Twisted Lies (Twisted, #4)

After Christian leaves, Stella collapses to the ground, sobbing, and nurses a broken heart.

In the two weeks since Stella and Christian broke up, he’s been getting drunk nightly at a random dive bar near his office. Tonight, Stella enters the bar with a man. Jealousy and heartache overcome Christian, and he leaves the bar. What he doesn’t know is that the man accompanying her is Stella’s social media manager, Brady.

Stella receives a call from her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken in four months. Her mother recently read Julian’s writeup in Washington Weekly and saw the Delamonte photos. The article has given her a new perspective on Stella’s career and achievements, in which she expresses pride. She asks if Stella would be willing to meet with the family sometime soon, and Stella agrees.

At Harper Security’s annual poker tournament, Christian feeds his four suspects four different pieces of information, casually slipping into conversation that he has developed a new device even better than Scylla. Knowing that a traitor can’t resist sending that information to Sentinel, all he has to do is wait.

Christian returns home and goes to his office. He drafts another love letter for Stella—one of many he’s been writing daily since their breakup—and places it in the hidden compartment where the files on her used to be. He’s long since destroyed them.

Stella meets her family at a café in Virginia. She mends the rift with her mom and admits that the accomplishments game makes her feel like the most inadequate family member at the table. She tells her family about finishing her first collection and that a local boutique has agreed to stock it.

When her family leaves, Brock approaches Stella, still tasked with subtly guarding her. Brock becomes suddenly sick and heads for the restroom, and Stella herself becomes dizzy as if drugged. She leaves the restaurant for air but is held at gunpoint by a stranger behind her back and knocked out by the butt of the gun.

Christian monitors an email that Sentinel’s CEO sends to his top cyber developer. The specific information given to Sentinel reveals that the traitor is Kage—Christian’s oldest friend within the company. Christian tails Kage to an abandoned junkyard on the outskirts of the city, where he meets with the owner of Sentinel, Mike Kurtz. Kage receives a briefcase of money for the information. After Mike leaves, Christian confronts Kage. Kage admits that his motivations stem from jealousy and ego at having to serve Christian while never getting recognition himself.

Christian makes quick work of shooting Kage dead instead of drawing the moment out. He then gets a text from Brock detailing his location and informing Christian that he’s incapacitated.

Christian rushes to the District Café, where he finds Brock puking in the bathroom. He demands to see their security footage and catches Stella ushered at gunpoint out of the building by a tall figure in a baseball cap and dark jacket.

Stella wakes to discover that Julian is her kidnapper. He admits that they had a class together at Thayer, where they both went to university. He became enamored with her and has since entertained fantasies of them being together romantically. He reveals that his grandmother has an apartment in The Mirage, which is how he’s been able to get past their security, especially with the added help of Sentinel.

When Stella says that she’d rather die than be with Julian, he claims that if he can’t have her, no one can. He raises a gun to shoot her but is incapacitated instead by Christian and a team of reinforcements, who arrive just in time.

Christian reveals that he tracked Julian down via the credit card he used for the car rental, which they then tracked out to the cabin in the woods where he’s been keeping Stella. Christian and Stella arrive at The Mirage, where she is checked by a doctor. They shower afterward, and when they settle in for the night, Stella asks Christian to tell her a story.

He claims that his mother left him a goodbye note before she died along with her one attempt at art—the ugly Magda painting. Christian framed it and placed her note inside the painting, where it stayed for two decades. His competitors believed that it was valuable due to how Christian treated it, but it really only holds sentimental value to him.

Stella admits that she’s missed him and that, at the cabin, she realized the differences between Christian’s invasion of privacy and Julian’s. She believes that she can fully forgive Christian in time.

The next morning at breakfast, Christian reveals that he’s invited all Stella’s girlfriends over. Christian must leave to deal with Julian but tells Stella to look in the desk drawer where she found the files when she gets the chance. When Stella’s friends arrive, she tells them everything. After they leave for the day, Stella finds the daily love letters that Christian left in his desk drawer and begins reading them all.

Christian tortures Julian for a while in punishment for what he did to Stella. The session is eventually interrupted by a text message from Stella asking for him to come home. Christian shoots and kills Julian, showers in the warehouse’s bathroom, and goes home to Stella. After reading his letters, Stella has decided to forgive him completely.

Two weeks later, Christian takes Stella to his favorite Italian restaurant in Columbia Heights. Stella has also heard news that Sentinel was working on a new piece of code that self-destructed and destroyed their entire infrastructure past the point of rebuilding. Their CEO, Mike Kurtz, was also arrested for embezzlement and tax fraud. Though Christian doesn’t admit to it, Stella knows that he is the mastermind behind it all.

Stella and Christian attend Alex and Ava’s wedding in early October. They plan to leave for a safari and beach honeymoon in Kenya and the Seychelles the following day.

The day following Alex and Ava’s wedding, Christian flies with Stella to his hometown of Santa Luisa, California. He brings her to a warehouse filled with the artwork that his father stole. Christian reveals his plans to donate them or return them all to their original owners. He points out the Magda, which he brings outside the warehouse and lights on fire, releasing himself from the emotional hold that the painting has always had on him.

One year later, Stella has her first fashion show in Milan, which showcases her Stella Alonso brand designs. Her success has skyrocketed with the help of Bridget, who’s worn items from the line at every possible event. Stella has taken a step back from influencing to work on her brand. In the crowd of Stella’s show is her family, Alex and a four-months pregnant Ava, Rhys and Bridget, Josh and Jules, and Christian. After the show, Christian whisks Stella away to Positano, where he proposes to her.

Four years later, Stella and Christian have been married for three years. Stella owns an office, and many talented employees work under her. They’ve since moved to New York from Washington, DC, and have their headquarters in Manhattan. Though Maura made it to their wedding, where she managed to be more lucid than usual, she passed away in her sleep a month later. Stella misses her every day.

Christian, Stella, and their friends meet at Rhys and Bridget’s getaway villa in Costa Rica for Christmas. Jules and Josh finally got engaged last summer but have yet to set a wedding date. Ava and Alex have twin children named Sofia and Niko, and Bridget and Rhys have a daughter named Camilla. When Christian and Stella retreat to the kitchen for water, Stella reveals that she is pregnant. Christian is thrilled with the news.