Chapter Thirty-One
Dec
Liv stared hungrily around the buffet room on the ground floor of the resort, where all the crew and contestants were currently having breakfast.
“I wish I could have some eggs and croissants,” she said, miserable expression on her face.
“I know. I’m sorry, baby,” I replied quietly.
A week had passed, and despite our efforts we were no closer to figuring out who might be slipping hand sanitizer in Liv’s food or drinks. As such, I still didn’t want her eating anything which we didn’t know for sure was untainted. The food in the buffet was likely fine, as everyone else was eating it, but I didn’t want to risk it.
I’d managed to whip up a few things for lunches and dinners in one of the resort kitchens over the last few nights when we had free time (if I prepared the food myself, I knew it was fine) so Liv wasn’t starving, but I knew she hated seeing all her favorite breakfast foods laid out in front of her, teasing and torturing her when she knew she couldn’t touch them.
“Oh god, speaking of croissants,” Liv murmured. “Mom’s standing right near them with one of the senior producers. Do you think she’s going to come over here and talk to us?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. Probably will at some point.”
We’d both been worried about Ellen since the most recent elimination, which was filmed last night. Hayley and Simon had been voted off the show, and now only three couples remained. It was becoming increasingly obvious that Liv and I had no intention of doing anything to get ourselves voted out, and by this stage Ellen was sure to have caught on to that.
Lo and behold, she caught sight of us and breezily walked over, takeout coffee cup in her hand. “Olivia. Dec,” she said by way of greeting. She ushered us over to a quiet corner where no one could hear our conversation.
“Good morning, Mom,” Liv said.
Ellen smiled. “Is it good? Because you two are still here, and it’s starting to get ridiculous. There’s only three weeks left. You need to get voted off. You know you can’t win, right?”
“Why not?” Liv asked. “We signed the contracts like everyone else. We’re real contestants for all intents and purposes.”
Ellen scoffed. “You only signed those contracts because you had to. If the network caught wind of anyone participating in one of their shows who hadn’t signed a contract…well, there’d be hell to pay for me.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re almost making it sound as if you’re actively trying to win, Olivia.”
Liv shook her head. “I was just pointing something out, that’s all,” she said meekly.
“Well, whatever. You two really need to start taking this seriously and get voted off. Have a major argument, or tell each other how you aren’t attracted to each other. Anything to make the viewers change their minds about you two. You’re still our most popular couple, and that has to change. If you two win, some of the crew members who know about the situation might revolt and report me to the network heads, because it’ll look like I let my own daughter win the million dollars. Letting you compete is one thing, but letting you win is another entirely. Looks like major nepotism there, not to mention all the other shit it will stir up. So I repeat—get yourselves voted out. Got it?”
“Got it,” I replied.
Ellen nodded with satisfaction. “Good. Now, Liv, there’s something else I wanted to say.”
Liv raised her brows. “Yeah?”
“I know we haven’t been getting along well lately, and we haven’t exactly had much time to ourselves as mother and daughter over the last couple of months. I overestimated how much time we would have to hang out while we’re here. Even on non-filming days, I’m still busy with the crew, editing and splicing footage together. It’s hectic.”
“Oh, I know, Mom. It’s fine,” Liv said lightly.
Ellen shook her head. “No, it’s not. One of the ways I convinced you to help me out by being a fill-in contestant on the show was telling you that we’d be able to spend some time together. I haven’t lived up to that, and I’m sorry. So as soon as the show wraps, you and I are starting a tradition. Every month, we’ll have a catch-up day. Either I’ll fly to New York to visit you, or you can come stay for a weekend in Monterey with me. Whatever the case, we’ll be spending more time together as a family.”
Liv nodded slowly. “Oh. That sounds good,” she said. I detected a guilty tone in her voice. I knew exactly why. She felt bad that her mother was seemingly trying to make an effort to have a stronger relationship with her (finally), and yet behind her back we were sneakily trying to win the show, which would probably mess up their relationship for quite some time due to the distrust it would breed. Not to mention the fact we were secretly together. Ellen was going to be pissed when she found out about all that, and that particular moment was heading toward us like a bullet train.
She thrust the takeout coffee cup into Liv’s hands. “Drink this. You look terrible when you’re tired. I could park a car in the bags under your eyes.”
Liv held the coffee tentatively. “Wow, thanks, Mom.”
“Anyway, I better get back to the crew. We have a very long and boring meeting at nine.” Ellen rolled her eyes, then stepped away.
Liv shook her head and turned to me. “Just when I think she’s starting to be nice, she insults my appearance. I can never win with her.”
I gave her a thin smile. “I know. So do you think she’ll still be up for those monthly mother-daughter catch-ups when we win the show?”
Liv shook her head. “No. I doubt she’ll talk to me for a long time. She’ll be pissed as hell.”
“We can stop at any time if you’re not comfortable with this anymore,” I said softly. “We can get voted out.”
Liv’s gaze turned steely. “No. I want to do this. I want to win that prize money for your sister,” she declared. “Every time I start to feel bad for doing stuff behind Mom’s back, I just think about how she’s holding Amelia’s treatment money over your head, and I don’t feel bad anymore. I know she’s my mom, and she’s only human like the rest of us, but what she’s done is really awful. Your sister’s life is literally at stake, and she’s using her as a pawn to get what she wants. It’s sick.”
“True.” I glanced over at Ellen, and I saw that she was looking over her shoulder at Liv and me. Her eyes were focused on the coffee cup she’d just handed Liv, and I gave her a smile and a wave. When she realized she’d been caught staring, she abruptly turned away, and I took the opportunity to snatch the coffee out of Liv’s hand and dump it in a nearby trash can.
“Hey!” she protested. “What did you do that for?”
I hesitated. Something terrible had just occurred to me, but I didn’t want to bring it up with Liv just yet. Not until I had a solid reason to believe it. Right now it was barely even a solid thought.
“I just don’t think we should trust anything we didn’t see being prepared. Even coffee,” I said. “The vending machine coffee on the second floor is surprisingly good. I’ll grab you one of those.”
Liv yawned. “I’ll go get it myself. I need to head back upstairs to shower and change anyway. I wore this T-shirt to sleep last night.”
I nodded. While she was gone, I could take the chance to investigate my most recent suspicions.
She trudged out of the room, and I looked back over at Ellen, wondering if what I’d just thought of could possibly be true. Surely not. But then again, it made a strange kind of sense. Over the last six days, Liv and I had wracked our brains to figure out who might be trying to make her sick. We’d never considered for a second that it might be her own mother, but right now, it was adding up. Ellen had made it clear that she didn’t want us on the show for too much longer, but she couldn’t force us off due to the official network contracts. So perhaps she’d been spiking some of Liv’s food and drinks in the hopes that Liv got sick. Not sick enough to be violently ill to the point of death, but sick enough so that she’d have to use the medical emergency clause in the contract to get out of being on the show.
I’d like to say that a mother would never do something like that to her own daughter, but hell, it was Ellen. She would do anything to make her show work and get people out of her way who were bothering or hindering her, and right now, Liv and I were definitely doing that. We were meant to be off the show a few weeks ago, and yet we were still here, on track to win.
I checked my watch. It was five to nine, and I knew from our earlier conversation that Ellen was having a meeting with the crew at nine. That meant her office would be empty for a while, and I could get in there and look around to see if I could find any proof that it was her behind the triclosan-spiking.
I slipped out of the buffet room and headed upstairs. Ellen’s office door had a combination lock, but I knew the code, because I’d seen her put it in before. It was her own birthday. Looking around first to make sure there was no one to spot me, I punched the code into the door. It clicked a second later, and I swung it open. When I was safely inside, I shut it and locked it again. Then I began to search the room, hunting in the cupboard and desk drawers.
“Hello!”
I jumped up, startled, then chuckled when I realized the voice was just William the parrot. “Hi, Will,” I said. “Don’t mind me.”
“Freckle!” he chirped. “Hello! Feed me.”
“Yes, I’ll give you some seeds in a minute,” I replied absentmindedly, opening another drawer. So far in my search, I hadn’t seen anything to suggest Ellen was behind the triclosan stuff. There was no hand sanitizer and no bottles of anything else which might contain the substance.
Something interesting landed in my field of vision when I opened the third drawer on the right side of the desk. It was a file marked ‘Liv’. Hmm. That could have something relevant or useful. Curiously, I opened it, and to my surprise, the first item in the file was some adoption paperwork.
What the hell?
I pulled out the papers and squinted at them. Ellen had filled them out and dated them for a few months in the future, and judging by what she’d written, she wanted Liv to be legally adopted by me in a few months. All that was needed was my signature.
Jesus Christ. Technically I was Liv’s stepfather, but Ellen and I both knew our marriage wasn’t real. Not real in the sense that I would legally adopt her children, anyway. Especially when her only living kid was a grown woman. So why the hell was she doing this? Why on earth would she want me to legally adopt Liv, and when was she planning on springing this shit on me?
I looked down at the still-open drawer before me. Now that the ‘Liv’ file had been moved off the top, everything else was visible….including a bottle of hand sanitizer and a syringe.
Well, shit.
It looked like I was right after all. Ellen was making Liv sick. That fucking bitch.
I sat back in her office chair, my head spinning with confusion. Just when I thought I’d figured out one thing, another crazy issue popped its head up. Yes, Ellen was likely the one slipping shit into Liv’s food and drinks, judging by the glaring evidence in front of me, but now I wasn’t sure why. Earlier I’d considered that she simply wanted Liv and me off the show, but after seeing the inexplicable adoption paperwork, I was starting to suspect there was something more going on here.
A lot more.
I frowned and scratched my chin, trying to figure out what the hell this could all mean, and just how crazy Ellen could possibly be. As I mulled it over, I glanced over to the left of the desk to see a framed family photo. I leaned forward and picked it up, brows furrowing as I looked at Liv’s brother’s face. He’d been such a cute kid, and it was awful how he died so early.
Liv’s words suddenly flashed back to me; the sad story she’d told me in the restaurant on our filmed date all those weeks ago. She’d told me that Callum was sickly for quite some time when he was young. Nausea, tiredness, headaches. He’d seemingly recovered for a while before succumbing to a sudden death only a month or so later.
Then my mind flashed back to something else Liv told me just last week. How Ellen only got ten percent of Joe Esposito’s fortune when he died four years ago, and Callum and Liv inherited the bulk of the money. Callum was dead as well now, so that left only Liv to inherit all that money. But if Liv somehow got sick and died too….well, surely the money could somehow find its way back to Ellen.
An idea was brewing in my mind now, a terrible idea. Something so dark I barely dared to consider it. I needed to be sure, and there was one way to start being even remotely sure.
I picked up the phone on the desk and dialed my family lawyer’s number. “Hey, Brian, it’s Dec Marin,” I said when he picked up on the fourth ring.
“Dec, what can I do for you?”
“I just have a few questions about wills and such, if you’ve got a few spare minutes.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“Say a married couple get divorced. It’s not exactly amicable. Not long after the divorce, the man dies. He leaves ninety percent of his fortune to his two kids, and the other ten percent to his ex-wife, seeing as she was the woman who raised his kids, despite the shitty divorce.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’d probably want to make sure the woman couldn’t get her paws on the money he left to the kids, right? And he could put something in the will to make that clear?”
“Of course. She wouldn’t be able to touch the ninety percent the children were entitled to. She’d only be entitled to whatever was left to her.”
I nodded grimly. “All right. But what if the kids both died? Would she get it back then?”
“Not necessarily,” Brian replied. “If the will specifically stated that she was only entitled to ten percent, then the rest wouldn’t automatically all pass to her even if the kids died. It would go to the next closest family member who was still living, because the will would’ve made it quite clear that he didn’t want the ex-wife getting it all.”
“And if there’s no other close relatives around…what about an adoptive father?” I asked. “If the woman got remarried and her new husband legally adopted the kids—that would make him a close relative, right? Not biologically, but legally speaking. Could he get the money, and then by proxy, she would get it?”
“I suppose that could be a tenuous loop-hole, depending on a few things. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Just curious,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
I set the phone down and leaned back in the chair, a frown furrowing my forehead. I was getting close to something here. I just knew it. There was nothing that could explain why Ellen wanted me to legally adopt Liv, unless she was trying to pull off some dodgy shit with the will to make sure she got her ex-husband’s entire fortune. Literally nothing else made sense to me.
But that would also mean that Ellen was even more of a crazy fucking bitch than I originally thought. It could mean she may have killed her own son to get him out of the way, and it would mean she was now planning on killing Liv to get her out of the way too. Enough time had passed since Callum’s death for it to not look terribly suspicious if Liv died too. Tragic, for sure, but not suspicious. Just incredibly unfortunate.
Something like that would take years to plan and pull off, not to mention the level of money-hungry insanity and lack of remorse it would require. I didn’t want to think Ellen could be capable of such psychopathy, but everything was seriously starting to add up. Liv was experiencing the same sort of symptoms her brother had before his untimely death, and Ellen had a convenient new husband who may be able to inherit the bulk of the Esposito fortune if Liv died, as long as she convinced me to sign all the bullshit adoption paperwork before she died.
I bet she thought she could manipulate me into it, too. She probably thought she could make a big scene about how she wanted us all to look like a ‘proper family’ despite our sham marriage, and forcing me to sign the adoption paperwork would be the icing on that cake. She might’ve even tried to offer me more money for my family if I did it.
This was all still a theory, of course. It could be bullshit for all I knew, and to be fair, Callum’s death two years ago had been ruled as natural causes. At least that’s what I assumed. It had to be, right? If Ellen had poisoned him with something minor like triclosan to establish a pattern of him being sick for a few weeks, and then ultimately killed him with another far deadlier poison, that would all show up in an autopsy. I was no medical expert, but even I knew they ran tox screens and similar stuff on dead bodies. So Callum’s death had to have been ruled as non-suspicious and occurring due to natural causes, and that couldn’t happen if he was murdered. Coroners weren’t stupid.
I let out a defeated sigh.
Most likely, I was dead fucking wrong. Ellen probably hadn’t killed anyone, let alone her own son, and my mind was simply going wild because I was running on fumes after spending the last week desperately trying to figure out who might want to hurt Liv. There was probably a totally innocent explanation for all of this shit I found in Ellen’s office, and it was someone else who’d been trying to make Liv sick.
But who? Why?
“Hello!” William chirped from his cage. “Hungry.”
“Not now, Will,” I muttered, slamming my hand against the table. “Think, for fuck’s sake. Think!”