"I was the one who told him you didn't want your name appearing in the letters."

I glared at Geraldine, wanting to rip her lying mouth apart, but my hands and feet were bound. I couldn't move an inch.

She went on, her voice dripping with venom. "You lost Dominic, but then you got Thaddeus. I hated you so much for that. They were both so exceptional. Why did they have to want you?"

"So I took every letter between you and Dominic and planted them in Thaddeus's office under Dominic's name." She tilted her head. "Can you imagine how much he hated you after that?"

My head rang like a bell had been struck inside my skull. I finally understood where Thaddeus's hatred came from.

But Geraldine wasn't finished. "Of course, the letters alone might not have been enough. I needed him to truly despise you. So I made up a little story."

"I told him I'd always been in love with him, and that I'd asked you to deliver my love letters to him on my behalf. But you never did. You kept them from him because you were greedy. You wanted Dominic and Thaddeus, and you resented me for having feelings for him."

"Then I told him that after graduation, you performed a medical examination on me yourself, and that you deliberately damaged my uterus during the procedure. That I had to have it removed because of what you did to me."

Her lips curved into a satisfied smile. "I cried so beautifully that day. Tears streaming down my face like rain on flower petals. Thaddeus was furious at your betrayal, and his heart went out to poor, broken me. Everything that was supposed to happen between us... happened that night."

"Honestly, when I think about the performance I gave?" She pressed a hand to her chest in mock reverence. "I deserve an Oscar."

Then she reached down and loosened my restraints. "I'll give you a chance. Go ahead. Run to Thaddeus and tell him everything I just told you." Her eyes glittered. "Who do you think he'll believe? You, or me?"

Footsteps echoed from outside. Thaddeus was coming.

My mind raced, clawing through everything she'd just confessed, searching for the one thread I could pull to unravel her.

"Ahh—!"

Geraldine screamed. Before I could react, she'd grabbed a fruit knife and dragged it across her own arm.

"Thaddeus, help me! Help!"

She stumbled backward, eyes wide with manufactured terror, staring at me as though I were a monster.