Page 121 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
“I also spent six months in prison on a drug charge unrelated to my dad’s thing. I was just really fucked up at that point in my life. Connor helped me make all that information disappear, by the way.”
“That’s it. We’re outta here.” Connor strides over to me and waves me up. “Not another fucking word, brother.”
I keep right on ignoring him, encouraged by Tabby’s expression, which hovers somewhere between wary interest and full-blown surprise. I can tell I’ve got her hooked.
“I also caused my girlfriend to commit suicide. I left her without even saying good-bye, because my father blackmailed me into it because he hated her guts, which is why I later blackmailed him about the drug thing, because by then I hated his guts. But to make a long story short, by the time I realized what a stupid thing I’d done by agreeing to leave her, she was already dead. Because of me.”
This is when Tabby’s face takes on an expression I can’t accurately describe, because I’ve never seen it on another human being. It’s outrage, hate, pity, disgust, and more hate. A lot more. With a side order of serial killer.
She shakes her head and begins to laugh softly, a sound utterly lacking in humor.
“It’s uncanny how good you are at that,” she says. “Seriously, you should become an actor. Oh, right—you already are! You get an Oscar for that performance. Wow. Just wow. You really had me going. Congratulations: you’re the fucking bullshit artist of the century.”
Blood rushes to my head. I shoot to my feet. Connor grabs my arm, probably thinking I’m following his directions and getting ready to leave, but I’m not leaving.
I’m fucking losing my fucking mind.
“I’m not lying!” I roar.
Tabby hollers back, “I already know there’s no dead girlfriend, you piece of shit—I checked! You are lying!”
“What the fuck are you talking about? You think I’d make up something like that?”
“I know you did, assface! There’s no goddamn death certificate for any goddamn former girlfriend of yours anywhere in the world, so don’t you dare stand in this goddamn kitchen and try to tell me there is!”
“What? Wait—what?”
Connor, who’d been about to remove me bodily from the room, stops and says impatiently, “OK, what’s this bullshit about a dead girlfriend?”
Tabby points at me. “This douche nozzle told Victoria one of his girlfriends offed herself so Victoria would feel sorry for him—can you believe that?”
It’s clear from Connor’s expression when he looks at me that he’s put two and two together. He says softly, “So that’s what you were so messed up about the night we met.”
Tabby’s eyes widen. “Oh my God, he told you the same story?” She cuts her vicious gaze to mine. “You’re pathological!”
“I’m not a liar!”
Sneering, Tabby crosses her arms over her chest. “Oh, really, fuckwad? Then what was this dead girl’s name?”
My head feels as if it’s a pressure cooker, and my brain is an artichoke being turned into mush. I lose the last remaining shred of my self-composure and shout so loudly my voice breaks, “Her name was Isabel Diaz, and she was the goddamn love of my life!”
The air in the room turns to ice.
Every drop of color drains from Tabby’s complexion. She whispers, “Who told you she killed herself?”
Confused by Tabby’s reaction, and her question, I glance at Darcy. She’s frozen in her chair, staring at me wide-eyed, her open mouth in the shape of a perfect O.
“Her mother did. Why?”
The squeak of horror that emits from Tabby is so high-pitched, I imagine every dog in a five-mile radius just leapt to its feet and started barking.
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. Whatever’s happening here, I have to keep talking.
“I showed up on her mother’s doorstep after I’d been living in Europe for a few years. I couldn’t stay away anymore and was going to confess the truth: that my father had finagled the deed to her family’s farm through a fixed poker game, and made me choose between staying with Isabel and destroying her family, or going away to school and never seeing her again. But I never got the chance to explain myself. As soon as her mother saw my face, she started screaming. She told me Isabel was dead. That she’d shot herself with her father’s gun when I left, and had been cremated. Then she slammed the door in my face. I haven’t spoken to her since.”
Tabby crumples into the nearest chair as if her legs have given out, and raises shaking hands to cover her mouth.
Darcy exhales hard, shaking. “Sweet baby Jesus. The tangled webs we weave.”
