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questions. Olivia had made one angry appearance at the penthouse, demanding that he leave her alone and let her plan her own daughter’s funeral, but Alex had just stared at her with a stone cold expression until she subsided.
     
    “I loved her too,” she said, eventually, and for the first time, the woman’s armor seemed to be as fragile as the layers of a pearl instead of the diamond skin she’d seemed to wear for so long. It made Zoey’s heart hurt to look at the woman, to wonder what would happen to her own mother if this insane quest of theirs ended with her parents needing to find her a space in the ground.
     
    If it hurt Alex at all, Zoey couldn’t tell. “You didn’t,” he said, his voice sharp and whip-fast. “You loved that it made Philip actually pay attention to you for a few minutes. Why you still wanted his approval after everything he put you through, I don’t know—”
     
    The slap snapped his head back, and he went with the motion, not moving until she went to hit him again. He caught her hand at the wrist and gently stepped away.
     
    “It’s time for you to go,” he said, still angry, still cold. “I have work to do.”
     
    He dropped Olivia’s wrist and stalked out of the room, leaving her alone with Zoey as she crumpled into tears.
     
    “I didn’t know,” she moaned, her voice as rough as sandpaper. “I didn’t realize.”
     
    Zoey wasn’t sure right then if it was being human or being a journalist that motivated her, but either way, there was no way she was going to let the woman sit by herself and suffer. Whatever guilt might lay at her feet, she was still a human being. That wasn’t how you treated a human being. She settled carefully on the couch next to Olivia, trying not to jostle the woman. She looked like she might dissolve into a pile of dust if a strong wind blew through the apartment. She rested a hand on Olivia’s shoulder as gently as she could. “Can I have Sophia get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”
     
    Olivia’s eyes turned towards Zoey, and Zoey was shocked at the anger that she saw in the other woman’s eyes, caked there like makeup. “Do you have any idea,” the woman asked, and Zoey could hear some of Alex’s anger there, no matter how much the woman said that he was acting like his father. “How hard it was for me? What I thought I was getting in my marriage, and what I got instead?”
     
    “No,” Zoey said, cautiously shaking her head. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”
     
    “He wanted nothing from me but my money. I’d told myself that he was a womanizer, and that he only asked my Daddy for my hand to get at my money, but I thought I’d be able to please him now and then. But the ink wasn’t even dry on our marriage license.” Olivia shook her head, her eyes far away and staring into another world of memory now. “He turned up when he wanted me and took what he wanted. He called me names, in public, at dinners. Told his wealthy friends to find themselves a rich coon so that they could screw around as much as they wanted, too.” Tears glistened on her lower lashes, but they didn’t fall. She shook herself slightly and refocused on Zoey. “It may look like I didn’t do much with my life, not by the standards of a modern feminist, but I did what I needed to. I did what I needed to to take care of my children. To keep their father from poisoning their lives even further.”
     
    There was something in the tone of her voice that caught Zoey’s ear and made her tip her head to the side. “Olivia,” she said, not sure that she’d get any kind of meaningful response to the question, but needing to ask anyway, “Did you have anything to do with Cindy? Or Arturo? Or Thalia? With their deaths?”
     
    Even as she said the words, she found herself bracing for impact. If Olivia was anything like Zoey thought, the woman might lash out, try to hit her or hurt her—
     
    But instead of any of that, Olivia turned a long, hating look at Zoey, and