I sit up, searching her eyes out. "Wait. What?"
"She just wanted to tell me not to come to Rach's funeral." Her voice cracks. "Because—because I'm not welcome."
"I fucking hate Rachel's parents," I spit, clutching her tightly.
"Why?" She's full on sobbing now. "Because they took your money? Is that what it is?"
"Because they're full of shit! You think people who really cared about their daughter would have taken a couple mil over giving Rach what she needed?" I'm not an idiot—I know I hurt Rachel. I know she spent years in therapy because of me, repairing her self-esteem and feeling anxious for closure. And I guess, ultimately, she failed. "Let me tell you, sweetheart. We're not the reason she shot herself. They are. The fucking know it. They're passing the buck. If somebody hurt you, I'd cut them up myself, Leo. And if they offered me a payoff, I'd shove their bank notes so far down their throats, they'd be spitting up dollars for weeks. That's if I let them live."
"That's fucked up."
"It's the truth. Yeah, you know what? I'm not a nice boy." I snort. "But they're a pair of twisted assholes more interested in their own bank balance. They can jump off a cliff."
Like I always say: human nature is nails on a chalkboard, no matter what your diagnosis is.
Leo weeps quietly into my shirt, absorbing all this.
"I'm making it all go away," I tell her. "You want to see?" Without waiting for an answer, I scroll through the channels to NN24...where they're breaking the story on Montgomery.
Fucking yes.
Can't get in with your gagging order now, can you? You fat shit.
Leo crawls upward, using fistfuls of my shirt for leverage. "What the hell?"
"It's perfect," I whisper. "You just watch, baby—in a couple days, nobody will remember who Rachel is. We're home clean."
"Where did you get this?"
"I have ways and means." I tip her chin up, find her mouth for a kiss. "I told you I'd take care of you, and I meant it. I wasn't just talking about...things."
"You're taking care of yourself," she mutters, looking away.
"Both of us, Leo." Doesn't she get how strange this is for me? How can I explain it without telling her what I am? It makes my pulse roil with frustration. "Or you want me to halt my little damage control operation, huh? Have your face plastered over GNS some more?"
She says nothing. Just lies there, breathing slowly, her fingers still digging through my shirt.
I'm not just doing this for myself. It pisses me off that she'd even think it.
Later, when she falls asleep, I load up her laptop. Its neon screen turns my skin cyan blue in the dark. Out of habit, I go through her internet history; it's just tech news sites and Facebook (which I can't log into), email and some fashion blogs. My Forbes interview comes up though. So does my biography on the Lore Corp site. Huh. So she thinks about me when I'm not around, searches out pieces of me, anything she can get.
I know how she feels. Is that empathy? What the fuck is empathy, anyway, aside from avoiding your own crap and hiding in someone else's?
I have to know. So I search.
Then I type my other question into Google. Can sociopaths fall in love?
The words float there. Just pixels. I don't know why I'm so nervous—I'm not a fucking pansy.
I hit enter.
The search spews up articles, and I begin to read.
***
Tuija is late for work again.
Screw paparazzi. Screw the cops and forensics assholes who are still taking up half my lobby. I'm done with being inconvenienced by them. I swear, if Tuij is face down in a pool of her own vomit, I'm finally going to fire her ass.
Leo insisted on coming into work with me, despite the fact she's dosed herself up on Xanax. It's half nine; I predict she'll be out cold on my sofa by eleven, tops.
Still...I did kinda tire her out last night. Late into the dark hours, when she woke again, something else woke with her. It was hungry and it wanted me. It spilled fresh blood from her healing wounds.
"Tuija had some budget files for me," Leo says as she straightens my tie. I watch her ass move in the opposite mirrored wall, and give her curves a light spank of appreciation. "You think you could get them for me, if she's not here? I promised I'd go through them with Finn."
"You sure you should be at work today?"
She shrugs. Bites her lip. "I don't know what else to do with myself."
"Then you go get the files. Tuij is pretty organised, and her office isn't locked. I've got some stuff to take care of."
I need to sift through the entire contents of the internet and bask in the downfall of Dietrich Montgomery. I wonder what his stock's looking like? Is this what happiness really is, the slow curdle of success and adrenaline until you feel drunk and delirious?
Fucking hell, grasshoppers. Someone should bottle this shit.