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“She knows everything she says is being recorded,” he says as we make our way through the doors.
With a nod, he opens the door for me. The room is bright, with a table in the middle and three chairs. Pearl watches me as I scoot a chair back. The chair’s screech against the cement floor bounces off the walls, making me wince as I sit down. She waits for me to get settled. She’s aged at least ten years in the past twenty-four hours. Of course, it could be the unforgiving glare of the fluorescent lighting.
“I’m so sorry, Kali.” She extends her hands across the table, but I jerk back, hiding my hands in my lap.
“Don’t touch me.”
She frowns, as if I just offended her. “You have to know my heart was in the right place.”
Is she trying to justify burying me alive?
I force myself to swallow the knot of bile in my throat as I stare at her in utter shock. No apology can make this right.
“The light of a hero shines brighter from the darkest of moments.” What the hell did she just say? Why is she speaking like that? I replay her words in my mind, hoping I misheard them. “You and my son were meant to be together.”
Nope. I heard them correctly. Paxton was right, this lady is nuts. She doesn’t even sound like the Pearl I know.
My mouth gapes open, but there are no words. Anger digs in and takes root, and I have to take a couple calming breaths so I don’t fly over the table and slam her head into it a few times.
“Let me get this straight…you had me buried alive so I could meet your son?”
“So he could save you,” she says with pep and a smile, as if that changes everything.
So he could save me? Who thinks that way? Who believes drugging someone, locking them in a box, and tormenting them—thump, thump, thump—would be a recipe for romance? Why not let nature run its course? He sent me a pie and then came back to the diner. Wasn’t that enough?
She’s delusional. Her heart is in the wrong place. Wired wrong. Something.
She doesn’t care about her son. She only cares about herself. She left him. She chose someone over him. So, why now? Why does she want to offer me up on a silver platter to him?
Was it the money?
Was she going to wait until we got married and then kill us both so she would end up with the money? Shit. This is a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down.
I see why Paxton hates her.
Don’t kill her, everyone is watching.
“This is not a fucking fairy tale!” I slam my palms on the table, causing her to flinch. “Thanks to you, I have mental and emotional scars I live with every day. Fears! I was stuck in a box, thinking my last breath would be any minute. I couldn’t move. I felt spiders on me. I peed myself!” Not able to keep still, I jump up and start pacing. I stop and turn toward her. “What if he hadn’t come?”
“He would,” she insists. “I knew he would find you.” Grinding my teeth, I spin away from her and stare at the mirror where Paxton and Martinez are watching. Do they find this as absurd as I do? “And you got help. You were better, and you were so happy with my Pax.” Nails dig into my palms as I fist my hands. “But that idiot, Carl, had to mess everything up. He was like a cat who had his first taste of blood. He acquired the taste for tormenting women.”
The tension knots between my shoulders, spiraling up to the base of my neck. A small voice in my head screams at me to leave. Walk out of here because I’ve had enough. But there’s more she needs to say, more they need to hear, and she might not tell them. So, I take hold of the power she’s given me and spin around, determined to get more answers.
“Who’s Carl?”
“My crazy ex-husband. Pax’s stepfather.” Did she just call someone else crazy? Hello pot, meet kettle. “I should’ve never had him help me.”
My eyes close, and I ask between gritted teeth, “Where’s Ari?”
“I swear, Kali, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about that other girl, either. Carl’s gone off the deep end,” she says, her accent heavy with emotion.
“So, Carl is the one who kidnapped me?” I ask, my voice strained.
She nods. “But I didn’t tell him to do all the other stuff. I swear.”
I’ve had to deal with a lot in my life. Mentally, physically, and emotionally, but I’ve survived each time. And there’s no doubt I’ll survive this. But right now, the pain from her deceit hits right in the center of my scarred heart.
She was my friend.
