The Maid's Diary(86)
Her eyes are flint. “Do it,” she says.
He inhales and asks Kat for her account details. She gives them. He enters the information, punches in the amount. He hesitates, then hits “Transfer.”
“Thank you, Jon.” Kat reaches for the laptop. She seats herself and taps away on the iPad.
“What are you doing?” Jon asks.
“Just transferring it to my offshore account. Don’t worry. Like I said, I did go into the bank ahead of time and clear all the details with my account manager. The bank is anticipating the transfer. Just imagine how much you might have had to pay in child support, education, medical costs. Not only for my baby if it was proved to be yours, but for Charley’s, too.” She hits a final button, glances up. “Or if I sued you in civil court, as I still can do, especially with this evidence now, I reckon that given what you did to me, how you destroyed my physical health, threatened my parents, the ensuing mental trauma, the stress, the loss of my own education and a chance for me to earn a more lucrative living, I’d get more than nine hundred K. Plus you’d incur legal costs. And there would be the press. So much press. Imagine the headlines: ‘Gold medalist, national ski hero, ex-Olympian, admits to gang-raping Whistler schoolgirl with members of ski team.’ Then he and his girlfriend’s family—TerraWest founder Labden Wentworth and top Realtor Annabelle Wentworth—tried to thwart justice? Consider this a simple solution.” She holds his gaze. “Consider this the justice that the system denied me.”
She checks her tablet. “There, it’s gone through. How about we drink to that?” She reaches for her glass and holds it up. “Cheers.”
“Will that be all?” Daisy asks.
Kat angles her head. “That’s all.”
“Can we go?” Daisy asks.
Kat holds her hand toward the door. “Be my guest.”
“I swear, we’re not done here,” Jon says.
“Maybe you aren’t,” Kat says quietly. “But I am.”
DAISY
October 31, 2019. Thursday.
Three hours and forty-one minutes before the murder.
Daisy sits like a stone as Jon drives. The wipers clack across the windshield. Fog is thick as they near the bridge.
“What did she mean, ‘Maybe you aren’t done, but I am’?” Jon says.
Daisy clenches her teeth and fists her hands in her lap. Her pulse is high. Too high. She’s not going to do this now. Because she is done. She should’ve been done with Jon when Charley happened. She was stupid. Cognitive dissonance—that’s what it was. She wanted to believe something different, but men like Jon don’t change their spots.
They just learn. They evolve. Adapt. They figure out how to be more careful, how not to get caught.
“We’ll get it back,” Jon says for the tenth time. “We’ll get our money. All of it. Talk to me, Daisy. Please, dammit, just say something.”
“You said you were with clients, Jon. Mia? You have got to be kidding me. And you call me a fool for falling for her yoga-mom ruse? Meanwhile some female in lipstick and a tight dress just has to look at you a certain way and you can’t keep your dick in your pants. And what did she mean about those other men?”
“I was set up. I was drugged and set up.”
“Because you’re an asshole! Because you can’t think beyond your dick. You are a weak, vulnerable target. You and your fragile male ego. I—” She swipes tears from her face. “I knew you were lying. Deep down, I knew. But I so badly wanted to believe you. I thought with our son coming soon that things really could change. And this business with a private investigator? Looking for dirt on a colleague? That Waheed guy probably deserves your promotion one thousand times over. He deserves every goddamn ounce of that new COO job. And you deserve exactly what you got.”
Jon swerves as a car cuts in front of him. He almost clips a motorbike in the next lane. He curses violently.
“She sexually assaulted me—her and those men. They drugged me and handcuffed me to a bed.”
Daisy stares at her husband. It’s like she doesn’t know this man at all.
“And I suppose you didn’t go up to her room willingly? You didn’t want it?”
“Not like that, I—” His voice catches. Daisy sees tears on his face. “I don’t even know what happened, Daize. I don’t know if I had sex with those guys. I don’t even recall their faces.”
“Do you see what just transpired here? Do you honestly not see? She just gave you a small taste of your own medicine.”
He slams on the brakes, almost hitting the car in front of him.
“Just focus on driving before you kill your unborn child,” she snaps.
“This is bigger than what she did to me. This is more than just the money she took.”
“You mean the money you willingly gave her when she asked.”
“It’s blackmail. Extortion.”
“Why? Because you could be charged and tried and go to prison if this gets out?”
“Goddamn it, that’s exactly what I mean, Daisy. She’s not going to go away. For all I know, she’s going straight to the cops tomorrow to hand over that footage. That’s all she ever wanted when she was sixteen, to see my ass in prison.”