But my pulse stayed rapid because of something else he’d said. “She had a bodyguard to prevent her from leaving? Like Tabor is for me?”
“No. Tabor is one of my men. He’s here to protect you. I swear. You can and always have been able to leave whenever you want.” His body language said he was sincere. And before we’d come on the trip, he’d seemed reluctant when he’d offered me access to a vehicle and encouraged me to go into Jackson if I wanted. Was his reluctance rooted in the memory of what he hadn’t given Amber?
“The man who watched her wasn’t even hired for that in the beginning. He was one of my uncle’s guys, and he got her coke now and then. I didn’t find out until later that it was a lot more than now and then, but that’s not the point.”
One of his uncle’s guys. Was Michelis his uncle, then? He was older than Reeve by nearly twenty years. Was that how Vilanakis had gotten involved?
“What had you hired him for originally?”
He exhaled before answering. “Let’s just say that Amber did like to be shared.”
“Oh.” Then Vilanakis’s guy had been hired as a sex toy. Having her lover watch her with another man had always been a favorite of Amber’s. And Reeve had been okay with that. With sharing her, but he wasn’t okay with sharing me.
Huh.
Christ, Emily, this is not the time to be finding comfort in anything he says. But it wasn’t just comfort. It was pride. And I’d needed something to bolster me after he’d said he tried to marry her.
I pressed two fingers to my forehead and forced myself to focus on Amber. “You said you threatened her. What with?”
Reeve surveyed his lap. “By this time, by the end of our relationship, she was an addict with no money. It was easy enough to threaten to cut her off from both.” He leveled my stare. “But I considered telling her I’d kill her.”
I gasped, my surprise throwing me backward, and I would have fallen off the bed if Reeve hadn’t reached out to catch me.
When I was balanced again, he continued to hold on to me. “Emily,” he said, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. “Emily. Look at me.” Always the pleaser, I did. “I told you it was the worst thing. The absolute worst. But I only considered it. I never would have told her that. I never would have done that. I loved her. I was desperate and irrational, and, honestly, cutting her off from drugs was a much worse threat to her than death would have been.”
I nodded, wishing he’d let go of me so I could think.
“Emily, I’m telling you the truth. I’m not leaving anything out even though it’s ugly. I’m the same man I’ve always been. You know me.”
I nodded again but said, “Let me go, Reeve.” Because I didn’t know him. Not really. And there was still the end of the story to tell.
He held on a second longer. Then he dropped my hands.
I scurried off the bed and paced the room in long, slow figure eights. Almost the way Reeve had paced the ground when I’d told him my story earlier. He was right – it was ugly. It was hard to hear. But men had done much worse to me. And he didn’t actually say it to her. If I believed him, he didn’t.
It was enough rationalization for me to stay in the room. “What happened next?”
“Nothing,” he said. “After six weeks or so, I came to my senses and realized that taking away her freedom was not the way to win her back.”
“Yeah, no shit.” I crossed my arms over my chest, tracing the same path on the carpet. “So then what?”
“I gave her the keys to my car. Could you stop pacing now?”
I ignored him. “Go on.”
“She took it and her bodyguard and left. Emily, come sit with me.”
“No.” I needed the end. Needed to hear the worst part. The part where he changed his mind and asked his uncle, or his uncle’s guy, to end her life. “She took your car and left and then what?”
“And I haven’t seen her since.” He flew up from the bed and stepped in front of me, halting me by gently placing his hands on my elbows.
I balled my fists and looked up at him sharply. He immediately took a step back, raising his hands in the air in a surrender position.
“I let her go,” he said again, “and I haven’t seen her since.”
We considered each other. I didn’t see someone who wanted to hurt me. Well, not someone who wanted to damage me, anyway. I also didn’t see someone who would lie about a horrible thing he’d done. If he’d ordered her death, though, would he have told me that?
As if he’d tell me the truth – as if I’d believe it – I asked, “You didn’t have her killed afterward?”
“No. I did not. I would never have killed her, Emily. Never.”
But Amber was still dead. There had to be a reason. “Weren’t you afraid she’d go to the police after?”
He let out a short laugh. “Amber’s a drug addict. And not a big rule follower. She’s not fond of the police.”
“You weren’t afraid that she’d go anyway?”
“No, Emily. I wasn’t. This is a shitty, shitty thing to say, but even if she ever did, nothing would come of it. You said it yourself – she has a history, and I have money. It’s fucked up, I know. But it’s how things work.”
His expression turned grave. “If you’re wanting me to be punished for my crime, let me tell you that I have been. First when she left me. It destroyed me. Though, to be honest, we destroyed each other long before she drove away. When I met her, she was a casual drug user. In the end, she was a high-strung junkie. When I met her, I was a man who liked being in control. In the end, I was an abuser of power.”