“Shoot.” He pulled out his phone and typed. “We also need to update your will. Your life insurance too. Should be simple enough.”
Her head hurt, a pounding that threatened to overtake her senses completely.
“You think anyone would believe this?” she asked.
“Weddings are the perfect place to plant rumors,” he said. “At first it was just to mess with Nasir. Really twist the knife. Last I heard, the wedding guests took it way further. Now the story is you and I were secret lovers for years, throughoutyour relationship with him. Come morning, the paperwork will prove it. It was a happy marriage, even if it was tragically short. It’s a shame you took your own life.”
His words sent terror down her spine. They should have prompted her to run as fast as she could.
So why couldn’t she move?
“What have I ever done to you?”
“Other than not love me back?” His voice was gentle, tinged with regret. “Nothing. I would have rather been part of your family with you.”
She felt sick. She needed to escape. She took a trembling step toward the door.
Haris pulled a vial out of his shirt pocket. It was empty.
“You’re welcome to try,” he said. “But you won’t get far.”
So that was why she was dizzy. Nauseous. What did he slip into her drink?
“It’s been a pain to plan around you,” he said. “Reza was a particularly tricky complication I didn’t expect. Did you know your mother hired him to look out for you? Seriously. Paranoid much? It was weird from the start. Him and Khaled were friends, but I found it odd he was slotted in at the last minute as a groomsman. I eventually got it out of Khaled, though.”
Reza. A tear slid down her cheek. He had told her the truth. He’d been trying to protect her.
Taking in her expression, he smirked. “Yep, never told you, did he? You really know how to pick them. Anyway, once I realized, I knew we had to get you away sooner than later if we wanted to smoke Nasir out, but you slammed into that cake on the island and spooked my guy within an inch of his life.”
Black dots clouded her vision.Focus, Hena.
“I marry you in secret,” she said weakly. “Then I’m dead.Leaving you everything. You don’t think anyone will have questions?”
“I’m still working out the kinks,” he admitted. “But I’m thinking I stayed with you because I loved you. Through your depression. Your manic episodes. You must have been manic when you fucked up your sister’s wedding. The snakes were weird, but inflicting your sister with an allergy attack? That’s sociopathic. My best guess, at least what I’ll tell the police, is once you came down from your mania, you saw what you did. You were devastated. Because you’re a good person deep down. And, well, you decided to end things. There won’t be a body—too many questions—but the suicide note will lay it all out. Shouldn’t be too complicated. Disappearances run in your family, don’t they?”
Her eyes darted to the windows. The door. Her mind was screaming. Telling her to run. But her body couldn’t. Not now. Not when the room was spinning. Then she saw it tucked in his pocket. The black grip poking out.
A gun.
Her lungs seized. She took a stumbling step toward the front door. Her breathing felt ragged.
Haris clucked his tongue. “So glad I remembered to keep a vial in the glove compartment,” he said. “After what you did to my guy last time, I knew I’d need it. You’ve got bite.”
A shiver rippled through her.
“I really am sorry for this,” he continued. “This isn’t personal.”
This isn’t personal.
The boathouse. The intruder. Haris had sent him.
He took a step toward her. “Let’s get you to bed. You’re going to crash.”
Her vision was blurring.
The memory replayed. That man. His hands clampedaround her neck. How her body slumped against the vanity. He had been there on Haris’s orders.
No. She gritted her teeth as Haris’s hand went to her shoulder. A surge of adrenaline raced through her. She summoned everything within her, and with her last bit of strength, she kneed him as hard as she could.