He paused. Then laughed.
"She won't suspect a thing. Don't worry about it."
The voice on the other end said something.
Clyde laughed again, clearly in high spirits, then added one more thing.
"Oh—the kidnapping. That all cleaned up?"
"Keep those guys' mouths shut tight. Nobody finds out I arranged it. Not that a fool like Deidre could ever dig that deep, but better safe than sorry."
Everything went still.
The kidnapping. He arranged that too.
Part of me had already suspected it was Clyde's handiwork, but hearing him say it himself—casually, like he was checking off a list—something in my chest caved in, and I couldn't breathe.
They kept me in that pitch-black basement for three days and three nights. Pumped me full of some brutal aphrodisiac, left me screaming into nothing, and nobody came.
I'd told myself it was random—some enemy who grabbed the wrong person, a case of mistaken identity.
But Clyde Gilbert had been pulling the strings from the very beginning.
To him, I was just the ugly backdrop that made his idealized first love look even more radiant. A foil.
A tool.
A piece of trash to be used up and thrown away.
I spun around to run,
but my knee buckled and I stumbled back a step without meaning to.
A dry branch snapped under my foot.
Both of them turned at the same time.
Victoria's face went bone-white. She shrank behind Clyde on instinct. "What do we do? She heard everything we just said..."
Clyde's head snapped up, his eyes locking onto me. "Deidre. Come out."
I straightened my spine and stepped out from behind the hedgerow.
Three people facing off under the moonlight. The air between us was eerily still.
"You heard all of that?"
A slight crease between his brows. His voice perfectly calm.
I looked at him and laughed.
It must have been an ugly laugh—I could feel the tears forcing their way up, burning behind my eyes—but I choked them back with everything I had.
"Every word."
Victoria glanced at my face, then at Clyde, biting her lip.
"Clyde... she's the one you're with. I'm the one who shouldn't be here. Maybe you should just let me go."
Clyde actually smiled. "You're everything I've ever wanted, Victoria. Why would I give you up for anyone else?"
"And? She heard. What's she going to do about it?"
He walked up to me and tilted my chin up with his fingers, looking down at me like I was something amusing.
"Right, Deidre?"