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!”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Olivia
I rubbed my eyes and stepped out of the bathroom, yawning as I headed over to the cupboard. Dec wasn’t in the room, but I wasn’t concerned. He was probably either still at breakfast or hanging out with Mark somewhere. I liked that about him—as much as he adored me and took care of me, he also understood that couples didn’t always have to hang out with each other every second of the day, and he had his own friends and interests outside of me. I guess this was what a healthy, adult relationship looked like.
Aside from the reality show, the fake marriage, and the fact he was still legally married to my own mother.
As I selected an outfit for the day, I chewed my bottom lip and frowned. The triclosan issue was still playing on my mind, much like it had for the last week or so. Dec and I had spent almost every free minute we had trying to figure out who might want to poison me, but we’d come up with zilch. We’d gone through every contestant and every crew member, trying to think of motivations or reasons to specifically target me, but we hadn’t come up with anything. I guess neither of us should apply to work as FBI agents anytime soon, because clearly, we weren’t the best detectives.
“Bingo,” I muttered to myself, pulling a pretty cream-colored blouse out of the cupboard. I hadn’t worn it in a while, and it would go well with the black jeans I’d picked to wear.
When I was all dressed and ready, I checked the clock and sighed. I had an appointment with Dr. Donnelly later this afternoon for more tests to see if the triclosan was out of my system, but until then, I had five hours to kill.
An idea suddenly came to me with a flash. There was a little makeshift archive room downstairs next to the main producer’s room, and it contained all the contestant files. I knew this because Mom mentioned it when she was dealing with Shayla all those weeks ago. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of this sooner, but those files might be a good place to look in order to find information on who might be trying to hurt me. For all I knew, one of the remaining contestants could have a criminal history or something similar; something which could make them more likely than the others to try and poison other contestants. It was a very long shot, but at this point I was willing to look anywhere and do anything to figure out what was going on.
I headed downstairs to the first floor and slipped into the little archive room. From the voices floating out of the main producer’s room next door, I could safely assume the show workers were all busy with the meeting Mom mentioned earlier, and thus no one would catch me in here rifling through all the files.
I pulled out the female contestant files first, mostly focusing on the particular women who were still on the show or had only recently left. It didn’t make sense for the poisoning culprit to be anyone who’d been eliminated closer to the beginning of the show, seeing as they literally wouldn’t have been on the island to continue doing it to me.
Frowning, I flipped through Isobel and Emily’s files. Nothing jumped out at me. Then I picked up Hayley’s file. She was gone from the show now, after last night’s elimination, but it still could’ve been her attempting to make me sick until she was voted out.
Unfortunately, nothing jumped out at me in her file, either. She was the embodiment of ‘basic’. Sighing, I dropped the women’s files and pulled out all the men’s files. After going through all of them, any hopes I had of discovering the culprit began to fade. There was nothing in these little dossiers. No one seemed to have any sort of criminal history or untreated mental illness, and I guess anyone with that sort of history probably wouldn’t be allowed on the show anyway. So maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Frowning, I picked up a file belonging to a man named Ross Minette, which I’d only just noticed. There’d never been a contestant on the show called Ross, at least not this season, but it said ‘2017’ on the front. I opened it to see his name crossed out in red marker, and someone had written a note on the side. Dropped out last minute. Replaced by Dec Marin.
Oh. That made sense. This was the original twelfth male contestant who’d been selected for the show only to drop out mere days before filming began.
My frown deepened as something new occurred to me. When I went through all the women’s files, I hadn’t come across any unfamiliar names. In fact, now that I thought about it, I was sure there were only twelve women’s files—the other female contestants I’d met on the show, with me as the twelfth one. But with the men’s, there were thirteen—all the male contestants plus Dec, and also the dropout who Dec replaced.
So who did I replace? Where was her file?
I counted the women’s files carefully just to make sure I was right, and a moment later, I sat back on the floor, my nose wrinkling with confusion. There were definitely only twelve files on the female contestants, and there was no record of another woman who’d dropped out at the last minute to be eventually replaced by me.
What did that mean? Was there simply never a dropout contestant? If so, what did that mean?
My breath hitched as I realized the most obvious answer to that question. It meant my mom actually wanted me on the show all along, and she lied and guilt-tripped me in order to get me here. But why? Why would she want me on the show? It didn’t make any sense, at least not for any reason I could think of.
I set my lips in a grim line.
Obviously, Mom was hiding something…
Chapter Thirty-Three
Dec
My mind was in overdrive.
I was still sitting in Ellen’s office chair, William the parrot chirping in my ear as I tried to sort through the jumbled mess in my mind. I felt like I was going crazy, but at the same time I was sure I was on to something here.
I rubbed my temples and tried laying out the facts I knew on a scrap piece of paper I found on the desk.
1) Ellen wants me to adopt Liv as my legal daughter in a few months.
2) After Callum’s death two years ago, Liv will inherit ninety percent of a huge fortune. However, Ellen and I would very likely have full access to all that money if Liv died - if I adopt her, that is.
3) Liv has been sick on and off for a few weeks now, much like Callum was before he died.
4) Liv has been diagnosed as suffering from triclosan overdosing, and I just found hand sanitizer and a syringe in Ellen’s desk.
As much as I kept trying to convince myself that I was wrong, and that there had to be an innocent, rational explanation for all of this, I simply couldn’t shake the awful feeling that I’d stumbled upon something truly heinous.
Somehow managing to keep a steady hand, I picked up the phone again and dialed my friend Ricardo’s number. He was the guy who owned the boutique hotel in New York that I always stayed at when I wa
s in town—the same guy who Liv accused me of making up when she didn’t trust me a couple of months ago.
After building a massive software development company, Ricardo had started investing his fortune in real estate, and the hotel was one of those ventures. However, due to the software development stuff, I knew he was also an absolute genius when it came to computers. That genius could come in handy right about now.
“Hello?” He answered on the fifth ring.
“Ric, it’s me. Dec.”
“Hey, man! Long time no see. When are you back in town?”
“I’m not in the country at the moment. I’m—”
He cut me off with a chuckle. “Wait, wait. I know where you are. The wife loves trash TV, and she’s been watching Wed At First Sight a lot lately. I almost forgot. She’s been telling me all about it. You’re living it up on some paradise island right now, aren’t you?”
I grinned. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Laugh it up. But listen, I need your help with something.”
“What?”
“With all your computer stuff…you can kinda hack websites, right?”
He laughed again. “What most people see as ‘hacking’ is very different from what the actual process is, but yeah, I can find backdoors into most sites. Depends on the site, of course. I could never get onto anything like the FBI or the NSA.”
“Well, that’s good, because I don’t need you to hack the NSA,” I replied. “Just…erm…a county coroner’s office. Like where they keep all their records.”
I couldn’t see him, but I could practically hear the shock registering on Ricardo’s face. “What? Why the hell would you need me to do that? I don’t even know if I can. It’s all stored on government sites, I assume. Heavy encryption.”
Daddy's Fake Bride (A Fake Marriage Romance) Page 19