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I’d convinced her to remove her parents from her life, and by then, she believed her friends had forgotten all about her. Well, Jenson hadn’t.

From his prison cell, he often wrote letters to her— which the prison guard I paid handsomely to keep an eye on him always destroyed. I had her all to myself, until fucking Edward had to go and ruin it.

Why he couldn’t keep his nose out of my business, I didn’t know. Still, he’d learnt his lesson and was now rotting six feet underground, becoming a tasty meal for the worms. The fucker should have been grateful he got a whole extra month to live. Had I discovered the existence of the USB stick the day he gave it to Charlotte, he would have met his fate then.

It went in my favor that Charlotte knocked herself out when she fell down the stairs; it gave me time to sort out the mess my cunt of a brother had caused. Like removing all the cameras from around the house, and finally getting Charlotte’s wedding dress cleaned; something I had reluctantly done.

Not without taking a dozen photos of the garment first, a way of reminding myself of how it felt when I first fucked her. The photos weren’t as good as looking at the real thing, but it was a small sacrifice to make for the bigger picture.

Living in the elite world I did, I knew people. Connections to those who, if you paid them the right sum of money, anything was possible.

And, boy, did I pay. I paid a fucking fortune for Edward’s pitiful life to come to an end and to make it look like suicide. Of course, Mommy and Daddy couldn’t bear to face the gossip of their precious son killing himself. They paid almost as much as I did for the coroner to state on his death certificate that he died as a result of a heart attack, rather than hanging.

As for the date, it was easy for the best forger money can buy to amend the date on the certificate. It was the same for Jenson’s fucking social media to be faked. The idiot was languishing in a cell, his punishment for attempting to frame Charlotte. If she’d looked at his profile in detail, she would have realized it didn’t exist until a couple of months ago.

I had told her some of the truth in my office; I received an alert on my phone notifying me that someone was trying to access my computer. When I logged into one of the many cameras installed around the house—the cameras I’d had installed so I could watch the little things Charlotte did when I wasn’t with her—I’ll admit I was more than curious to know what she was up to.

And so, instructing Johnston to take me back to the island, I watched, bemused, as she rifled through my drawers and found the police report on Jenson. I wondered what was going through her head as she discovered her friend was locked up for the next ten years, and it was my doing that landed him behind bars.

I knew she’d be furious, but my angel didn’t realize I had done it for her own good. What sort of friend was the boy if he was happy to leave her to take the rap for a crime she didn’t commit? No, the best place for him was out of Charlotte’s life.

But my amusement turned to blind fury when she plugged the USB stick in and started going through the files, and I realized she had kept it hidden from me. My mind churned over where she could have gotten it from, and as we reached the island, my suspicions were solely on Edward.

It was the only possible option, unless Wallace had given it to her, and no way would that happen. Wallace was as obsessed with me as I was with Charlotte. I thought it was weird at first; a professor obsessed with his student, but I quickly learned how to use it in my favor.

Wallace was my alibi when Amy died, and when I gave him the opportunity to leave the college and live with me as my assistant, he snapped at the chance. He hated teaching at the college; he suffered from a condition known as mutational falsetto, meaning when he spoke, he sounded like a pre-pubescent boy.

Students called him all sorts of names, and the teachers weren’t much better. But Wallace had a passion for history and wanted to impart his wisdom to others. Everything I learned about Wallace helped me to mold him into the man I needed him to be.

He took a vow of silence when we moved to the island, knowing that I preferred quiet isolation, and for years, we lived in harmony. He doted on me, knowing what I needed before even I did. When Charlotte came along, he knew how obsessed I was with her and vowed to do whatever it took to keep her in my life, knowing she made me happy.

But I could see the jealousy creeping in.

Wallace was under my instruction to not interact with Charlotte, but he heard every conversation I had with her, every compliment I gave her, every moan I pulled from her when I was devouring her body.

I kept a subtle eye on him as time went on, and when we returned from our honeymoon, it seemed his jealousy had doubled. I often caught him staring at her wedding ring in disgust, or when we kissed, I’d find him watching with hatred written all over his face.

But I always knew he wouldn’t hurt her, simply because it would hurt me, and that’s why I trusted him to keep her safe when I headed to the mainland for a meeting. A meeting that I never made because of the events that unfolded.

Never in a million years did I think Charlotte would have the balls to shoot me, and yet she did. If I hadn’t been so fucking furious, I would have been proud of her. Her shot was piss-poor, though. Instead of hitting me in the chest, the bullet lodged in my shoulder. It still hurt like a motherfucker.

The moment she realized what she’d done, devastation covered her beautiful face, and I knew she instantly regretted it. It seemed only right that I played on her heartstrings, making her realize that she didn’t really want me dead, and sure enough, she collapsed by my side, begging me not to die.

Things got a little chaotic after that, though. When Johnston burst in, I had less than a few seconds to decide what to do. It wasn’t a hard decision. I’d already decided that Edward was going to die for giving Charlotte the USB stick.

The only other person who knew the truth about Amy was Wallace, and as much as I trusted him to take the secret to the grave with him, I figured I’d hurry up his journey to the afterlife.

Johnston—a man who was as callous and nefarious as me—agreed with my plan, and when Wallace rushed in while Charlotte was looking for the first aid kit, I instructed him to drug Charlotte with rohypnol, the same drug I’d been using to drug her throughout various points of our relationship.

Little did Wallace know that when he left the room to greet Charlotte on her return to my office, Johnston followed. I might have felt guilty for ordering Wallace’s death, but any guilt was washed away when Johnston witnessed Wallace intentionally push Charlotte down the stairs after he stabbed her with the needle.

Convincing Charlotte that the doctors at the hospital’s only concern was her welfare was simple. Nothing that a few hundred thousand dollars couldn’t resolve.

Dr. Emery was the only doctor permitted to treat Charlotte, and he’d been more than happy to go along with the story we had contrived, given that the payment he received for lying went to pay off his gambling debt.

The same as the detective who claimed to investigate the incident. He earned himself an early retirement from the force for convincing Charlotte that he had conducted a thorough investigation. The only one who hadn’t been paid to lie was Dr. Merrifield, the obstetrician who conducted Charlotte’s scan.

I didn’t need to lie to Charlotte about the pregnancy, not when my baby really was growing in her belly. It had only been a matter of time, considering she hadn’t been taking the contraceptive pill like she thought she had, but had been taking fertility booster pills.