Twisted Love (Twisted, #1)(74)
A thick pressure circled my neck, squeezing. My breath quickened.
I knew what my uncle was doing. He was forcing me to confess—the biggest lie I’d ever told, the worst thing I’d ever done. He wanted Ava to hate me.
And the worst part was, I had to do it. I would give her up if it meant saving her.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I drawled, keeping my gaze locked on Ivan’s. “You underestimate me, uncle. She was never more than a pawn in my game. Why do you think I pulled back after her father went to jail? She was useless to me after that. I admit, the sex was good.” I shrugged. “That was the only reason I didn’t cut her off entirely.”
I saw Ava’s head jerk up out of the corner of my eye.
“Sorry, Sunshine.” I forced myself to inject a mocking lilt into her nickname. “The cat’s out of the bag, so I might as well tell you the whole story. The man I told you about, the one who murdered my parents? That was your father—well, fake father. Michael Chen.”
Ava’s eyes popped, and Bridget finally stirred, her sharp intake of breath audible even through her gag.
“I always knew.” I pushed off the wall and walked toward her. Camo tensed and stepped in my direction, but Ivan waved him off with a delighted smile. He was enjoying this, that bastard. “You think it was a coincidence that Josh and I were assigned to the same room our freshman year? A hefty bribe with the right person goes far, and there’s no better way to destroy your enemy than from the inside. I played the ‘dead parents’ card to gain his sympathy until he invited me over for the holidays, and while everyone was asleep, I snooped. I bugged your house, went through your father’s files…found lots of interesting information. Why do you think his business took so many hits over the years?”
A tear rolled down Ava’s cheek, but I kept going. I’m sorry, Sunshine.
“I dismantled his empire, piece by piece, and you and Josh had no clue.” I uttered a soft laugh even as my chest burned. “This year was going to be the grand finale. The year in which my plan to take down his company publicly and humiliatingly came together. But I needed one more piece of information, one more excuse to search through his office. Then Josh—my ticket into your house every Thanksgiving—announced he was volunteering in Central America. Most inconvenient. I needed another in.” I cupped her face with one hand, knowing this might be the last time I touched her. “That’s where you enter the picture. Josh did most of the heavy lifting himself when he asked me to look after you, but I planted the idea of moving into his house. After all.” I smiled, my heart slowly shredding itself apart. “It’s much easier to make you fall in love with me when you have to see me every day. And you did. It was so easy it was almost embarrassing. Sweet, trusting Ava, so eager to fix broken things. So desperate for love she’d take it anywhere she could find it.”
She shook her head, her chest heaving. She’d stopped crying, but her eyes burned with anger and betrayal. That’s my girl. Hate me. Don’t cry over me. Never cry over me. I’m not worth it.
“That night after Thanksgiving dinner? I found the information I was looking for,” I said. “Your father got desperate over the years as his business crumbled, and he made a few bad deals with bad people. I had it all lined up…the FBI bust, the media circus.” I left out the part where I’d planned to have Michael killed in prison. The jury was still out on whether I’d pull that plug. “But imagine my surprise when you regained your memories. It was like an early Christmas surprise. If I couldn’t nail him on the corporate stuff, I could nail him on attempted murder. And it worked. Except…” I turned back to my uncle, whose eyes gleamed with malice. “I was wrong. It was never Michael. Was it, uncle?”
Ivan’s lips stretched into a thin grin. He bore no resemblance to the man who’d brought me into his house and treated me like his son—or so I thought. It took years to build a relationship and a second to destroy one, and ours had been ruined beyond repair.
Don’t trust anyone, Alex. It’s always the people you least expect who’ll stab you in the back.
“That’s the beauty of it,” he said, even as he winced. I reveled in the pleasure of that small movement—it’d been two weeks; he must be in serious pain by now—even as my heart tore itself apart at the way Ava looked like at me. Like she didn’t know me at all.
In some ways, she didn’t.
“Michael was one of your father’s business rivals when Anton started expanding into Maryland. They’d never gotten along—Anton hated the way Michael conducted business, and Michael hated that anyone dared encroach on ‘his’ territory. They eventually reached a truce, but Michael made an easy scapegoat. It didn’t take much to plant ‘evidence’ that an impressionable teen like yourself would believe.” Ivan coughed. “You’re a smart kid, but your desire for vengeance blinded you. I always hated the man, anyway. He humiliated me once at a party your father invited him to as a ‘gesture of goodwill’—even though I told Anton not to—and I wasn’t surprised to learn Michael’s a psychopath as well.”
“You’re one to talk,” I said coldly. My uncle would be deranged enough to hold on to a grudge over some slight at a party that happened decades ago.
I’d gone to painstaking lengths to ensure Michael wouldn’t know of Ivan’s nor my connection with my father, because he wouldn’t exactly welcome the son of the man he’d murdered (or so I thought) into his home. I’d changed our last names and erased any evidence that would tie us to Anton Dudik. My uncle and I had been born Ivan and Alex Dudik; we were now Ivan and Alex Volkov. I was lucky my uncle was so paranoid—there were few public photos or traces of him before we started Archer Group, which made my job easier.