A cold nudge. A hard one.
Then there's a sound—or at least I think there's a sound—and I'm falling back, hitting the ugly fake tapestry carpet with a burning cheek and a strange, numb feeling, as if I don't have any legs. It's like diving underwater; the world spins and swims.
I'm vaguely aware of Leo's knees in my eye line. She's fallen beside me, making more sounds.
An image fades into view: the gun in her hand. Her finger still braced on the trigger. Leo lets off a harsh, hoarse wail, and I follow her gaze to my belly.
All red.
"I'm sorry. Oh God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." She launches the gun somewhere behind me. It lands with a blunt thump.
The carpet beneath me grows wet and warm. I'm still swimming. I try to connect dots, to understand things—because I'm aware that I should be doing that—but half my brain won't work.
"I saw your fucking website plans for SilentWitn3ss," she weeps. Her tears shine like diamonds—they're beautiful and precious, and I can suddenly taste the salt of them on my tongue, as if it's where they should always land. "I know what you were planning. You promised me! This wasn't even in your fucking contract, you snake!"
Oh.
So...that's what this is about. It all feels very casual, like any other lover's spat.
Only this time, I'm the one who's bleeding. A lot of bleeding. A steady ooze of blood.
"I let you take enough already, but you are not going to fuck over my baby. Oh god, I've been so stupid." She's hysterical. I've seen her broken, coming, just plain coming apart...but these sounds feel coarse in my ears. "This is what I have to do," she tells herself. "This is what's left."
"Leo," I manage. I sound like a little girl.
"Shut up. I'm not talking to you!"
"Sweetheart...pl—please..."
She keeps flashing in and out of focus. "Shut up! I have...things. Things I need to say to you."
So do I, I want to say, but the words are already bleeding out of me. My legs tingle. The muscles contract.
She lets out another feral sob. "I don't have OCD. I never had OCD."
I take a dry, rasping breath. She's inches from me and yet, so far away.
"I needed something to get into therapy, to be with Rachel." She draws an arm across her wet face, feathering her makeup and dragging trails in her nervous sweat. "You really don't know who I am, do you?"
Another rasp.
No. But you're still Leo.
"About six years ago, you paid somebody a lot of money for an alibi," she croaks. "Your security guys came in one night and they needed something, just a little something, for a lot of money. They paid that money to my Mom, Aeron. They came in and told her that if she kept quiet and told a little white lie, our problems, they'd be over."
Oh fuck.
"When my parents divorced, my dad paid for stuff like school, but he left Mom pretty high and dry," she goes on. "I mean, things were okay...but they were going to get a whole lot worse for her when I turned eighteen. I get that, you know? I saw where she was coming from. Then I came home from school for the holidays, and she told me how we didn't have to worry anymore. And she told me why." She bleats out a laugh wrought with despair. "Didn't take a fucking Einstein to figure out that it was you. And that...that you were guilty, Aeron. I know what you did to—to your mother." More tears. "I always knew. Do you know what that's like? To be that age and realise that men with enough money can get away with anything? It's like losing more than innocence. It's like having the entire sodding rug pulled from under you, this knowledge that nobody is ever really safe. I had this—this knowledge—but I couldn't prove it, and I couldn't use it to put away this very bad man because I'd break the agreement. It was like this constant threat."
I want to nod. Yes, I understand. As much as I can. I've always known that the world is a fucking horrible place; I only wanted to take care of her.
I've been doing that for longer than I knew.
"You're awfully quiet," she says softly.
I blink at her. Take deep breaths. "L-Leo. I won't..."
I won't make it.
Look at all this motherfucking blood.
"No, I'm not done yet. I have to get this out." Her bottom lip trembles; she's cut apart and I can't reach to heal her. "I don't know what happened. I think maybe the divorce had hit me hard...I started to read about you. Follow the news. I knew this part of you that hardly anyone else did; I felt like we had this weird intimacy. And we had money, so I used...I used...I hired an investigator. I just wanted to find something to help, because they dropped the charges against you, even though they hadn't arrested anyone else. Mostly the investigator was pretty useless, but he found out that your mother paid off another family a while before."
The Fordhams.