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Her hands stiffen in mine. "Original report?"

I nod.

"Your father bribed the coroner to change it. In return, he fixed a sentence for the coroner's son." Her sapphire eyes hang on each of my words, her lips slightly parted as she listens intently. "But I guess the coroner kept the original in case his son misbehaved again."

"What did the report say?" She asks lowly.

"That the injuries your mom sustained during the car crash were inconsistent with her cause of death. Those injuries happened after she died."

"How did he say she died?" Scarlet's voice is barely audible now.

"A broken neck," I say, preparing myself for every eventuality. Tears, yelling, hysterics, or fainting. Anything but how she actually reacts.

"Oh." She blinks a few times. "Oh."

"Scarlet? Do you understand what this means?"

She nods. "I do." Her eyes widen. "I killed her. I killed my mom."

I wasn't prepared for this kind of full-on honesty, but fuck! This woman, mywife, is full of surprises. I'll do everything in my power to make sure this doesn’t ever touch her. I'll need to have a chat with Marcello to make sure he understands that.

Go to bed,Scarlet. It's okay. She's okay. My dad said.

And I believed him.

I was fifteen, and we’d just had the mother of all fights. All three of us.

After fifteen years of Mom hitting me with switches, Dad finally found out. Mom went too far this time.

How long, Elle? How long has this been going on? Dad yelled when we walked in the door at home after he picked me up from school. The school nurse hadn't wanted to call my dad. She had wanted to call my mom, because isn't it always the dad abusing the kid? Well, not in our house. One look at my face when she started to dial Mom, though, was enough for her to hang up and change her mind.

Do you want me to call your dad instead, honey?

I nodded. Numb and in so much pain, I could hardly breathe. On the nurse's insistence, he took me straight to the hospital.

I think she has a couple of broken ribs. The nurse said.

She was wrong. Ionlyhad threebruisedribs.

Of course, the doctors noticed the faint scars on my back, my stomach, and the upper parts of my thighs, not to mention the new bruises and cuts. Last time, Mom hit me so hard that she broke the switch. All of it because I came home in a cut-off tank top and shorts. My friends and I had been to the lake; it was hot and summer.

I used to have a waist like this, mom remarked wistfully when I entered the day before the disaster,and high perky tits.

Mom was still a beautiful woman. I didn't see anything wrong with how she looked. Yes, her stomach wasn't as flat as in some of the older pictures—she’d been a model when she met my dad—and maybe her waist had been smaller, but it was hardly noticeable.

They told me I was too fat, her voice rose, and I shrank back, knowing what it meant.Too fat! Can you believe it?

She wasn't talking to me; she wasn't even seeing me. Savagely, she threw the glass of wine she had been nursing against the wall.Nobody wants me anymore, she cried.

Mom, I tried,don't cry.

Mom never cried. She was strong-willed and never allowed anything to bother her. But that day, she was totally out of it. I didn't know how much she had already had to drink, but Inoticed two empty bottles of wine in the trash. And that's when I remembered that morning she’d had an appointment with her old agent. She had hoped to go back into modeling.

Too fat, too old, she lamented.

Mom, you're beautiful; wrong thing to say. Wrong move to call attention to myself right then. Her hateful eyes met mine, and a snarl disfigured her pretty face.

You! This is all your fault.