Page 16 of Rock the Boat
Frank’s girlfriend grabbed his phone from the table and scrolled through the pictures. “Frank?”
“It wasn’t me. She must have planted them there!”
“If she had, they would be at the front of the reel, not hidden in pictures from two years ago. Who are these other women?” she demanded. Her voice had a warble, and I felt sorry for her. His girlfriend’s only crime was her bad taste in boyfriends. “What about this one of her closeup with her throat cut?”
I couldn’t have planned that any better myself. They could deny everything I said and showed, but for Frank’s girlfriend to find the evidence on his phone and ask the hard questions, they could not exactly deny everything.
Stepping back, I watched them all. I noticed how their eyes darted between each other and then down to Matthew, who still lay on the floor. Who would crack first?
“It was nothing more than acting,” Leon finally answered. He towered over me at 6’5” and exuded power with his salt and pepper hair and matching mustache.
“Yeah, acting,” Frank agreed, nodding his head. His face was covered with sweat, and his spiky bleached hair was wet, the carefully arranged tresses beginning to fall.
Frank’s girlfriend shook her head. “The cut looks real. I can see muscle, and there is so much blood. She looks dead.”
“If she was dead, how can she be standing here right now?” Clod asked. “It’s fake.”
Unable to drop it, she pressed on, “Her neck is sliced in the exact same place as this woman’s scar.” She pointed to me.
“It’s fake too,” Helena said, lifting her chin.
“But we saw her wipe off the makeup covering it,” Matthew’s mother spoke up. Maybe the truth had begun to sink in, and she no longer thought her son was the sweet child he once was. He’d grown up to be a monster.
“Fake.” Helena refused to back down. I was starting to believe I could give this group a lie detector, place the bloody weapon in their hands, and give them a fingerprint report, and they would still deny it all.
“Mrs. Blum, would you like to come up and inspect my scar yourself? You can also look at the one on my arm?” I pointed to the slightly puffy skin on my bicep. “I apologize, but the one on my stomach, you will have to trust it exists unless you want me to disrobe here in the middle of the room, which I would gladly oblige,” I smirked.
Matthew’s mother was a bit of a prude, and the offer to strip was immediately declined. However, she did want a closer look at my scars. They were only physical marks. While I hated seeing them and constantly worried people would see them and stare at me as if I was less than, the real scars, the ones that forever changed me, were on the inside. Those would never fade, never disappear.
Grabbing her napkin, she dipped one end into her glass of water and carefully approached. Her gaze kept straying to Sergio and the other men who were on the dance floor to keep the others under control. She was not gentle when she rubbed the rough cloth against my neck, and I winced. “They…They’re real,” Mrs. Blum gasped. She either hoped they wouldn’t be or didn’t believe me.
“They are very real,” I responded, taking a step back. That had been harder than I thought it would be. The only people who had ever touched my neck were my plastic surgeon, his team, and Dom. What was he doing right now? Worrying about me? Part of me wanted him here because I suddenly didn’t know if I could follow through. When she had tried to erase my scar, it took me back to the night I received it and then to the night I woke up in Dom’s clinic confused. I was hurt and afraid and wanted to hide from the world.
Her head moved back and forth as she backed away. “My Matthew would never do anything like that.”
And that statement reminded me why I had to finish. “What do you know about your darling Matthew?”
The man in question began to moan. “What happened?” His words were slurred and muffled but clear enough.
“Matthew, who is Nell Ward?” I asked him.
He laughed. “Just some girl. She was all over me. I pretended that I had feelings for her, but she was ugly. Had to force myself to pretend.”
“Did you propose?”
“Ring fake. She fell for it. Who would want her?”
“What happened to her?”
“We got rid of her,” he answered and turned his head to the side, a frown marring his normally handsome face.
“What’s wrong?” I loved the fact he was digging his own grave.
“Something...” His eyes remained closed, but he kept scrunching his face and releasing it. If the situation weren’t so severe, I might laugh.
Steven tried to grab me, and I pressed my blade against his crotch. “Holy fuck!”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.” I kept my hand where it was and might have added a little upward pressure, forcing him to stand on the tips of his toes. I might have put away the blade earlier, but it was always easily accessible. I would never be caught unaware again. “What were you going to say?”
