Page 19 of Saving Scarlett
When I returned inside the cottage, Scarlett was in the kitchen, seasoning chicken she had laid out in a pan. The site of her preparing food for me turned my chest into complete mush. I grinned at her, but Phantom was waiting on my instructions, so I walked straight into my bedroom, opening the safe in my closet and pulling out my laptop.
Returning to the living room, I opened the laptop and set it on the coffee table. Scarlett was still in the kitchen, fully immersed in preparing dinner, but as the machine powered on, I approached her.
“What are you cooking? It looks amazing.”
She looked up at me as she sliced a cucumber, a smile spreading across her lips.
“Baked chicken and a salad. There are a few boxes of pasta in the pantry though. I thought about throwing one of those together also.”
After everything she’d gone through, her tenacity amazed me. She was a remarkable woman—a true phoenix.
“You didn’t have to do all of this, especially after having such a long day.”
With a shrug, she turned on the faucet and rinsed a tomato before setting it on the cutting board. “I don’t mind. We have to eat, and it pays to keep myself busy.”
Although I didn’t say so, I understood completely. There were definitely things we had in common. As good as her mood was, I hated to ruin it, but I had no choice but to change the subject. Clearing my throat, I grabbed the decanter of whiskey and poured it into two glasses. “Phantom just sent an encrypted video to me. All I know is that it has something to do with your husband.”
I turned to look at my laptop and then back at her, hating how her smile fell. “Are you able to step away from the food for a few minutes so we can see what this is all about?”
Opening the oven to peek at the food baking inside, she nodded. “I guess we should get it over with.”
Hesitation still buzzed in my mind, but I turned around and led the way into the living area. With us both seated side-by-side on the sofa, I opened the encrypted file, taking a sip of my whiskey as I waited for it to load. The tension in the air was like a living entity in the room, Scarlett’s posture was rigid, and her drink nearly gone.
The moment the video finished buffering, and the picture cleared, my hands curled into fists, rage already building.
On the front steps of his home, and surrounded by members of the press, Joshua Prejean stood behind a microphone in a press conference setting. I turned the volume louder on the laptop, unable to sit still.
“Have you heard from your wife?” one reporter, a middle-aged blond I recognized from one of the local news channels, asked.
“Have they found her body?” Another screamed from somewhere in the back, the question turning my stomach. As easy as I found it to take a life, I couldn’t think about her that way, not with how I felt about her, whether or not I wanted to acknowledge it.
A few more questions were asked before Joshua’s attorney lifted his hand to silence the crowd, the smug look on his face making me want to slice his throat and watch him bleed.
“Mr. Prejean has an update he would like to share,” he said, his tone allowing no responses. “But you will hold off on your questions until he’s finished saying what he needs to say.”
Giving the press one more no-nonsense glare, the attorney moved to the side, and Joshua Prejean stepped forward.
“Here we go,” Scarlett said in a deadpan tone, reaching for her whiskey glass and tossing the rest of it back.
Joshua cleared his throat. Although pain and betrayal showed on his face and deep shadows around his eyes indicated his lack of sleep, we both knew he was as full of shit as would be anything he was about to say.
The microphone crackled. “Up until last night, I grieved for my beloved wife, Scarlett. I thought someone had taken her in the night — had stolen her and hurt her. I’ve searched the swamps for her, cried for her, and prayed for her. Up until last night, I grieved for my wife. This morning, however, I discovered that the financial accounts I share with her have been frozen by someone other than myself. Money has been moved to other accounts. Without her body being found, and with a substantial amount of money from our shared accounts being stolen, I have reason to believe that my wife, Scarlett Prejean, is indeed alive and using our money to run away from our life together.”
Dipping his head, Joshua pretended to wipe a tear away from his eyes. The living room in the cottage was dead silent.
A growl rumbled in my chest as I thought of all the ways I could murder him and make it look like a suicide, or a robbery. Fuck. At that moment, I just wanted him dead. I didn’t care how it looked in the end, only that he suffered.
When he looked back at the camera, his eyes were glassy, but even I could tell it was fake. He was a bad actor.
“If something has happened to my beloved wife, and the perpetrator has stolen our money, please bring her home. But if it’s you, Scarlett, and you’re out there somewhere, then please come home. I love you, and I forgive you. We can still fix this.”
Chapter 18
The Survivor
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Bane growled, slamming his hand down hard on the coffee table, making our glasses jingle.
I heard his words, but my brain was still trying to process what I’d just heard. I knew he was lying. I knew he was trying to manipulate me. It was just that… he was really good at it and it turned my stomach.