Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
Jason
“What the hell do you want?” Ralph snarls at me.
He’s looking better.
“You ready to level with me?” I ask.
“About what?” He exhales sharply through his nose. “Don’t think you’re going to get me to drop the charges against you.”
“That’s already a done deal,” I lie. “We have proof that I didn’t do this to you.”
He sneers. “No, you don’t.”
“You sure about that?” I turn toward the machines monitoring his heart rate. Surprisingly, his pulse remains at about seventy beats per minute.
I’m not getting to him.
Maybe Angie is right. Maybe he is a narcissist. But I recall a bit about my psychiatry rotation my internship year.
I think Ralph—or Ronny, or whoever the fuck he is—is a bona fide sociopath.
He knows I didn’t do this to him. In fact, he and I seem to be the only two who do know the truth. But someone did do this to him. The injuries are too severe to have been self-inflicted.
I still have privileges at this hospital, and I could easily look at his records, but I don’t need to. I respect patient confidentiality, even though I don’t respect Ralph.
Someone did this to him.
And I’m pretty sure it was orchestrated by the man in this bed.
Because that’s what a sociopath would do.
His pulse is staying constant at seventy beats per minute. Which also means he’s not in a lot of pain, either. He could be doped up on drugs, or he could just be a fucking iceman.
Then again, if he is a sociopath and an iceman, could he still be obsessed with Lindsay?
I watch him carefully, studying every flicker of his expression, every shift in his breathing.
He lies there, bruised and broken, but there’s no real distress beneath the surface.
No fear, no panic—just calculation. A man like this should be seething, should be lashing out, should be grasping at any last shred of control he can find.
But his pulse stays steady, unnaturally so, like he’s already ten steps ahead of me.
Like he’s already decided how this will play out.
Sociopath or narcissist?
There’s a difference, but right now, the distinction feels thin.
A narcissist craves attention, feeds off the reactions of others, twists the truth until it serves their purpose.
But a sociopath—he doesn’t need admiration. He needs control.
And this one? He’s been playing the long game.
He accused me without hesitation, with all the certainty of a man who’s rewritten reality to fit his needs.
He expected outrage, maybe desperation. He expected me to crumble under the weight of the accusation.
Instead, I told him I had proof. Hard evidence that I wasn’t the one who left him like this.
And still, his pulse never wavers.
Normal people react—spikes of adrenaline, anger, relief, even regret.
But he simply watches me, as if my proof is nothing more than an inconvenience, an obstacle he’ll sidestep when the moment is right.
He isn’t trying to convince me of my own guilt.
He’s waiting. Calculating. Already shaping his next move.
Sociopath. He’s a fucking sociopath.
A narcissist would be unraveling by now. But he remains composed, knowing that truth has never mattered as much as perception.
He thinks he’s still in control. That’s his mistake.
“You see, Ralph,” I say, remaining as calm as I can under the circumstances, “I know you.”
He scoffs. “You don’t know shit about me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” I slowly pace at the foot of his bed. “This was never about Angie. It was never about medical school.” I shrug. “Hell, it wasn’t really even about me.”
He glares at me. “You think you can outsmart anyone, don’t you? The great physician, head of his class. On to becoming one of the best general surgeons in the country.” He laughs coldly. “None of that happened, did it?”
“No. It didn’t.” I draw in a breath, count to ten.
I can’t let him get to me. That’s what sociopaths do, thrive on control. On watching people collapse under the weight of their manipulation. They push buttons, prod at weaknesses, and wait for the inevitable snap. But I won’t give him that satisfaction.
Not now. Not ever.
I hold his gaze. “Our pasts can be funny things. No one really knows when they’re going to collide. My past has been filled with loss, trauma, sorrow. Yours? Yours has been filled with a single thought. One singular possession.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” I lean over him, sear my eyes into his. “Mr. Burgundy?”
He swallows hard, his pulse still steady but his breathing just a fraction off.
Good. Even sociopaths have their limits. He’s not as calm as he wants me to think.
“It’s Normandy,” he says. “Ralph Normandy.”
“We’ll see about that.” I stand back up, pace around his room.
“Let’s just, for the sake of argument, assume that I’m right.
Let’s say that you’re the Ronny Burgundy who dated my wife, Lindsay, in high school.
Who, when she broke it off, became so obsessed that you stalked her, made her life hell, to the point that she had to get a restraining order against you.
” I stop pacing and face him. “But you didn’t stop there.
You were so obsessed, bothered her so much, that she and her family left their home state of New Jersey.
” I shrug. “Maybe you tried to get over her. Maybe you waited. Maybe you just didn’t have any money to follow her around.
Frankly, that’s my best guess. But you eventually found her.
And when you finally did, you learned that she had just suffered an unimaginable loss.
You thought you could be the one to console her, make her love you again.
” I cock my head, not breaking eye contact. “But she didn’t.”
I continue to stare at him, counting in my mind.
His pulse goes up to seventy-five.
“Am I getting close?” I ask.
“You’re living in a dream world.” His fingers twitch against the hospital blanket.
His words are staying strong, but his body, fraught with the injuries that he brought upon himself, is faltering.
“So there are a few ways we can handle this,” I say. “You can drop the charges against me…”
“Or what?” he says, his teeth gritted.
“Or you can see the cards I’m holding close to my chest.”
“What cards might those be?”
“A smart player never shows his hand,” I say.
“So you think I’m just going to drop the charges against you?” A short, cold laugh. “I’m just going to assume that you’re not bluffing?”
“You can do whatever you want. But I can tell you one thing right now. There’s only one of us in this room who’s going to be doing any prison time.” I shrug. “I’ll let you think about that. Think about which one of us it’s going to be.”
Then I turn around and walk away.
“You can’t prove anything, Lansing,” he calls after me. “Not about me, not about this Burgundy guy. It doesn’t matter how many of his friends you call.”
I ignore him, close the door behind me. Once I’m in my car, my phone buzzes. It’s Angie.
“Hi,” I say into the phone.
“Hey, can you come to my place for dinner at eight? My brother’s in town, and I’d like you to meet him.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“And I have some great news. My brother has connections in the Boulder court system. He got a warrant to check the security footage around Ralph’s apartment building. We’ll see if anyone goes in or out. Maybe the person who attacked him.”
“I know you want to be helpful, but what if it didn’t happen around his apartment?”
“I know. Henry’s getting a search warrant too, based on the handwriting expert’s analysis.”
“That’s enough to get a search warrant?”
“Well, it would help if we had the fingerprints. That’ll take a little longer to get. But yeah, Henry thinks that’s enough. I mean, you know, connections.”
“Wow.”
“I know. Sometimes it pays to be the person who wears my shoes.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just…” She sighs. “My family name means something. And if I can use it to help you, Jason, I’m going to do it.”
“At this point, I’m going to let my pride sit on the back burner.
” I let out a humorless chuckle. “I need to prove that I didn’t do this to Ralph.
I have no alibi, so the only way to deal with this, get it off my plate, is to get him to drop the damned charges.
And unless we can find out who did this to him, or get him to admit it, the only way he’ll drop them is if I hold the better hand.
I have to prove that he’s behind Lindsay’s death.
” I rub at my left temple with my free hand.
“God, I almost wish I had been the one to beat him.”
“Don’t say that, Jason.”
“He fucking killed my wife, Angie.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
Except I do. It all makes sense now.
The puzzle pieces click together, fitting into the chilling image of Ralph as an obsessed, calculating man who would do anything to manipulate reality to his favor. A sociopath.
“Angie, I need to go,” I say hastily.
“But the dinner—”
“I’ll be there.” I cut her off. The last thing I need right now is to explain things to her and see the dawning horror in her eyes. Not when I’m barely keeping myself steady. “I just need some time.”
I end the call before she can respond and toss my phone onto the passenger seat of my car.
Ralph’s image flashes in my mind, but now I see him for what he is—an obsessive manipulator who would stop at nothing to possess the one thing he holds most dear.
I tighten my grip on the steering wheel. The dashboard clock reads six forty-five. I have just over an hour until dinner with Angie and her brother, who is hopefully going to help me put Ralph behind bars, where he belongs.
In my pocket, my phone buzzes again. I ignore it, my thoughts too consumed by Ralph. His face, his lies, his chilling composure. I’m uncomfortably aware that he’s still out there, a free man, while I’m the one facing charges.