BUT UNCLE Vincent had one more card to play.
“Except for you, Anna,” he said. “You and I have other matters to discuss.”
Sarah and Serena looked at each other, then at me. I thought I could hear their hearts pounding along with mine.
“It’s all right,” I said. “You girls go on. I’ll be fine. Won’t I, Vincent?”
“I’ll see she gets to her destination.”
My destination? A mud pit? An alligator’s gut? As threats go, that one was vague, but not so veiled. Vincent looked at his watch.
“The clock is ticking, ladies,” he said.
It was clear they weren’t going to budge.
“We still have Broch,” Serena said.
Now I was sure her brave streak would get us all killed.
“And you can keep him,” Vincent said, grinning. “Men like Broch are a dime a dozen. They’re meant to be disposable.”
I locked eyes with Sarah.
“Would you get her out of here, please?” I said. “I’d like some private time with Uncle.”
She took Serena’s arm, nudged her away. Nigel shut the doors behind them.
“Please, sit down,” Vincent said. “It’s a shame how seldom we’ve found ourselves with an opportunity to really talk.”
I eyed the dinner knife lying idle beside his plate. I figured it wouldn’t be idle much longer.
“I’ll pay you,” I said as I took a seat. “The house, the cars, the yacht—you can have all of it.”
“Do I look like a man who needs money?”
“I’ll disappear, I promise.”
“Oh, yes, you will. But on my terms. It’s true what I said: I can’t afford to look weak. Disposing of the cook and the maid wouldn’t exactly be a show of strength, now would it? But you? Anthony’s widow? The woman who infiltrated our family and then did her level best to destroy it? I might be merciful, but my mercy has its limits. You’re a cancer. I have no choice but to cut you out.”
He’d stood to watch Sarah and Serena go. Now he sat back down, comfy and casual as though we really were going to have a nice little chat. I took up my glass and drained it. Then I took up Serena’s and drained hers, too.
“That’s right,” Vincent said. “A little anesthetic never hurt. You can swig straight from the bottle if you like. I seem to remember your relations passing one around at the wedding.”
He leaned forward, reached behind him, and pulled a gun from his waistband. Then he took a long, cylindrical object from his pocket. A suppressor.
“This is for me,” he said. “My ears aren’t what they used to be. Anything louder than a low roar and I hear ringing for days.”
He kept talking to me while he screwed the cylinder in place. He told me I wouldn’t escape Anthony so easily. He said any two people who managed to screw up such a good thing ought to find themselves bound together in this life and the next. He sounded as though he was scolding a puppy.
“Do you know who you’re avenging?” I asked. “Anthony was laughing at you. He said stealing from Uncle Vince was like stealing from a senile baby. ‘Big tough guy,’ he said. ‘You have to hold his hand so he doesn’t wander off.’ He joked about getting you one of those toddler leashes.”
Vincent was savoring the moment, taking his sweet time assembling that gun. Something in me had changed tracks. I was more angry than afraid. Maybe Sarah and Serena had felt something similar that morning in the kitchen.
“My mind is as firm as it ever was,” he said.
“That’s what I told Anthony. I told him he was playing a dangerous game, but he didn’t care. He wanted to hurt you. It was more about the hurt than the money.”
“Why on earth would the boy have wanted to hurt me? He owed me everything.”
“Because he couldn’t bring himself to kill you. He wanted you to make the first move.”
Vincent let out a big, theatrical guffaw.
“You’re talking nonsense,” he said.
But he knew that I wasn’t. Beneath the smooth facade, a crack was beginning to open. His fingers had stopped working the suppressor. He was listening. He wanted to hear more. Certain truths would be lost to him forever once I was dead.
“Anthony hated your guts,” I said. “He knew better than to let it show, but he couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t hate you.”
“Absurd,” he said.
He turned back to the task at hand, but his fingers wouldn’t cooperate. The suppressor fell onto the table. He picked it up, started over. He was seething now, struggling to keep the anger down. I decided to go for the jugular. There was something I hadn’t known for sure until tonight—until Vincent said that Anthony was just like his father.
“Actually, it makes perfect sense,” I said. “I mean, you did kill his old man.”
Now I had his full attention.
“I did no such thing,” he said. “And Anthony never believed that I did.”
The second part might have been true. Anthony never talked about his father. He didn’t have much to talk about: William Costello died when his son was only three.
“Then where’s his portrait?” I asked.
“What?”
“At the country house. There’s a great big painting of you. There’s one of your father. But where’s Bill?”
He shook his head as if he was dealing with a lunatic.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy it very much.”
“Is that why those veins are bulging on your forehead? I always thought Anthony was paranoid, but it’s true, isn’t it? Bill Costello was the real brains. He set it all up. He just wasn’t ruthless enough to keep it going. That was your special talent.”
“I’m warning you,” he said. “There are slower ways to die.”
“So one day Billy just disappeared, his body never to be found. You cried so convincingly the cops skipped right over you. They looked at cartels, rival families, even a serial killer who’d been racking up bodies. But never at you.”
“They had no reason to look at me.”
I ignored him.
“You call yourself a man of principle? You’re a fake. A fraud. A con man. You stole your brother’s life.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“‘Brothers kill each other all the time.’ Isn’t that what you said? How’d you do it? A bullet to the back of the head? Quick and painless? Then again, I guess we can never really know about the pain part.”
“Enough!” he screamed, rearing up out of his seat. “I’m going to—”
But as he rose the suppressor went flying, and the gun slipped from his hand. He looked around, confused, blistering with hatred—for me, for Anthony, for himself. I lunged forward, grabbed the dinner knife, and drove it into his chest.