“You just want to be honest with me?” He spat out the words vehemently. His brows drew together in an angry frown as he clenched his jaw. He stood up from the couch and towered menacingly over me. “Do you think I’m a fucking fool?” His voice was like venom and his eyes blazed with fury.

As I shrunk back in fear and felt panic spread through my body, I wondered what he had meant by his question.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did you think I didn’t know?”

“I…what are you talking about?”

“Stop playing dumb, Liv. I know all about Ethan.”

A chill ran down my back as I froze, paralyzed in place.

“Do you really think anything can escape my notice? I know you didn’t spend your birthday with Anna. I know you were with that fucker the entire time.”

Shock rippled through my system and a part of me wanted to ask him how he knew.

“You want to know what else I know?” A muscle twitched angrily against his clenched jaw. His narrowed eyes were stone cold and all remnants of love and warmth that had once been there were gone. “I know you went sky diving with that guy. I know you let him finger bang you last night. And I know you would have let him fuck you if he hadn’t said no.”

My mind raced with everything Connor was telling me. “H-how do you know all this? Did you have me followed?” I accused as I looked at him in disbelief.

“So you do admit that you’ve been cheating on me?” A resentful smirk appeared across his face.

“Connor, I didn’t plan on any of this to happen. I never wanted to hurt you. It just happened.” My face twisted in anguish, knowing that there was nothing I could say to make what I had done with Ethan okay.

“Nothing just happens.” He then walked to the coffee table and picked up the emerald, diamond pendant. “You want to know how I know everything you’ve done behind my back?” He dangled the pendant in front of me.

“What’s that got to do with it?” I frowned at him in confusion.

“So I wasn’t completely truthful with you about this pendant.” He looked at the pendant and then at me with a wide grin. “You see, when I had it custom-made, I also had a few extra features added to it. It has a GPS tracker as well as an audio and video transmitter.”

My mouth dropped open, and at that moment, I was more shocked than frightened. “So you watched and listened to me the entire time I’d been wearing that?” I stared at him, in utter disbelief that he had been spying on me this entire time.

But something else bothered me about this, and it was a thought I couldn’t shake off. “But why? Why did you go through this much trouble to track my every movement? I thought we loved each other. Why didn’t you trust me?” I searched his stone-cold face for answers.

“That’s not important,” he said dismissively. “What’s important is the fact that you did in fact cheat on me.”

I wasn’t sure why, but I suddenly felt a strong urge to get away from him. “You’re right, Connor. I did cheat on you, and you didn’t deserve that. While I don’t regret what I’ve done with Ethan, I do regret doing them while we were still engaged. You can choose not to believe me, but I’m telling you the truth when I say that I do feel awful about how things happened. I do feel awful that I’ve hurt you in the process. That’s why I talked to you today. I didn’t want to keep doing things behind your back. With everything that’d happened between us, and between me and Ethan, I’ve realized that our relationship isn’t working. That’s why I think we should just be friends.”

“Fuck friends! I’m not going to let you do this to me!” His voice roared like thunder, causing me to flinch. “You’re not going to leave me like she did.”

“She?” I asked softly. I felt my body tense up as I started to fear for my safety.

“Cindy. You’re not going to leave like Cindy did.” There was a crazed frenzy in Connor’s hazel eyes that I’d never seen before.

“I’m not,” I tried to reason with him. “Cindy died from cancer. This is different.”

He snorted with laughter. “She didn’t die from cancer.”

My breath caught in my lungs. “But why did you tell me that then?” A part of me was afraid to know the answer.

“She had cancer but when she went into remission, she left me and made up some bullshit reason—something about being too controlling. So to me, she died when she walked out on me and left me and Scooter behind.”

“Connor, I’m sorry.” I looked at him with pained eyes. “I didn’t know about Cindy—you know that. I really don’t want to hurt you, but…I can’t stay when the feelings aren’t there.”

I walked toward the door to leave, but he moved in front of me. He glowered at me, and his left eye twitched in anger as he narrowed his eyes at me. “Did you not fucking hear me? You’re not leaving me!”

He suddenly grabbed my wrist and yanked me closer toward him. Then a flashback hit me more violently than any of the others I’d experienced before.

Anna laughed at something I had just said. “Liv, you’ll have to tell Connor that story. Maybe that’ll sway him to having the rustic farm and outdoor themed wedding that you want instead having it at that stuffy ballroom he wants it at.”

I giggled. “Yeah, I know, right? You know, sometimes I think he’s so formal and rigid about things.” I leaned in and said in a whisper, “Do you know he almost always wears a suit? Even on the weekend when we’re working from home. He’ll have a suit on. If I didn’t have access to his closet, I swear I’d think he didn’t even own a single pair of jeans.”

Anna laughed again and then looked around. “Speaking of the devil, where did he go?”

My eyes swept the room, but Anna was right, there was no sign of him in the reception hall.

“I’ll go look for him.” I smiled as I put my drink down on one of the tables.

Anna narrowed her eyes at me and smirked. “Wait a minute, is he in one of the private rooms waiting for you to get there so you guys can have a quickie?”

“You and your dirty mind.” I laughed as I rolled my eyes. “Like I said, Connor’s too formal for that kind of stuff. We’ve rarely had sex outside of the bedroom.”

She gasped in outrage. “God, that sounds awful.”

I laughed. “You’re so ridiculous. Okay, let me go find him. I’ll be back.”

As I walked around the circular perimeter of the museum, I passed by a series of closed offices. It was then that I thought I heard some movement inside one of the offices. I reached for the doorknob and it turned in my hand. When I opened the door, I gasped in horror at what I saw.

It was Connor. His back was turned to me, but I knew it was him. He was on the floor, leaning over someone else. My eyes grew wide as I saw a thick pool of dark red liquid expand around them.

“What have you done, Connor?” My voice came out in a broken whisper.

His head whipped around at me, and it was clear from the shocked expression on his face, that he didn’t hear me open the door.

“Shut the door, Liv!” He demanded as he got up quickly. There was a threatening edge to his voice that was new to me.

I obeyed and closed the door behind me. My eyes turned back to the body on the floor. It was a middle-aged man that I didn’t recognize. There was a large red stain on his white shirt where the knife was still protruding out of.

“Did you…did you kill him?” I ran to the body and checked for any signs that he may still be alive.

There was no pulse. He wasn’t breathing. He was dead.

“It was self defense.” There was an agitation in Connor’s voice as he paced around the room. Then he leaned down over the body and pulled the knife from the man’s chest. He wiped it clean against the man’s pants and wrapped a towel around it.