Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
He crossed his legs and went into a further lean before he said, “It’s two hundred million dollars. I’m not going to let this one go.”
I blinked.
“What?” I asked. “How did you go about getting that high of a policy on someone? That’s usually reserved for people with high net worth. And from what I understand, Rose didn’t have anything to her name other than a nurse’s usual salary.”
And a kid, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” he said. “I just know that I have this policy that I paid for out of my own pocket. I deserve that money, not her trash pile of a sister.”
I narrowed my eyes at his use of “trash pile.”
However, I was able to control my automatic reaction of wanting to shut his mouth up the only way I knew how—by punching him—by saying, “Name calling? That’s quite unbecoming.”
He snorted. “Whatever it may be, it’s the truth. Magnolia Baker was nothing but trouble. And her sister was my woman. My fiancée. She gives over the money, and I’m out of her life for good.”
I gritted my teeth so hard that I felt my jaw creak in protest.
“That much money isn’t going to be something that you just get to keep,” I said. “You need to maybe offer splitting it. I don’t know.”
Because I was thinking, even half that could set Iris and her future for life. Hell, her children’s children’s future for life.
Not that I wouldn’t do everything in my power to make her life what it should be. I would. But even I wasn’t worth two hundred million. I had a net worth of eight million, and a lot of that was tied up in real estate I owned in the area.
“Well, that’s just not going to work for me.” Cain smiled, and it was a sickening smile. “I didn’t do all that work to get half. It’s either all, or I make this really hard.”
I forced myself to loosen my jaw.
My fingers unlocked from the fist in the next moment, and I shook out each of my fingers for a couple of seconds before I said, “What it’s sounding like is that you knew you were going to get an insurance payout. One that was going to shoot your net worth sky high. Tell me, did you torture her knowing that eventually she wouldn’t be able to take it anymore?”
Cain didn’t say that he did, but I could see the knowledge in his eyes.
He hadn’t killed her. Probably never intended on it. But forcing her hand so that she thought that was her only way out? Making her life so miserable that she thought her only way out of that life was to leave it prematurely? Kill herself before she could be killed?
Had he done this before?
Because it sure the fuck was sounding like it.
Was that how he made his billions? Dating some chick, getting a life insurance policy on her, then making her hate her life and him so that she offed herself?
“How many times have you played this trick on someone else?” I asked. “Gotten them to fall in love with you, then gotten them to play into your hand? How much of your money did you make on this little scheme of yours?”
He pushed off the Tesla Cybertruck that he was driving and opened the door. He dropped inside, but he leveled me with a look that clearly said that he was smart and wouldn’t fall for my questions.
Before he closed the door, though, he said, “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
With that parting comment, he started his outer space sounding truck up and roared off—as well as a Tesla Cybertruck could roar, anyway.
I watched him leave until his taillights disappeared around the corner of the square and then reached into my pocket for my phone.
Apollo answered on the second ring. “I’m already working on it.”
“You saw?” I asked.
Of course he did.
“I’m in my truck parked two cars down from where you’re standing,” he explained.
Apollo’s truck window rolled down in the next instant, and I heard him through the phone as well as in person.
“He’s loaded,” he said. “Invested in quite a few companies. But all of that money came in starting eight years ago when his first wife passed away from a heart attack.”
I gritted my teeth. “Wonder if he started with her, or just saw the benefits of having someone die with a life insurance policy?”
He shrugged. “I was going to come in, but I’m more amused with this right now. Have Hopps make me a burger and deliver it to the cabin. My girl’s not with me this time.”
I gave him a chin jerk and went back inside Hopps, finding Magnolia’s eyes immediately as I crossed the threshold.