah adds.
“You know?”
“I’ve been looking into the genealogy. Lewis’ name came up. Ivy’s been piecing it together from the information the author left.”
“Well, I didn’t know that then. He fed me so many puzzle pieces but never the full picture. All the while, I gave him access and knowledge about us without even realising. Do you know the Cane family in the States?”
Noah doesn’t answer, but the snap of his eyes to mine tells me he’s heard of them. A criminal organisation that my brother kept clean and out of prison for years. “I looked into them. I couldn’t even believe that Landon would work for people like that. All that time away from us, defending people like them, and he comes back here and takes over just because he’s the eldest. Ivy deserves that job.” There’s a bitter edge to my tone that I’m not even sorry about. “Lewis had me questioning so many things in my life. I didn’t know who or what to believe.”
“And?”
“That’s when he told me who his family was. And that all he wanted was a share of what was rightfully his.”
“Let me guess.” Noah leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “You agreed.”
“At first. It didn’t feel right. I tried to talk to Father. And that’s when Lewis changed.” I drop my eyes to my lap and wring my hands together.
“Neve?” Noah’s prompt is stern, and I can feel pricks of emotion at the corners of my eyes. “What did he do?”
“Hit me. Threatened me. Shoved me against a wall and forced the barrel of the gun into my mouth.” The words are rushed and I can’t look at Noah. “I didn’t know what to do. I was frightened, so I agreed to what he wanted. He was after money, so I offered to pay him off, I even wrote him a cheque, but he demanded more. It wasn’t enough for him. He made me set a meeting with my dad to get him to change his will. See, he wanted what was his. A share of the Broderick fortune as recompense.” As I say the words, I can’t believe I let this happen. After everything he did. Shame sweeps over me, and I shake my head, ashamed at how easily I was manipulated.
“It was all Lewis. But he used the information I’d given him over the months to frame me for it all, or so he threatened.”
“That cheque ended up in the author’s account.”
“So it looked like I hired her?”
“And you just let it happen?”
“I didn’t know it was happening, Noah. Not until it was too late. And the whole gun in my mouth was an incentive for me not to argue,” I shout. “I thought I was setting a wrong right – that I was doing the right thing – in the beginning.”
