“I’m giving them the truth. Don’t you think they deserve to know the role you played in bringing their daughter’s killer to justice? Don’t you think they should be proud of you, admire what you risked?” He laughed. “I’m helping you face your fears, my dear. Don’t you think it’s time you came clean, laid the burden down? You went back to the Point to end me but forgot just how many of your secrets still lived there. There are a lot of ways to make someone suffer, Reeve, and I think you should experience them all before we meet again.”
He wasn’t trying to do anything to my parents or for them. He was trying to do it to me. I’d left because things hadn’t felt right. I hadn’t felt right knowing what I had done and not feeling an ounce of guilt over the choice I had made. I couldn’t stay there and lie to my parents’ faces, so I left, and now he was forcing me to go back. He was going to blow up my family once again, using me and my past choices as the dynamite. I squeezed my eyes shut. He was right: there was more than one way to make someone suffer. I felt the pain well up inside of me.
“You expect me to tell them what I did. You want me tell them I went to Novak.”
“I don’t expect it, I know it. If you don’t do this, the next call will be from your new boyfriend because he’s on the way to their bodies. Do you understand me?”
“You’ll kill them anyway. It’s what you do.” And even though my parents and I weren’t really close, I still couldn’t let him do that to them. They were innocent in all of this, their only crime being that they were related to me. Their deaths would be my fault, and even though I was strong, the weight of more guilt and more bodies would cripple me.
“I haven’t killed anyone who didn’t deserve it.” That voice was so seductive, just begging me to believe him.
“Oh yeah? What about the girl on the docks? You want me to believe you didn’t have your hands in that? She looked just like me.”
He laughed a little bit. “She had your smart mouth as well. I might have taken a personal interest in her and gotten a little overzealous in trying to teach her what happens to pretty, mouthy girls. It’s time to go home, Reeve. Go alone. If the cop shows, it won’t end well for anyone.”
I whimpered a little bit. “He’s going to want to know where I’m at. He won’t just let me drop out of sight.” Titus was going to be pissed that I was leaving the condo in the first place. When he found out why, he was going to call me every kind of idiot for falling into one of Roark’s traps.
“Well, you better buy yourself some time, then. This little reunion has been a long time coming and your new boyfriend isn’t going to mess with my fun. I have another call to make but I’ll be seeing you soon, Reeve.” It sounded like he blew me a kiss over the line before he ended the call. After hanging up the phone I just sat there staring at it for a long time. I didn’t get my head together until I realized I was crying and big, fat teardrops were hitting the screen. Going to see my parents was a stupid risk to take. I could take a cab to their house, explain what I had done, and Conner could still send Zero after them, but if I didn’t go, they were dead for sure. There was no winning in this scenario, and as usual, at the end of the day I came out the loser. Figuring I didn’t really have a choice, that a homecoming and a come-to-Jesus talk with the people that had raised me was long overdue anyway, I called my mom back and told her I would be home for dinner. I was surprised at how excited she sounded to see me, and the lure of new information, of some kind of closure when it came to her daughter’s death, had her practically giddy. It made my heart hurt.
I put on some makeup, deciding I needed it like war paint to psych myself up, and then called for a cab. Titus tried to call me, once and then again, but he didn’t leave a message and I knew if I tried to talk to him, tried to explain what I was doing and why I had to do it, he wouldn’t let me go alone. Hell, part of me hoped that it was all an elaborate ploy to get me to leave the fortress castle so Conner could grab me. I had the Glock in my purse and that confrontation was one I was prepared for. Far more than I was prepared for this new one with my parents. I had had a hard enough time telling Titus about the murder-for-hire plot when I turned myself in; I couldn’t imagine trying to find the right words to justify my actions to my parents.