“I got pregnant.” Her nostrils flared with disgust, and she dropped her hand from her necklace. “I didn’t want the baby, but Fletcher was over the moon about it. He thought that we were going to get married and be this perfect little family. He was wrong.”
I thought back to the casket box full of mementos. “Fletcher gave you an engagement ring. I found it in a box of old photos. What did you do with the diamond from it?”
“I hocked it, of course, the day after he gave it to me, and had the diamond replaced with a glass chip. Fletcher didn’t know the difference until it was too late.” She chuckled.
The mocking sound made me grind my teeth, but I wanted to hear the rest of her story, so I forced my voice to stay steady. “What about Finn? Why did you keep him?”
“The idea of a baby put Fletcher even more under my spell, so I went along with it. I could see how useful it was going to be in the end.”
Her voice and face were cold, flat, and emotionless, as if she were reciting some history lesson she’d memorized long ago. It was such a complete change, such a total role reversal from the warm, over-the-top persona she’d shown until now. I’d thought all along that Deirdre was coldhearted, but seeing her complete lack of compassion or feeling up close jarred me much more than I’d expected. I had to keep reminding myself that this was the real Deirdre Shaw—and exactly what Fletcher had warned me about.
“Useful for what?” I asked.
“Once I realized that Fletcher was an assassin, it was easy enough to wait, plan, and set things up. I went ahead with the pregnancy, even though it was the longest, most miserable nine months of my life, pretending that I was excited about the baby.” She rolled her eyes. “But Fletcher never even suspected what I was really up to. Not until it was too late.”
Deirdre started walking up and down in front of the cage, trailing her long red fingernails over the metal bars like a cat sharpening her claws. I made sure not to look at the padlock, even though I was holding my breath the whole time, hoping that she wouldn’t jar it loose and make it drop to the floor. If that happened, I was dead. Deirdre and her Ice magic were dangerous enough, but Dimitri, Santos, and Tucker were still here, standing behind her. One of them could easily pull a gun and put a bullet in my head while I was battling her.
She ran her nails along the bars a final time, then stepped away from the cage and faced me again. “After I had the baby, I told Fletcher that I wanted to reconcile with my parents. So I said that I was taking Finnegan to see them.”
“What did you do?”
“I took the money I got from the diamond in that pathetic ring and paid a homeless bum to slap me around. I also ripped up Finnegan’s clothes, as if he’d been attacked right along with me. Then I rushed over to the Pork Pit, crying my eyes out, and told Fletcher that my father had hit me and that my mother had tried to take the baby away from me. He never even questioned me.” She let out a dark, satisfied chuckle. “As for what happened next, well, you knew Fletcher. You knew all about his savior complex and exactly how far he would go to protect his family.”
My heart plummeted into my stomach. “Fletcher killed your parents.”
“Just like that.” Deirdre snapped her fingers, the sound as loud as a gunshot. “With my parents dead, I got my trust fund and what was left of the Shaw fortune. I wanted to leave right away, but of course, I had to wait for the estate to be settled. Three months was better than a lifetime of waiting, though, so I stuck around and pretended to be the grieving daughter and doting new mother. I’ll admit that the thought of all that money made me a wee bit impatient and that I didn’t play the parts as well as I should have. I think that’s when Fletcher first suspected that I had set him up. But I didn’t care. He was nothing but a tool, and I was done with him.”
“What happened?” I asked, wanting to hear the rest of it, even though I could guess how bad it was going to be.
“As soon as the estate was settled and all the money was mine, I went to that monstrosity that Fletcher called a house and packed up my things. I’d been planning to disappear without a trace, but he came home and caught me right before I left. He was devastated at the idea of my leaving him. He begged me to stay, if you can imagine that.” She laughed again. “Told me that he knew how much I was hurting over my parents’ deaths but that Finnegan needed me, that he needed me, and we could work things out. What a blind fool he was.”
“What did you do?” I whispered.
She looked at me, her blue eyes colder than I had ever seen them. “I told him the truth. About how I’d used him to get my money. You should have seen the look on his face. It truly was priceless. One of my fondest memories.”