Page 48 of Detective for the Debutante (SAFE Haven Security #3)

LEIGH

I try to keep track of the various turns, but since I’m not very familiar with Nashville, I end up more turned around than getting any clarity of where we are.

“W-Where are you taking me?” I ask.

Fuck, I wish my voice would stop shaking. It’s showing weakness when none of these three deserve it.

I shouldn’t be surprised when no one answers me. Ellis continues to stare at me, palming himself over his clothes and licking his lips when he sees I’ve noticed.

I cough, gagging, my stomach heaving.

“Don’t puke in my car,” Mr. Vanderweel mutters, taking another turn that only adds to the nausea.

Like I could help it if I did.

“I don’t feel so good,” I groan.

“Make sure she doesn’t puke in my car,” Mr. Vanderweel directs Ellis.

“It might help if he stopped fondling himself while looking at her,” Kenneth says with a glance back at Ellis.

“Jesus Christ. Ellis, change of plans. You’ll need to take this car and dump it. I don’t need any DNA—from anyone—in this car,” Mr. Vanderweel says curtly, taking another corner with a squeal of tires against asphalt.

Another ten minutes of driving and we pull through a garage door in the side of what looks to be an abandoned warehouse.

“W-where are we?” I ask, as the car stops with a jerk.

My stomach bubbles and I take several breaths.

“Out,” Kenneth says.

He exits the passenger seat, opening my door and yanking me free. I stumble, almost falling to my knees before righting myself.

I’m not sure whose hands I don’t like more—Ellis’s rough grip or Kenneth’s manicured hold.

Both make me sick to my stomach.

I shrug free of his grip, backing up against the car as the three men stand in various poses around me.

Mr. Vanderweel. On the surface he looks detached, but there’s a hatred in his gaze creating a pit of terror in my stomach unlike any I’ve ever known. Kenneth stands near him, studying me like I’m a bug under a microscope. Ellis is farther away, twitching, his gaze bouncing between me and his boss.

“W-why am I here?” I clear my throat and try to keep the quiver out of my lip.

“You mean to tell me you don’t know?” Mr. Vanderweel asks.

I shake my head, an errant tear falling, and I swipe it away from my face.

These bastards don’t deserve my tears.

“N-n-no.” I can fight my tears, but not the shake in my voice.

In this moment, I hate my own weakness. Scanning the almost empty building, I look for any way to escape. But there’s nothing. All the windows are boarded up, and the only thing in the empty building is a dilapidated staircase leading to a separate room with gray-tinged windows.

The door we came through is already down, the steel heavy enough I can’t lift it. I don’t even know how they opened it.

Please let Sydney have understood my text.

But even if she does, will she think to track the AirTag?

“I picked you for him,” Mr. Vanderweel snarls.

“Huh?” My attention snaps back to Mr. Vanderweel.

I don’t understand. He picked me for who?

“Don’t be stupid. You. You were meant to be the perfect society wife for Charlie.

I saw the way you two interacted the day we met with you and your boss.

So I had you investigated. And as soon as I got the results, I knew you were perfect for him.

Exactly who I wanted for him. You were raised correctly.

Your family is one of the founding members of one of the quaintest towns in all of Tennessee.

Precisely what that sniveling little wimp needed.

You have an almost impeccable college record, and law school is the crowning achievement.

He was going to get the best crafted love story money could buy.

He was going to continue the dynasty I’ve built from the ground up.

She was never good enough for him.” Mr. Vanderweel spits the words and they lie between us like a poison.

She.

“Selene? I ask.

“ Her . She should have been perfect for him. She had the right pedigree. The right breeding. But in the end, she was nothing more than poor white trash. A gold-digging whore.”

It sounds like he’s referring to a dog versus a human being.

Selene was from an upper middle-class family.

Her file had said she went to Brown before coming back to Nashville to be close to her family when she got offered a job at Mr. Vanderweel’s company.

She and Charlie had met at a charity event for animals.

Nothing I had read fit the narrative he was spouting.

“It-it was never like that between Charlie and me. We’re friends. He loves Selene.” I can’t even use the past tense. Because the way he talked about her, the way he still grieved? It was still very much in the present.

Even if I hadn’t fallen for Murphy. Even if I had been interested in Charlie.

He loves his fiancée.

It is obvious.

Isn’t it?

“She didn’t love him!” he explodes, pacing the length of the car and back.

“She wanted to keep working once they were married. Charlie needed a wife who could uphold their social obligations. Not someone whose attention was divided. Even when I called her to my office to let her know her job would no longer be there when she and Charlie married, she had the nerve to stand up and tell me she would get a different job. With another company. That Charlie would support her. Would choose her. Not me. She was turning him against me. My own son!” he screams and it echoes around us.

Oh, God.

When did they have that conversation? Did Charlie know about it?

“I couldn’t have that. I knew she would succeed. That little brat was always more his mother’s son than mine. But I made sure he was going to follow in my footsteps. I had worked too long and too hard to get him where he was. And how did he repay me? By picking her !”

Rage mottles his throat, the red creeping up his face until he’s breathing heavily, his motions exaggerated.

“She walked out and resigned the week before her wedding. I knew she was going to come between Charlie and me. So I went to visit her.” He grows eerily calm. Like he’s walking through a business report versus the vitriol he had just exhibited before.

He runs his hands through his hair before straightening a wrinkle in his shirt.

When did he visit her?

You already know .

But I don’t want to believe it. So I force that voice to the back and watch Mr. Vanderweel’s face return to a normal shade. Almost like his outburst never happened.

“She wasn’t expecting me. She was expecting Charlie. They had a date that night.”

A rock forms in the pit of my stomach and I want to cover my ears. To pretend I’m not hearing this.

I don’t want to.

He looks up and a smile plays on his face. One that has my entire body flushing cold and chills ripping down my spine.

“I knew by the look in her eyes I wasn’t going to get her to change her mind.

So I changed tactics. I told her I was worried about Charlie.

He’d been distracted that day at work. Not like himself.

And I wanted to go talk to him but he and I always struggled with conversations.

So I asked her to go with me. I told her I needed her help. For him.”

He lifts his hands, staring at them like he’s in some sort of trance.

It’s a memory.

I jolt at the realization, trying to breathe through lungs that don’t want to work as everything he’s saying sinks in.

“It’s a powerful feeling. Watching someone’s light fade in their eyes because of your hands. More powerful than anything else I’ve experienced.” He shares a glance with Kenneth and my stomach drops to my toes.

“You…you…” I can’t say the words because then they’ll be true.

They’re still true whether you say them or not .

If Mr. Vanderweel has any reservations about saying the words, they’re not evident.

He nods.

“I killed her. Then I paid some bum to dump her body in the water, but the asshole didn’t light the car on fire the way I directed. Her DNA was still in the car. Charlie’s car.” He snaps his gaze to Ellis who nods.

I want to scream. To curl into a ball and cry. To run away from the monster who should only live in nightmares but is standing so calmly in front of me.

He killed his son’s fiancée. The woman his son loved.

And I realize my fate is on the same trajectory.

Sydney, please send help.

“I know what I need to do,” Ellis slurs.

Vanderweel’s attention shifts back to me and he steps forward. I shrink back.

I need to buy some time.

“Was that the same person you convinced to take the fall for Selene’s death?” I ask, hoping to keep him talking.

He shrugs, like he didn’t ruin another life.

“It was the only thing he could do to make it right. I made sure his family was well compensated despite his idiocy,” he says.

“Is that what you’re going to do to me?” I ask.

Why I need the morbid confirmation, I don’t know. But I can’t resist asking.

His eyes light up and I want to throw up.

“It’s poetic, isn’t it? You’re going to die in the same place she did. Back then the factory was fully functional. Another inheritance from my grandparents. I had to shut it down when workers kept quitting. They said it was haunted.”

I shiver as the word echoes despite the quiet way he said it.

“I don’t want to die,” I say, unwilling to beg but needing to say the words.

His posture tells me he couldn’t care less about what I want. About what I said.

“You’ve left me no choice. You embarrassed me.” He says the words as if he’s talking to a child.

I rack my brain, trying to think of something I could have done.

“W-what?” I say, the tremor returning to my voice.