He stepped forward, his eyes locked on me, and said, “I’m sorry you had to find out this way. I was the one who wrote the note. I was the one who set everything up.”
He lifted a small vial from his pocket, identical to the bottle of laxative I had used. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, Jess. I wanted him to think he was the only one who could betray you.”
My breath caught. The betrayal I thought I had orchestrated was just the surface of a deeper, darker plot, one that had been pulling strings from the shadows, using my own desperation as a tool.
He placed the vial on the counter, his fingers lingering on the glass, and whispered, “Now you see why the scent mattered.”
And the house fell silent once more, the perfume hanging in the air like a question without an answer.
