“And so what she wrote in that journal—that’s all true?”
“The stuff about me is,” Nick mumbled.
“Even though you told the press it wasn’t?”
He nodded. “I was just upset. And surprised she’d expose that stuff. That’s all.”
“And so we can surmise, perhaps, that everything else in the journal is true, too?”
Nick’s gaze flicked out into the courtroom, landing on Hanna. He snickered.
Reginald sauntered over to the jury. “And so if Alison had, say, begged Ms. Hastings, Ms. Marin, Ms. Montgomery, and Ms. Fields for mercy, telling them that she was innocent and that they shouldn’t hurt her because she was a pawn in your game, that wouldn’t have been a lie, either?”
“Nope,” Nick drawled. “Alison wanted to reunite with them. She begged me again and again not to hurt them.”
“Oh my God,” Spencer hissed.
The district attorney seemed to notice this, but then he turned back to Nick. “What can you tell me about these four girls? You know them quite well, so I’ve heard.”
Rubens shot up. “Objection!” he cried. “This man is a murderer, and he’s admitted himself that he’s manipulative. He can’t serve as a character witness.”
But the judge looked intrigued. “You can continue, Mr. Reginald.”
All eyes turned to Nick again. He shrugged and glanced at Hanna and Spencer. “They want what they want,” he said simply. “Whether that’s to get the perfect grades at any cost. Whether it’s to place the blame on someone else so they can get off scot-free. Whether it’s to cover up their dirty secrets. All they care about is protecting themselves—and getting revenge on Alison. I got a long, hard look at their faces the day I trapped them in the basement. They weren’t angry at me—not really. They were angry at her.”
“And what do you think they would have wanted to do to her, if they found her again?”
Nick didn’t take a moment to ponder the question. “Kill her. No doubt.”
Reginald turned. “No further questions.”
There was a shuffling in the crowd. Hanna placed her hands over her face, too humiliated to even look around. She felt Rubens rise from his seat, but it only made her heart plummet lower. What on earth was he going to ask Nick?
Rubens walked up to the witness stand and looked at Nick. “So you’re admitting that Alison was your slave and not your girlfriend.”
Nick didn’t make eye contact. “Uh huh.”
“Are you sure about that?”
He scowled. “I just said I was.”
“So what you told the police at first—that you and Alison worked together—that was a lie, huh?”
“Uh, yeah,” Nick said, rolling his eyes.
“And what really happened was that you brainwashed Ali, right? Forced her into helping her kill her sister? And when she was let out of The Preserve again, you got to her and made her torture the girls, help to kill Ian Thomas, et cetera?”
Nick glanced into the courtroom at the DA, then shrugged yes. Hanna chewed on the inside of her cheek, wondering where Rubens was going with this. Reginald had already asked these questions.
“So you didn’t love Alison at all?” Rubens asked. “You didn’t do all you could for her? As in, hire a private nurse to take care of her burns after the fire in the Poconos, paying for it with your own personal funds?”
A tiny muscle twitched by Nick’s eye.
“I know what burn victims look like, and I did see the surveillance video of Alison at that mini-mart,” Rubens said. “It was clear she had scars on her face, but they looked like they’d been treated. Do you know what burns look like when they aren’t properly cared for? It’s not pretty.”
The DA banged on the desk. “Mr. Maxwell hired that nurse to keep Alison alive so she could help him. It had nothing to do with love.”