“Not necessarily a lecture,” I said with a sigh. “But yes, we did talk about it. And he is right. I never should have left you guys like that. It wasn’t fair of me to do. It was hurtful and broke our trust. And it absolutely killed me to leave.”

“Technically, it almost did actually kill you,” Adam said.

There was no laughing this time, though.

“Where were you going anyway, Lisette?” Rob asked. “What was all of this about?”

I started in on the story to tell Rob and Adam all about everything. All about Naomi, the inheritance, and why I left them behind out of fear that Naomi would use my affections for them as a weapon. Just as I got to the juicy parts, Michael came back and sat down beside me on the bed while the other two guys listened until I was done explaining it all.

“The nurse said that you have to spend another day,” Michael said once I had finished talking.

“But Naomi—”

I groaned. “Will still be a force to be reckoned with after you get out of the hospital, I’m sure,” Michael interrupted me. “You need to heal and then we’ll deal with her.”

“Michael is right,” Adam agreed. “We’ll all stay here with you until you’re released.”

I got the feeling that Michael wasn’t too thrilled with that. I think he liked it when it was just the two of us here alone together. Regardless, it gave us all time to talk and rest, which all four of us needed desperately. When I was able to leave, we would all take one car together. Rob had driven a rental and already called the rental company to come and pick it up. We made a plan to go to Maine together and get the inheritance from my uncle. Hopefully, we could talk to Mark a bit while we were there; and hopefully, he would have some insight or information that might help us deal with Naomi. The only thing that the four of us were divided about, was what to do with the inheritance money.

“I think we should just offer it to your Aunt Naomi,” Adam said. “If that’s what she’s after and it will buy you your freedom from her and let us all get back to living in peace, then why wouldn’t we just give it to her? It’s not like money has ever been a priority for any of us.”

“Agreed,” Rob said as he crossed his arms over his chest, which also oddly enhanced his biceps in the process. “I can tell you that from years’ worth of police force experience dealing with criminals, sometimes it’s just worth paying someone to leave you the hell alone. I hate to say that because it goes against everything that I morally believe in, but there are some people out there who will never stop until they get what they want. They’ll manipulate and evade the system, and half the time the system is corrupt enough to let them do it. Sometimes all it takes to make them disappear from your life is to give them the money or whatever prize it is that they are seeking, cut your losses, and move on.”

“No,” Michael said. “That inheritance belongs to Lisette, and with a huge amount of money like that she could run far away. It’s enough money that we could all get far enough away from here that Naomi would never find us. Why would we hand over exactly what that woman wants after all that she’s done to us, and give her even more power? If the choice is there to take the money and get the hell out of here, I say we do it. What do you think, Lisette?”

I didn’t know what I thought, if I wanted to be real with myself. The guys seemed divided by it, and honestly, I could see the valid points in both options. I just wanted to do whatever would get Naomi out of our lives for good, and it was possible that either of those things would work or that neither of them would.

“I don’t know,” I said listlessly. “I guess I need to think about it some more. Besides, I think we should wait to make a decision on that until we can talk to my uncle. There may be other conditions to the inheritance that we don’t know about yet. Or maybe the amount is different than what we think. I think we should go and get all of the information first and then make a decision about what to do.”

Everyone was at least on board with the idea; a nice compromise between all of us. Besides, it was always smart not to react without having all the information you needed. I’d learned that lesson countless times and I was hoping that I was actually going to stop making the same mistake of reacting instinctively and then regretting it.

When we got ready to leave the hospital, I was still a bit sore and still tired, but overall, I felt good because we were all back together again. The drive from New York to Maine wasn’t that long now and the guys would take shifts driving there. I didn’t really know what to expect when we got there, but as long as I had Michael, Adam, and Rob with me. I felt as though everything would be fine.

However, the tension and discord between the guys on the ride there should have been my first clue that everything was indeed not going to be fine.

The guys were feeling at odds about what the best course of action was, but there was also another tension that was adding to that unstable dynamic. Michael seemed put-off that they were even here with us now, and I had a feeling it was because he knew that in the end, it would just be he and I together.

I also think he wanted to fast forward to that part now.

Even though Adam and Rob didn’t even know that I had chosen Michael yet, I think they could tell that something was up because everyone seemed on edge with each other. I honestly didn’t have the strength to deal with that whole dynamic yet.

I still wasn’t quite back to feeling a hundred percent, and I needed to focus on the matter at hand with Mark and Naomi. After we had dealt with the inheritance money and made a plan, then I would figure out how to talk to the guys about things and get us all in a less awkward and less uncomfortable mindset.

But for now, we just needed to make it to Maine.

3

When we got to my uncle’s house and knocked on the door, it may as well have been a stranger answering it because I didn’t recognize the man who opened it.

He looked like he knew who I was, but the look on his face wasn’t one of close familiarity, which made me think that he just recognized me from a picture that he had seen or something like that.

“Lisette?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

He looked around at the three guys standing with me, and then looked over their shoulders to see if anyone else was behind them. He looked nervous and I imagined that was probably the way his life had been most of the time since he was holding onto the inheritance that his crazy sister was after. I wondered why he had gone through so much trouble for all this time, and why he hadn’t just given it to her and went on with his life unfettered. It wasn’t like he and I were close.

I didn’t even know who this man was.

“I’ve come to talk to you about the inheritance,” I said as I tried to sound matter-of-fact, and not freaked out and exhausted.

“Come in,” Mark said as he stepped to the side.

He seemed uneasy, but I guess that was to be expected considering we were essentially a group of strangers showing up at his door and asking about an inheritance that his sister was willing to murder people over. I would have been uneasy, too; in fact, I was uneasy. We walked inside and Mark quickly closed and locked the door behind us. When we got all the way inside the house, he offered us something to drink and we all sat down around a round wooden table in the kitchen.

Then, he stared at me until it became more than a bit unnerving.

“Sorry,” Mark said when he realized that he had been staring for a moment longer than was comfortable. “It’s just that I haven’t actually seen you in person since the day you were born. I was there at the hospital with your mother. After Paula died, I figured that you would come looking for me one day.”

I wasn’t trying to be rude or overstep by hitting my uncle with accusatory questions within the first five minutes of meeting him. However, I simply wanted to cut to the chase.

“Why didn’t you come looking for me?” I asked. “If my mother had left behind an inheritance for me when she died, then why didn’t you come to find me? Why didn’t you reach out to tell me about it? Why have you held on to it for so long in silence and waited for me to figure it out and come find you?”

I guess that I already knew the answer to that question, and when Mark answered me with a single word, I knew that I had been right.

“Naomi.”

Michael furrowed his brow. “You knew your sister would go after Lisette’s inheritance?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” Mark answered, as if we were all supposed to know that. “Naomi is crazy, and dangerous. Paula was the eldest sister and, therefore, her share of the inheritance was the largest. Naomi wanted that money, and I knew that if it had immediately fallen to Lisette, Naomi would have killed her for it. I’ve kept it out of her reach all this time, until you were ready to claim it and deal with Naomi yourself.”

“Well, unfortunately, we’ve already had to deal with Naomi,” I said bitterly. “And it nearly cost a few of us our lives.”

Mark looked sincerely troubled by that as he shook his head and frowned.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “If there was anything that I could have done to prevent her from reaching you, I would have.”

“You could have at least reached out to tell me about her,” I said. “Then at least we might have been prepared.”

“Trust me when I say that there is no preparing for Naomi,” Mark replied with a shake of his head. “I did my best to keep her locked away for years, but she is as smart as she is insane. I avoided contact with you altogether, hoping that Naomi would stay targeted on me when she got out of the institution since there would be no reason to even go after you if you didn’t have, or even know about, your inheritance.”

“Yeah, well that plan failed,” I said flatly.

“What is the inheritance tied to?” Adam asked. “Does Lisette need to be headmistress in order to claim access to it?”

“No,” Mark said.

I was surprised by his answer. I thought that the whole point of why Naomi was trying to make me headmistress was to get at the inheritance money.