Page 139 of Beautiful Revenge

I’ve fallen back on my ass, and the phone hits the floor.

“Answer me!” Even with my ears ringing from the piercing gunshot, I hear Devon call for me.

But Allen moves fast.

He steps up, puts a foot to the phone, and I hear it crack under his weight.

Janie cries out in pain and maybe fear, too, when she begs, “Don’t do this, Allen. I’m begging you not to do this.”

Because right now, she and I are in a bad spot.

I slowly climb to my feet and hold my hands out low in front of me. “The phone’s gone. Tell me what you want. Money? I can do that. I’ll get however much you want. Name the price. I’ll have it wired to your account, and you can leave for good. No one will ever know this happened.”

Allen shakes Janie like a rag doll. I focus on her for the first time. She’s a mess. And not just the kind of mess like when the country club mixes up her dinner reservation.

No, she’s an absolute wreck.

She’s not wearing makeup, her hair is matted, and it doesn’t look like she’s showered in days. I’ve never seen Janie like this.

“Please.” She turns her gaunt eyes to me and begs, “Help me. He’s kept me like this for days. He drove me across the country and forced me to show him where you were.”

“How many times have I told you to shut the fuck up, Janie?” The way he enunciates her name makes my skin crawl. Allen turns back to me. “I practically had you taken care of. Janie had one job, and one job alone—to get Albert Humphries to off you in exchange for a position within Stonebridge. But the Humphries boy is an imbecile who can’t seem to keep a secret under wraps. To this day I have no fucking idea how you found out. And really, I can only assume you did because why else would you no show for your own wedding on the world stage?”

Janie sobs so hard, I have trouble making out some of her words. “He made me do it. I’m so sorry, Harlow. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt Patrick.”

Allen laughs. “Yeah, like I made you suck my cock. You were begging for it so bad, you practically jumped into my bed the first chance I gave you. Hell, it was so easy, I was embarrassed for you.”

Holy shit.

Janie was having an affair with Allen. None of this makes sense, yet the pieces are falling into place like some fucked-up puzzle.

Janie looks like she’s given up. She slumps somuch, the weight of her frail body takes over, and her knees hit the floor. “I’m sorry, Harlow. So, so sorry.”

Allen practically rolls his eyes, like he can’t take Janie for another moment.

“And then I found out Patrick has a secret son he didn’t know about. That was a fucking thorn in my side. It was all I could do to keep it under wraps. But before Patrick got sick...” Allen lifts his hand with the gun in it and tips it twice for air quotes. “He was onto me for ‘managing his interests’. And by that, I mean what he needed to know versus what I wanted him to know. He was so close to finding out about his son, we had no choice but to shut him up. And since he is the face of Stonebridge, and I wanted to be elevated by the board, we couldn’t just kill him. We had to shut him up.”

My head spins.

Janie might not be innocent, but she was a pawn.

Allen Foster is the mastermind who tried to tear my family apart, take down my father, and take advantage of the situation to elevate himself at Stonebridge.

I look at my stepmother. “How could you do this to Dad?”

Janie continues to cry. “I was always compared to Effie. Always. Maybe not to my face, but behind my back. I heard the whispers for years and had no choice but to look the other way. It was like living in the shadow of a ghost my entire marriage to Patrick.”

I drag a hand through my hair and can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“You were always a stupid, self-centered bitch,” Allen says. “Which made you an easy target. But you were about to turn on me.”

She looks up at him and shakes her head in quick succession. “I’m sorry. That was a mistake. I’ll never talk. I promise. Please, let me go.”

My eyes widen when Allen raises his gun, but not to me.

He presses it to Janie’s temple.

Janie screams.