Chapter 40 The Conspiracy Theory
Serena
"I had nothing to do with this." It was the truth, but it was barely holding together. I forced the words out anyway, I forced myself to stand straight even though my legs felt like they'd forgotten how to be solid things.
"I don't know what's on that phone." I held Lara's gaze, not wanting to give her the impression I was afraid of her in any way. "But I am innocent."
Lara let out a wicked laugh. She didn't argue. She just turned the phone around.
“Wanna change your mind, Serena?” She asked, her voice lilting at the end.
Everything inside me went quiet. That was me in the video. I was in the kitchen, moving through it like a zombie, like something without a soul.
My hands were opening cabinets, one by one, my fingers tracing shelves with a familiarity that made my stomach turn. I looked like I knew exactly what I was doing. Like I had done it a hundred times before.
Like I had planned it.
"I…." My voice cracked. I swallowed and tried again. "I don't remember this. I don't remember leaving the bed. I was asleep…."
"You were sleepwalking."
Mrs. Hale said quickly under her breath. Nobody except me heard her.
I looked at her and lifted my brows.
Sleepwalking? The word landed wrong. It kept sliding off the edges of my brain like something that didn't belong there.
I had never sleepwalked. Not once in my life. I slept heavily, deeply, like the dead, that was the one mercy my body had always given me.
My aunt used to say I'd never find a husband if I didn't stop sleeping like a dead tree.
So why couldn't I remember standing in that kitchen?
Why did watching that video feel like watching a stranger who happened to be wearing my face?
"We will deal with this." Saint said in a controlled voice. “When we return from the hospital.”
"Deal with it?" Mrs. Rivers took a step forward, and there it was, that look, the one that had nothing to do with justice or grief.
It was too eager, like she'd been building toward this moment. "This girl poisoned the patriarch of this family. My husband, your father! She is standing in this house, breathing this house's air, while he is—"
"I said enough." Sin's voice was lower than Saint's but harder and left no room for argument.
His voice didn't rise. Something I'd noticed since I arrived was that he had other ways of making the air in a room feel thinner and the walls feel closer.
“Nobody touches Serena, or a single hair on her head.” His gaze swept the room like a quiet threat. “Because if I come back and find out otherwise—” he let the sentence hang there, unfinished, which was somehow so much worse than finishing it.
“There will be no amount of family loyalty that protects you from what comes next.” He finished.
The silence that followed had weight to it. Lara ground her teeth so hard I heard it from where she was standing.
Saint moved toward the door. He turned to shoot me a glance over his shoulder and our eyes held for just a fraction of a second before he left.
I didn't know what I was looking for in his eyes. Belief, maybe. Some sign that he didn't think I'd done this.
That whatever we were, whatever strange, consuming, impossible thing had been building between us hadn't just been burned to the ground by a thirty-second video.
Sin lingered a beat longer. His eyes moved over my face with that slow, dark intensity that always made me feel simultaneously seen and stripped bare.
There was something in them I couldn't name, something that wasn't quite fury and wasn't quite softness and wasn't quite anything I had words for yet.
It was just so confusing.
He turned, and then he was gone too.
The front door clicked shut.
Mrs Rivers started marching up to meet me but the bodyguards who didn't leave with her sons stopped her from taking any step further.
“Get out of my way, you bench pressers!” She yelled at the four of them.
They didn't budge.
“The two masters left us instructions. Miss Serena is not to be harmed.” The one holding her arm said quietly.
Her eyes narrowed to angry slits. “I pay your salaries, idiots. Get out of my way.”
They didn't move. She let out a deep, frustrated sound before leaving.
"I will make sure you don't work anywhere else again!" She threatened on her way out.
Lara chuckled, like a satisfied movie producer enjoying her own drama.
“Nobody will believe you, Serena. I'm a permanent member of this family, whether you like it or not." She flicked her hair over her shoulder, even though it was in perfect waves. "I can't wait to visit you in jail.” Then she was gone, her swaying hips taunting me on the way out.
I fell to my knees, overwhelmed by shock and confusion.
"Lara poisoned the Rivers' patriarch, but I can't tell anyone except you," Mrs. Hale whispered, as if afraid of being overheard. "I was the one who brought you back to your room when I found you sleepwalking. You didn't even resist."
My mind reeled. "Me, sleepwalking? Wait, your cheek... Was it Mrs. Rivers who slapped you? Why?"
I rose to my feet, my thoughts racing. Something wasn't adding up.
Mrs. Hale continued, "I went back to confront Lara, but I ran into Mrs. Rivers instead. She was carrying an empty Morphine bottle. Serena, it was full earlier, the nurse had just given him his meds. And Lara was stirring something in his tea."
“So Mrs Rivers dragged you up to my room, using the rings as a distraction? Did you really give the rings to her?”
“You were clutching them to your chest when I found you. I thought they belonged to one of the other two women in the house since I've never seen you wearing them. Now I'm thinking she brought me to your room on purpose, to give Lara the time to act her own part of the script.”
My head was too small to carry this truckload of information. Lara recorded me sleepwalking, that was understandable.
But poisoning Mr Rivers and accusing me of it? That was just evil.
A thought lit up in my head and I grabbed Mrs Hale’s arm.
“You're trying to tell me Mrs Rivers led the plan to poison her husband?” I asked her, dreading the answer already.
“Yes.”