Page 65 of Ruthless Riches
“It’s okay, Lexie. You know I’d never hurt you,” she replied in a soothing tone.
“But you did hurt me. You stabbed me.”
She lifted a palm. “I didn’t want to do that. You made me do it.”
“I didn’t make you do anything!”
“You did,” she said in an insistent tone. “I know what you’re like. You’ve always been obsessed with finding answers and digging into every little thing. I knew you’d figure me out when you kept looking into Dad’s case. I just wanted to stop you. Scare you away. That’s all. It was never supposed to go any further.”
I blinked slowly. This was one of my wild, crazy nightmares. It had to be.
“Talk to me,” Sascha said softly. “Tell me you don’t hate me.”
I looked up at her again. “Make me understand,” I said in a hollow voice. “Because I don’t. I don’t understand any of this.”
She let out a long, heavy sigh. “Like I said, I know what you’re like. When you kept insisting on investigating the previous Butcher case to clear Dad’s name, I knew you’d eventually figure out what I was up to. I tried to put you off it. Then I tried to warn you. I sent you all those texts. But you didn’t listen. You kept digging. You tracked down the Golden Circle and figured out everything they did. After that, I knew it was only a matter of time until you figured me out too. So I warned you again. I really didn’t want to hurt you, but I couldn’t think of any other way to scare you off.” She paused and looked at the floor. “But that didn’t work either. You kept digging. You would’ve caught me. So then I had to take you away from everything.”
“Oh my god,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I can’t believe it.”
“You don’t need to worry, Lex. I could never kill you. I love you too much,” she said. “But I can’t let you go, either. Especially now that you know it’s me.”
A cascade of tears spilled over my face as she spoke. “Why?” I choked out. “Why did you kill all those people?”
She sighed and looked away. “It’s a long story.”
“I have nothing but time down here,” I muttered, wiping my cheeks. “So you might as well explain it to me.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
I raised my voice. “Try me.”
“I don’t even know how to tell you.”
“Just start at the beginning.”
Sascha bit her bottom lip and looked away again, as if she were staring into the past. “Do you remember when we moved back here, and we decided to get in touch with our grandparents?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the day they visited us at our apartment, and they told us they wanted nothing to do with us because of Dad?”
I nodded. “They were projecting,” I said. “They knew he wasn’t guilty. It was them.”
“I didn’t know that back then. No one did,” Sascha said. She scrubbed a hand over her face. “You know… you were much younger than me when all the shit happened with Dad. It didn’t affect you as much.”
My eyes widened. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m not saying it didn’t affect you. Of course it did. But it was worse for me,” she said. “I was twelve. Almost a teenager. You were just a little kid.”
“How did this turn into a pissing contest over who was affected more?” I asked. “And what the hell does any of this have to do with anything?”
Sascha raised a palm. “Just let me talk,” she said. “What I mean is… when all that shit happened and Dad left us—”
“When he was framed and murdered, you mean,” I snapped.
“I told you to let me talk!” Sascha said, banging a hand on the bars. “We didn’t know that when we were kids! I thought he was guilty. Everyone did. Everyone except you.”
“I know,” I murmured.
