Unmissing(67)

Two strikes in total.

That’s all it took.

I guess the old adage is true—if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.

My hands throb as I bend to examine her. Shoving her stringy hair aside, I place my palm in front of her nose. A veil of hot breath covers my skin.

She’s not dead.

Not yet.

My incision throbs, but only for a second, and then I feel nothing. Forcing myself back up, I return to the bedroom. Now that Lydia’s unconscious, I can say what I really want to say to this pathetic bastard.

Grabbing the policies off the dresser, I wave them in his face. “Five million, eh? That’s all I’m worth to you?”

I don’t know if I should be more insulted by the lowball price tag on my head or the fact that he thought he could pull this off behind my back—both are equally offensive in my book.

“Of course not.” He doesn’t blink, and his eyes hold zero fear. “That’s the amount Brian recommended.”

“Ah, yes. The guy who sells us our home and auto insurance. Let’s blame everything on him. That’ll make this go away, won’t it?” I reach for the butcher knife, palming the cheap stainless steel handle. “So Brian, I take it, is the one who told you to take out a million-dollar policy on our two-year-old?”

“Tragic things happen all the time. It was a precaution.”

“Did you take a policy out on yourself while you were . . . indemnifying our family?”

“Of course,” he says. “We’re all covered. You’re blowing this out of proportion. It’s smart financial planning. You’re letting that stupid bitch fill your head with lies.”

I tilt my head, frowning. She’s not as dumb as one might think if she pieced together our entire plan after being back in our lives for less than a month . . .

“How’d she know where we were? You told me you wanted to bring us here to get away from her. What were you planning?” I examine the shiny blade of the knife in the dull lamplight. It’s rust spotted, overused, but sharp enough.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing.” He speaks through gritted teeth as if that might make any of this more convincing—and then he makes a grave mistake. For a fraction of a second, his soulless gaze snaps to his phone on the nightstand.

“Luca . . .” I feign a dramatic gasp. “Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did . . .”

He thrashes, tugging against the zip ties, and then the asshole has the audacity to try to kick me when I snatch his phone.

I tap in his code—our meaningless wedding anniversary—and pull up his messages, weeding through them until I find the last one he sent to Lydia: GPS coordinates along with the words “for your fresh start.”

“You told her to come here?” I slam the phone down so hard the screen cracks in the corner. “Why? Why the hell would you do that?”

“I was going to finish the job.” He tries to sit up, but he can’t. I imagine he’s extremely uncomfortable in this position and his back is probably screaming in pain, but his comfort is the least of my concerns. “I was going to get her out here, finish her off, and bury her under the barn or burn her . . . I don’t know . . . The nearest neighbor is ten miles from here. No one would hear a thing, no one would see a thing. And as long as we keep the property in our name, no one will ever find her.”

“Oh. My. God.” I suck in a breath. “Is that what you were going to do with us?”

“No.” His brows meet and his white tee rides up, exposing his softening gut. When did he stop taking care of himself? When he realized he no longer needed to impress me because I’d soon be dead?

“You were going to kill us all, weren’t you?” I walk to the other side of the bed, pacing next to the window. “You were going to kill off all your problems—literally—and walk away a free and wealthy man.”

I perch on the foot of the bed, mentally playing out this sick fantasy of his, imagining him driving down to the police station in a few days to report his wife had murder-suicided herself and the kids. He’d tell them I’d been hallucinating. He’d spin it like I was suffering postpartum psychosis and everything happened so quickly he didn’t have time to get me the help I needed.

That poor widowed man, everyone would say. And then they’d focus on the dead babies. Because that’s what people always think about in those situations. It tugs at their heartstrings as they imagine what it must have been like for the kids, to die at the hand of their own mother. And then they find it in their heart to have compassion for me because motherhood is hard. Especially new motherhood.

And Luca—he’d play the role of the mourning husband, a man twice struck by unthinkable tragedies. But as soon as that five mil hit landed in his hands, he’d be gone.

“Maybe you’re not as stupid as I thought you were.” I study him for the last time. And then I think of Lydia. He was supposed to kill her that first week. Make it quick. Instead he dragged it out for years as I turned a blind eye, my gift to him. And he screwed her—while he was screwing me, while he was planning a future with me, while he was loving me. While I played the role of his perfect wife, she filled his cup. She was always his satisfaction. “The joke’s been on me this whole time, hasn’t it?”