He did not drink it.
I know now he never intended to — that he’d clocked the movement, or trusted the plan, or simply never touched that cup.
But I didn’t know it then, and the not-knowing was the longest minute of my life.
Chapter 12 — The Confession
“And what happens to Nadine,” my father asked, his hand resting near the cup he would not lift, “when I’m gone?
What happens to my daughter?”
And that was the question that finally broke Damian’s patience, and with it, his performance.
“Nadine was never part of the long game, Glenn.” His voice had gone flat and vicious, stripped all the way down.
“You think I wanted this?
Twelve years.
Twelve years I spent married to a dull, plain woman who wants to talk about spreadsheets at dinner.
This house is what I’m owed.
It’s my compensation for a decade of pretending your sad little family was mine.”
Under the table I stopped being afraid and started, very quietly, to go cold, in a way I had never been before and have never entirely stopped being since.