Verwandte Artikel zu A Lie for a Lie

A Lie for a Lie - Softcover

DeStefano, Ren

 
9780593438343: A Lie for a Lie
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593438345 ISBN 13: 9780593438343
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

A deadly game of cat and mouse unfolds when a housewife with a secret life takes on a tech billionaire with secrets darker than her own . . . from the author of How I'll Kill You.

Margaux leads a double life that would make most people dizzy. By day, she's a seemingly ordinary interior decorator with a picture-perfect marriage. By night, she works for a mysterious employer known only as Mr. X. Her specialty: infiltrating the lives of dangerous targets, gaining their trust, and ultimately exposing their crimes.

Her latest assignment: unraveling the secret life of Bertram Casimir, a billionaire tech CEO whose career is as mysterious as his past. His sister claims he stole her app to build his fortune. Not only that, his girlfriend may or may not have recently gone missing.

Bertram sees through Margaux's carefully constructed facade, matching her move for move. As the lines between hunter and prey blur, Margaux finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Bertram. They share more than she'd like to admit--a dangerous intelligence, a taste for high-stakes manipulation. When the evidence begins to shift, threatening to destroy everything she knows, Margaux realizes this is far more than just another job.

Her own secrets--and her life--are now on the line. One lie remains, and it might just save her.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ren DeStefano lives in Connecticut, where she was born and raised. When she's not writing thrillers, she's listening to true crime podcasts and crocheting way too many blankets.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

The courtroom is packed.

Today, the highly publicized six-month murder trial comes to an end. At seven this morning, the jury announced that they had reached their verdict. Now we gather to hear the fate of the defendant, Emma Graham.

"Mom," Collette whispers, "I can't be late for school. I have a math test today."

At eleven years old, my daughter is going on thirty.

"It's fine." I wrap my arm around her shoulders, giving her a comforting squeeze. "Not everything is learned in the classroom. This is educational."

Collette cranes her neck to see over the rows of people seated ahead of us. We didn't get here early enough to sit directly behind the attorneys, but with the popularity of this case, it's a miracle we got in at all. Through the window, I can see that the sidewalk outside the courtroom is also packed with people, all of whom are huddled over smartphones waiting for the next update.

Collette was interested in this case because it fascinated her that this crime went down long before even I was born, but also because the murderer could still be found guilty. I explained the statute of limitations to her-how some crimes, like petty theft or even assault, have an expiration date. But murder never does. Even if they find you when you're a hundred years old and on your last days, justice will come for you.

I stare at the back of Emma Graham's head. Her gray hair is cut short, and her skin is still tanned from her long days spent on sunny beaches. Back in 1985, when her husband went missing, she was youthful and radiant, only thirty-two. She wept on the news and pleaded for her husband to return to her, safe and sound. She begged the public to be on the lookout. She alluded weakly to poorly planned-out and vague mental health issues, claiming he'd "been depressed" and that she'd "always known" he "might do something."

This didn't stop her from cashing the insurance check when his van was later found submerged in a river, with him at the wheel. No attempts to escape had been made, and it was deemed an accident. He'd fallen asleep at the wheel and perhaps hit his head, rendering him unconscious on impact.

That was forty years ago. Since then, she's remarried three times-no children-and retired to an upscale condo in sunny Florida. When her husband's death was ruled accidental, the case disappeared from public discussion. And because there are so many tragedies to fill the evening news, the world eventually forgot about her.

The room falls silent when the jury files into the room. Collette eyes them curiously. The jurors aren't shown on the cameras, so this is the first time she's having a look at them.

My husband, Waylen, would be angry if he knew I've taken our daughter here. Yesterday, when he caught Collette watching the trial recap on YouTube, which contained salacious details about Emma's affairs during her first marriage, he took her iPad away. He said the topic is too grown up for her.

But whether or not he wants to admit it, Collette is smart. She knows that criminals exist and finds it reassuring that they can be punished for their crimes. Like me, she's interested in how a grave injustice can be corrected. How criminals who thought they'd gotten away with it can finally be punished.

"You're a good mother," Waylen told me recently, during one of our hushed little late-night arguments while Collette was sleeping across the hall. "A perfect one, really. But you're trying to make her too much like-"

"Like me?" I'd pressed.

"Like an adult," he'd amended, with irritating calm. "Shouldn't she be-I don't know-collecting stickers and coloring books?"

"She's not five, Waylen."

"She's not thirty-five, either." He'd had to fight to keep his voice low. He didn't say the rest of it-the part we've hashed out a thousand times. He wants our life to be more . . . normal. My obsession with spying, he doesn't understand. "What are you trying to prove?" he's asked. But I can never tell him. There's only one person who truly understands, and that's Mr. X, who agrees with me.

Now I sit in the courtroom with Collette, who is eleven-and admittedly I do forget she's not thirty-five sometimes.

The teachers at Collette's esteemed private school would be horrified to know that I'm exposing her to this case. But I wasn't much older than she is when I was in a courtroom as a defendant and stood trial for murder.

I already know the verdict will be guilty. The head juror is a petite college student named Mira Hart, and she's working for me. If there was any evidence of jury tampering that led to this conviction, the courts would have to throw the whole thing out. But that won't be an issue.

Emma Graham sits tall and straight. Maybe she's trying to maintain her pride, or maybe she still thinks she can get away with the crime she committed forty years ago. It happened before they had things like DNA testing, and small-town cops thought a man was more likely to take his own life than his loving wife was. This was back when the news media lined their pockets with sad stories of pigtailed girls who were stolen from their beds or snatched from their bicycles.

I found Emma's story while browsing a thread on Reddit. "What's a solved case that you think the cops got wrong?" Investigators never looked into Emma's motives. Just two months after her husband was found, she cut all communication with her extended family and ran off with a man she'd been having an affair with. These could have been the actions of a desperate widow looking to escape her grief. But the case still intrigued me.

Someone on the forum claimed to have a taped confession. He was an Uber driver, and he'd recently shuttled an intoxicated Emma home from a senior center bingo night. She told the Uber driver that he shouldn't get too cocky about his good looks, because one day he would also be washed up and ugly, like the man she'd murdered for a fifty-thousand-dollar insurance settlement.

Most people assumed the post was a hoax. No shortage of those on the internet. But I reached out and obtained a copy of his dashcam footage. I took on the case-no easy feat-and was able to piece the evidence together.

But I'm not a cop. I'm not even an investigator. I am part of an organization that handles things a bit differently.

Dear Emma, I began my letter to her. Although nothing can bring your loving husband back, today you are given the chance to redeem yourself. In your backyard, below the seashell where you keep the spare key, you'll find a cassette tape of the night you confessed to positioning your sedated husband behind the wheel of his van, putting it in drive, and watching him roll forward into the lake. Some details the police never released, to prove that I'm serious: You'd given him Benadryl in a late-night smoothie, and he threw up on impact. You had tried to tape a rock to the gas pedal, but it kept falling off, so you had to push it yourself. You tell people that your husband was planning to leave you and that's why you were having an affair. But after the truth cocktail my contact slipped into your drink at the bar, you confessed. You don't remember this, but I have the proof.

By signing your latest dearly departed husband's pension checks over to the safe home for battered women and children, you can save lives like the one you ended and make things right. You will not go to prison if you comply.

I'll contact you soon with instructions.


Sometimes, the criminals I contact know a gift when they see it. Not Emma. She was used to the accusations-all of which had been proven false-and she must have assumed this was yet another hoax. She didn’t shutter herself in the house or call an attorney like some have, but she did become increasingly paranoid. Looking over her shoulder when she sat at...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593438345
ISBN 13 
9780593438343
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
321
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
Niedersachsen
49078
Deutschland