Chapter 31 Selene #2
I push my lips out into a faux pout, fluttering my lashes innocently. “Me? I’m not going to say anything to anyone. You’re going to lay it all out in your suicide note. What’s not covered there is explained in the email you sent to all the major media outlets this morning.”
“I didn’t send any fucking emails.”
“Of course you did,” I insist, knowing damn well it was me. “They came from your private computer and your personal account. You even made sure to attach the most incriminating of Jordan’s files.”
His jaw drops, and I watch in delight as the redness of agitation blooms on his chest and begins to crawl up his neck while he sputters, struggling to form a coherent thought. I’m sure it’s overwhelming. I’ve thrown a lot of information at him all at once.
“Those files are gone,” he spits. “We destroyed the originals, and the only copies were on the computer we took when I dragged you out of that shit hole in Bethesda.”
“Oh, sweetie, you really believe that don’t you?” He glowers at me, and I roll my eyes, sick of explaining the most obvious things. “You’ve never been thorough, Aubrey, and you’ve never paid attention. All the years you’ve known me, and you never noticed where I put the things I want to keep safe.”
I’ve never been more thankful for that old laptop than I was the day I got back from Gambit’s and realized Aubrey hadn’t taken it. He hadn’t even seen it because Beck had the foresight to hide it, leaving the newer one out as a decoy.
Cal clear his throat. “Time to get dressed.”
Aubrey moves through the rest of his morning routine on leaden feet.
I can’t tell if he’s given up completely or if he’s plotting an escape, and truthfully, it doesn’t matter because there’s no getting out of this for him.
Once he’s dressed, I give Cal back his gun, so he can lead the march down to Aubrey’s office.
“So this is where it happens,” he muses, sinking into his desk chair with Beck’s hand on his shoulder.
I open the third drawer on the right-hand side and pull out the old revolver he’s had since his 18th birthday.
Chip gave it to him, and he was supposed to pass it down to AJ.
I never cared much for the tradition, but I think it’s kind of poetic that the thing meant to link generations of Taylor men together will be the undoing of one.
“It seems like the kind of thing you would do,” I say, carrying the small gun over to the couch he made me sit on when he took Cal and Beck away from me. They’re standing in front of his desk like they were that day, exuding power none of us possessed then because Aubrey had it all.
“Why would I do it now?” he asks suddenly. “If the guilt about AJ was eating at me, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to kill myself on the day he died?”
I stare at him for a full minute, wondering if he’s serious. If he has his head shoved so far up his own ass he can’t even be bothered to check a calendar. He looks back at me, growing annoyed the longer I go without speaking. When I finally find my voice, there’s incredulity laced through it.
“Do you really not know what today is?”
“You woke me up with a gun to the face. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to note the date.”
“It’s January 12th, Aubrey.”
It doesn’t take long for the significance of the date to sink in.
With it comes startling clarity and the jarring realization that he really is going to die.
All the bravado he’s displayed leaves him.
His shoulders drop, and the fear reappears.
This time it sticks, refusing to leave even when he shakes his head to try to dislodge it.
I relish every second, loving the way it makes him compliant enough to write the suicide note I dictate to him from across the room without argument, reveling in the way it leaks out of every part of him when the note is done and I slide the framed picture of AJ he’s kept on his desk for years into his field of vision.
“Selene.”
He’s shaking. Splotches of red interrupting the ghostly white of his complexion. I’m standing before him, the gun he’ll use to kill himself in my gloved hand.
“Is this the part where you beg?”
He blinks back tears. “If you put that gun in my hand, I’ll turn it on you.”
My smile is so wide it hurts. “You won’t do that.”
“Why the fuck wouldn’t I?”
Beck holds up Aubrey’s phone, displaying the time and a slew of notifications. There are missed calls from Phineas, Cordelia and Langham as well as a breaking news banner from the Times that reads: CONFESSIONS OF A CORRUPT PRESIDENT.
“The article was published two minutes ago,” I explain. “They haven’t had time to go through all the files, so I’m sure it just says it’s a developing story with more details to come soon. But your friends know what the details are, Aubrey, and they think you’ve sold them out.”
His phone vibrates, and Beck laughs at the text. “Phineas says you’re a dead man.”
Aubrey’s features are stricken. Every muscle frozen in terror as he considers what we’ve done to him.
“Do you think he’ll do the job personally?” Cal asks, speaking to no one in particular.
Beck shrugs. “Maybe he’ll send Langham.”
“That’s more likely,” I say. “Aubrey, do you think he has any more of that potassium cyanide?”
He doesn’t reply. I don’t think he can. He’s too busy crying, snot dripping down his nose, mixing with tears he couldn’t muster for our son but of course, has in abundance for himself. Satisfied, I sit the revolver in front of him and place his phone that’s still vibrating next to it.
“I thought I would have more to say when this moment finally came,” I tell him. “But I’ve wasted so much time and energy on you in this lifetime that all there’s left to say is goodbye, and you’re not even worth that.”
More tears fall, as he reaches for the gun, and suddenly, everything is moving fast. Cal grabs me around the waist, backing out of the room while Beck covers us, his gun trained on Aubrey as if he’s a threat to anyone other than himself.
I know that he isn’t.
I saw it in his eyes when his fingers wrapped around the handle of the revolver.
Defeat.
Acceptance.
Resolve.
That’s why I’m not surprised to see the barrel of the gun in his mouth when Cal stops in the hallway and I can finally turn around.
Why I don’t flinch when he squeezes the trigger and there’s a bright red flash of blood and brain matter across the back wall.
Why I don’t feel anything but triumph when his body goes limp.
I let out a sigh, tears gathering in my eyes as I realize I’ve finally had it.
A drink from the goblet of revenge.
A glorious mouthful of justice.
A taste of sin.