Page 89 of Chad's Chase
Tic.
Tic.
“She’s dead.”
I sat up straighter, not wanting to believe what my mind was screaming at me:He killed her! He killed her! He killed the woman he was in love with! His being in love with you does not exempt you from his maleficent stabs in the back. “What—how? Who?”
Tic.
Tic.
TicTicTic.
Tic.
“I killed her.”
Oh…God… He was…he was unredeemable. Pure evil.
The haze of madness and stupidity I’d been floating around in dissipated all at once. And suddenly I wanted out of that car, away from him. Rational sound of judgment returned, and the only thing I could think about right then was “run, run, run”.
Ah, Jhay, what about “I’m yours. To kill or to love”?my mind jeered at me.So quickly you change your tune?
“Why, Chad?” My voice was a shaky wisp of hot air. “Why?”
Emitting a sigh loud enough to be heard over Eminem’s spitfire rapping, he leaned his shoulder further into the door. “Remember when I said I signed my legacy over to my father for my freedom?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I also did it for her.” His voice was so still. “We never stopped fucking. Even while I was being punished. Pavel got tired of it and stripped her of everything he’d given her, so she was moving back to the States. I wanted to take her, save her.”
“Yes, I get it, because youlovedher.” So why kill her?
TicTic. “She’d known I was the inheritor of my family legacy, but what she didn’t know was that I gave it all up for my freedom.”
I unsnapped my seat belt and turned in my seat to face his direction, pulling my feet up and tucking my hands between my thighs. “And?”
“When we got here, we were living with my aunt—the same one you killed.” He added the latter with a gritty edge. “My aunt was well-off, with a house too grand for just a family of three, so she was overly happy to have us there with her. But Liz wasn’t. She wanted to know why we were living with my aunt when I was supposed to be rich. I eventually told her the truth.
“She changed after learning I was broke. But still stayed with me because she had no family; had grown up in foster care. Was probably regretting ruining the luxury she had with my uncle, for me. She was after all six years my senior, mooching off her eighteen-year-old boyfriend’s aunt.”
His free hand went up and tugged the cap lower. More hiding. “She became friends with another young, pretty trophy wife to a real estate mogul who resided in the same gated community my aunt did. Before long, she was sleeping with the mogul behind her friend’s back. My aunt tried to warn me a couple of times, but I didn’t believe her. Until one night Liz left and never came back. Her friend came by our house some time after, crying. The mogul was divorcing her and moving Liz in.”
“What a selfish, traitorous bitch,” I said, face contorted in disgust. “So that’s why you killed her?”
He shook his head no. “That was my first instinct, yeah. I was hurt and broken, fucked up for a while. But at that time, I hated what my father had turned me into so I was rebelliously trying to suppress all they taught me in training. The whole ‘kill first, face the consequences later’ MO. So I sucked it up and let her go.”
What? “I don’t understand. How did—”
“A year later, I got a visit from Grandad’s lawyer,” he carried on, letting me know it wasn’t over. “Apparently, Grandad had predicted my father’s actions. Had known family meant nothing to him and that he would do anything, no matter the cost, to manipulate me into signing over the legacy to him. Grandad had known that leaving the legacy to me would plant enmity between me and my father, possibly all his sons, which would lead to me becoming the outcast of the family. And all his predictions came to pass.
“According to his lawyer, Grandad knew I wouldn’t end up with the legacy in the end, so he’d opened a secret account for me and instructed his lawyer not to apprise me of it until I was at least two years out of my father’s grasp. It was exactly two years after leaving Russia that the lawyer showed up.”
His head turned to me now, shades still over his eyes. “4.9 billion, Jhay.”
“Whoa.”
“A small grain comparing to the 57 billion family legacy, but still, at that point in time, that lawyer was like Jesus turning water into wine for me, stone to bread.”
