Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
I snapped my fingers. “Maybe she found out you were using her nurse to steal from her while you counted the days until she died.” I shook my head, tsking. “I know parents are supposed to forgive their kids anything, but even Hera, the goddess of motherhood, would throw her kid off a mountain for that.
“Either way, you were not going to sit by and watch everything go to me, so you put your plan into motion,” I continued while Sue rolled her eyes. She was really going to stand there and play it like I was spinning fairy tales. “I always thought it was a little weird how everyone kept mentioning the fight, and how vicious it was. It happened just before I arrived, but the Omma I walked in on was weak, dreamy, and asleep twenty hours out of the day. How was it possible that only a couple weeks before, she had enough energy to crush your spirit to dust, but now all of a sudden she was too weak to lift her eyelids?” I held out my hands. “But then I read those invoices... and saw the bulk order of sleeping pills, morphine, and a mess of other hallucinogenic drugs that keep a person out of it, and pliable.
“Reynard was doping her,” I announced. “Carefully keeping her sailing on a river of happy drugs so she wouldn’t know which way was up, and it was all because Omma made the mistake of showing you the newest copy of her will before she turned it over to the estate lawyer. He had no idea you’d been disinherited—confirmed by the fact that he believes he’s been talking to Soo Min over the last couple weeks, and he’s told me all the details of Soo Min’s coming inheritance, when in actuality, Sue doesn’t get shit.
“With the doping going off without a hitch, the next thing to do was pluck your nature-made replica out of Willingsworth and put me in place in time for the party. Because it was all about the party.”
Sue groaned. “Is there an off-ramp from Delusion Highway to the real world? And if there is, can I get off there now?”
“Oh my gods, can you shut the fuck up for five minutes,” I screeched. “I swear, if you ever stopped running your mouth, you’d die!”
“This from the boring bitch who’s been blathering on about nothing for the last ten minutes!”
“It’s not boring. I’ll give you that much, Sue, your plot to kill your own mother wasn’t lazy or boring in the least. You thought of everything,” I threw back. “You commissioned the dress and rented the jewels knowing it’d come with a million bodyguards. You needed Soo Min to have a rock-solid alibi with witnesses and a dozen video cameras on her at the same time Soo Min murdered her mother. Everyone else would be a suspect... except you.
“You stole the guys’ credit cards and paid for that over-the-top, eye-wateringly expensive party because even though you told them you were done with them and wanted out, you needed them to stick around long enough to attend the party and then collect the refundable deposits,” I said. “They were in financial straits. They couldn’t walk away from sixteen million dollars, and if they were staying until after the anniversary party, they had to attend the party—not doing so would’ve looked too strange to all of their families, friends, and clients.
“You left nothing to chance,” I hissed. “Everything from it being a white party to Reynard securing a photographed alibi was planned out. That night, after Reynard left and we were all partying, you slipped out of his locked bedroom out of sight of every guard, killed Omma, and then shot under the bed when you heard the footsteps.
“Alex came into the room searching for the drive, and you witnessed it all. That’s why the clothes and the drive disappeared from under the step. You watched him duck into the servants’ entrance, and then you took it with you, because you couldn’t risk the police finding his hiding place.
“You didn’t want any of us—Rhodes, Micah, Alex, Reynard, or me—to be suspects in the murder. Reynard because he was your accomplice, and the rest of us because you had special plans for us.” I shook my head at her, lips twisting. “You didn’t want to share that inheritance, Sue. Not with me, not with your soon-to-be ex-husbands, and”—I choked, stomach heaving—“not with your daughter.
“That’s why you were waiting for Reynard to officially move out, so you two could come back and burn this place down with all of us inside,” I said. “The cops would come, peel my crispy corpse out of the ashes, compare my dental records, and reveal I was Sarang, and you—who planned to be a million miles away when Reynard started this fire—would receive the devastating news, and then step forward to play your new role of grieving daughter, sister, mother, and widow.”