“So who is this witness?”
“A janitor. Elias Schmidt. He actually came forward right after Richter died, but my father paid him off and he disappeared before he said anything to the police. Evelyn was around during all of that. So was Charles. There was a tell-all book in the works that was going with the hypothesis that I’d killed my coach. They got it shut down and the rumors locked up tight.”
I’m trying to follow all of this. “So the janitor was paid off, but he came back?”
“No,” Damien says. “He didn’t come back. The German police found out about him and they went to him.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” Damien says calmly. Everything about him is calm, and I realize that he’s gone into corporate mode. He’s relating the details of the transaction, but he’s not getting emotionally involved. “But I think my father tipped them.”
I am beyond shocked. “What? Why? Why on earth would he do that?”
“To punish me for not giving him any more money.”
I can’t help the shiver that rips through me. My relationship with my mom is fucked up, but this is out in the stratosphere.
The truth is, I’m scared. “But they’ll cave once you put on your defense. It’ll be fine. I mean, it will cost you a boatload of money, but you have about a billion boats of money, right? And you’re innocent, so eventually they’ll drop the charges.”
“Money helps,” Damien says, “but it’s not a guarantee. And innocent people get convicted all the time. And besides,” he adds, his voice as level as I have ever heard it. “I’m not innocent.”
24
I stare, certain that I could not possibly have heard his words right. “No. No,” I say. “Richter killed himself. He jumped off a building and committed suicide.” If I say it enough, it will have to be true.
“He fell to his death, yes.”
I stare at Damien’s face, this man that I have fallen for so completely. Does he have it within him to kill a man?
The answer is not long in coming—I know that he does. He would kill to protect me, I am certain of it. And he would kill to protect himself.
Suddenly, I no longer doubt his words. I shiver, but not because I am horrified. No, I tremble because I fear that I will lose him. That he will be convicted for protecting himself against a man who was truly a monster.
“Nikki,” he says, his voice infinitely sad. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.” He starts to get up off the bed.
“No.” The word seems ripped from me, and I grab hard to his hand and pull him back down. “Don’t leave me. You did what you had to do. What your father should have done, the bastard. I swear if I’d been around back then and knew what that son of a bitch was doing to you, I would have killed him myself.”
Slowly, Damien closes his eyes. I think that it is relief that I see on his face.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” I say gently.
Damien lets go of my hand and stands up. For a moment, I’m afraid that he is leaving anyway, but then I realize that he just needs to move. He walks around the bed, then pauses in front of the Monet. Haystacks in a field and the splendid colors of sunset.
Sunset.
That is our safeword. The word that Damien told me to pick that very first night that I was his. Mine to use if he went too far.
I look at him, and I hope that he will not invoke the word now. I know that it must be hard to go back, to tell me what happened that night. But I need to hear it. More, I need for Damien to tell me. And I fervently hope that the secrets he is so used to keeping won’t tie his tongue now.