“Just in case, you know?” She looked up at him, silently begging for confirmation. She got it when he nodded. “If things went sideways, I thought I should have it. Be able to wave it around and calm things down again. That’s how I thought the gun would work.” Such naive thinking. She closed her eyes, trying to believe she once thought that lie was true. “Back then I didn’t even know how to shoot. It was about holding it. The security.”

“But something went wrong.”

She closed her eyes and relived each horrifying moment in slow motion. The footsteps as Allison walked in. All the yelling. “I didn’t expect her. Allison. The affair. The double-cross. Brother against brother.”

“You took out the gun.”

Grant exploded. His rage was thunderous. The walls shook from it. The louder he got, the more she’d mentally retreated. It was a family thing and she’d dropped herself right in the middle of it.

She’d frozen, unsure what was happening. Thinking the argument was about money until she realized it went so much deeper and tangled up with love and marriage. Jealousy and revenge. “Ned grabbed the gun from me and then Grant was on the floor in all this blood.”

Connor gave her arms a gentle squeeze. “You didn’t shoot him.”

But she was lost in the horrible reenactment playing in her mind. “Allison kept screaming. She said that wasn’t the plan and then Ned shot her, too.”

The shock on Allison’s face. That moment when it registered that Ned was turning on her. Maddie witnessed every terrible second.

She blinked, transporting her mind back to the present. She blew out a long breath, trying to ease the pain wrapping around her heart. “I didn’t hit the alarm, as I said the other day. I didn’t think to do it. The cleaning crew heard the shouting and called security. They ran in but by then . . .”

“It was too late for Grant and Allison.”

She wiped away the tears. “At first Grant, but Allison died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”

“Maddie.”

“I put that gun in that room. Without it there they would have only argued, and security would have calmed them down.” Her voice broke but she kept talking. “I escalated. I took the fight to the level where it became murder. A double murder.”

“Come here.” He wrapped her in a hug as he said the words.

“It was me.”

All those years of tucking that away, of letting it fester, rolled out of her. She cried and held on. Grabbed on to his waist and pulled tight, not letting an inch of light between their bodies. In that moment he was the one sure thing in her world. Secure, calm, decent, and kind.