Chapter 24 #2
“He has to do with everything” she shoots back, whirling on me. “I know exactly what he did to that girl you loved so much.” She stands up straight and paces the room. “I’ve lived everyday knowing the damage he left in his wake. I live with the names, the victims, the blood he left behind.”
Her hands curl into a fists at her side.
“But he was still my brother.”
I gulp down a thick dryness in my throat.
She huffs out a laugh. “I warned my father to cut him loose from the family business because all he ever brought around was attention. That dumb-ass craved it. It fed his ego, but when I said I wanted him cut loose, I didn’t mean he needed to die. But you did just that, didn’t you, Finnic?”
She stops pacing and looks straight at me.
“Were you so ignorant that you didn’t think to look into his family? I mean, come on. For the longest, I thought you had figured out who I was. But I guess your revenge for the one you claimed to love so much stopped at him.”
My stomach turns.
“My father couldn’t avenge Marco publicly,” she goes on.
“If the straight A University student died right after his girlfriend was found murdered, we’d have eyes searching around the city for his killer too.
” Her gaze drops briefly to the restraints that are holding my arms down to the armrests.
“So, it was either stage your death to look like a suicide, or play the long game.”
I shake my head slowly. “You used me.”
“Yes,” she says again, unapologetically.
My pulse throbs in my ears.
“So, not even a few months after his death, we came up with a plan,” she explains.
“The unstable construction worker who got drunk every night after the death of a loved one. The obsessive stalker who thought innocent ‘Chloe’ reminded him of the love he lost.” Her eyes darken.
“My father was in on the plan, of course. To make you look deranged and to have you held forcefully in Beacon Asylum to be tortured and mentally changed for the rest of your hopefully short life.”
“I don’t get it though, Everleigh.” I spit her name out like it tastes bad in my mouth. “Your father is dead now. When did that part get added into the plan?”
“It wasn’t. Not at first. But eventually I realized you were the perfect person for this. I needed you to complete this part of my story.”
I laugh, “What? Was your real father too emotionally abusive? Couldn’t just pack your shit and walk out like a fucking adult?”
Her gaze doesn’t waver. “If you must know, you don’t just walk out on my father. My mother proved that to me years ago when I found her hanging from a ceiling fan.”
I stare at her, something inside me splintering quietly.
I can’t feel something for this girl. The girl who planned on trapping me from the beginning. Who did trap me. She premeditated this shit, yet here I am still feeling an ounce of sympathy for her.
“You stood there,” I hiss lowly, my mouth so dry from the side effects of whatever shit they laced my veins with. “You looked me in the eyes and let me believe you were someone else. Why not just end the charade earlier? Maybe save Dante from his fate?”
Her expression falters, but it is so brief that I barely catch it.
“My father always reminded me not to play with my food at the dining table. This was the one time I could break that rule. The only time I was away from his prying eyes.” She pops her knuckles before continuing, “And I’ll gladly let Dante know how concerned you are for him. ”
“What?”
What the hell does she mean?
“You really didn’t put two and two together, did you?” A sardonic laugh leaves her lips, “Did you see a drop of blood anywhere before we left that room?” She watches me for a moment before speaking again, “I didn’t think so. It’s called a bullet-proof vest, Finnic.”
This is all too much to process in such a short time.
Chloe is Everleigh.
Everleigh plotted against me for my part in the death of her predator brother.
And now I am being used as a scapegoat for her father’s murder.
Dante is alive and apart of all of this shit too.
The same man I worked with for an entire year.
Is Chloe even a real person? Or just another lie?
I let out a deep exhale, “So what happens now?”
For the first time since she’d entered the room, she doesn’t answer immediately.
She straightens, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle from her coat sleeve, as she walks back over to the glass.
“What happens now,” she says at last, “is that nothing changes.”
My jaw tightens. “So I just rot in here for doing something anyone would’ve done?”
She turns her attention back to me, expression settling into something bitter.
“You stay here,” she continues. “Beacon keeps you sedated while they continue to document your ‘psych episodes.’” She makes air quotes with two fingers, her mouth twitching. “Every time you insist you were set up, it just reinforces the narrative that you’re fucking insane.”
The room was cold before, but it seems to pickup a few degrees. “And you?”
“I ‘grieve’,” she says without hesitation.
“Publicly. I attend the trial dates I’m allowed to attend.
I give statements about how afraid I still am that you’ll possibly get out to come finish me off.
” Her eyes soften just enough to sell the story.
“I whine about how my trauma lingers everyday no matter what I’m doing.
I just can’t seem to move on in my regular life. ”
A bitter laugh escapes my lips. “You’re good at this. No wonder I fell for your shit.”
“I was raised this way, Finnic. Not everyone has a parent that kisses their boo-boo’s away.”
My fingers curl until my nails bite into the leather material. “You said this started as revenge.”
“It did.” Her voice drops a notch. “Marco took something from you. You took him from us. That debt was never going to stay unsettled.”
“And your father?”
She inhales slowly. “That part is my business.”
I stare at her, trying to compare the girl who’d whispered sweet nothings to me in the dark of that warehouse with the woman standing on the other side of the glass across from me now.
“Was any of it real?” I ask quietly. “Anything you said to me?”
Her eyes lock on mine.
“Yes,” she admits. “That’s what makes the lie work.”
Footsteps sound behind her.
Two guards, who I assume are hers, appear at the edge of the room.
“You’ll forget pieces of this conversation,” she adds in.
“You always do every time I visit.” Her lips curve faintly.
“Eventually, you’ll probably think all of this is a hallucination.
You’ll start questioning if anything in your life up to this point ever happened.
But I hope you always remember my face. Keep it as a reminder not to fuck with the wrong people. ”
She turns to walk toward the guards, heading toward the doorway on her side. But she stops for a moment, not glancing back and says, “For what it’s worth, Finnic,” she exhales softly, “you did save me, in more ways than you know.”
I’m left staring at my own reflection in the glass.
And for the first time since I woke up in Beacon, I’m not sure of what I feel anymore. I’m not sure of who I am.
I don’t know if I see her as a villain or if she was just like me.
She sought out revenge against the person who hurt someone she loved.
We were familiars in that way.
Maybe that’s why it is easy to contain my resentment.
I did the same after all.