“Renee Rango’s in town. I’ve been told she’s here to serve Whitney with a lawsuit.”

“What?” I gasp.

Lincoln pulls me even tighter to his side. “What kind of lawsuit?”

“Wrongful death. She’s saying Whitney’s at fault for Ricky’s suicide.”

Seven

Lincoln

Whitney sits silently beside me as we ride back to the estate. She hasn’t said anything since we left the hospital.

“If there’s really a lawsuit, we’ll fight it, and we’ll win. There’s nothing to worry about,” I tell her as we approach the bridge.

“You don’t know that. Renee . . . she’s . . .” Whitney takes a deep breath.

“She’s what?” I ask.

I wait while Whitney gathers her thoughts and turns in her seat. Her troubled blue gaze meets mine.

“She’s crazy. Like completely off-her-rocker, batshit crazy. You don’t understand how nuts she is. There’s literally nothing I wouldn’t put past her. She swore she would never let any of this go public if I did what she wanted . . .”

The blood pumping through my veins seems to slow as my brain locks onto the last part of what Whitney said. From the worry stamped on her features, I know it’s important.

“What did she want you to do?”

Whitney closes her eyes and swallows, and I brace myself for what’s coming next.

“She wanted me to make Ricky a rock star. Write his songs. Make sure his career took off like it did with his first song. She said if I didn’t do what she wanted, she would tell everyone about who his father really was, and . . .”

Realization hits me with the force of a dam breach as she trails off, gathering the courage to finish. But I don’t need her to finish. My brain is already jumping to conclusions.

For ten years, I haven’t been able to figure out what would make Whitney not only go back to Ricky after he cheated, but actually marry him. Now I have the piece of the puzzle I’ve been missing for a decade.

Renee Rango and her threats. That bitch. She stole ten years of the life I wanted, and I’m not going to let her take another second.

“She wanted you to marry him and make him a star . . . and if you didn’t, she was going to expose her marriage to my father and tell everyone Ricky was his legitimate son and heir?”

Whitney nods, tears turning her eyes glassy. “She said she’d destroy your family, and that Ricky would get everything and you’d get nothing. I knew if he inherited, he’d run the company into the ground, and every single person who relied on your family for a paycheck would’ve been ruined too. I couldn’t let that happen.”

The magnitude of what she did, for me, is astounding.

“You married him to save my family. To save me.” I say it out loud because I need to hear it to make it real.

Whitney nods. “Yes.”