CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"The Trainwreck"
Taron was definitely the dopamine hit Monica needed. These few days with him had been nothing but bliss, or the closest thing to bliss that Monica's particular circumstances could currently produce.
She hummed a melody as she danced around lazily in her bathroom, fixing her makeup for the evening.
It was the night before the Milan fashion show and she could not believe how close she had gotten to letting things get sloppy.
She was better than that. She had always been better than that. She simply needed to stay focused.
Monica winced in pain as she applied concealer to the dark bruising on her cheekbone.
She would give it to Priya. The girl knew how to throw a punch.
The scratch on Monica's arm was healing but would leave a mark, and the cheekbone needed precise coverage and good lighting to disappear entirely.
She had worn turtlenecks for a week and had told a couple people she'd walked into a doorframe in the dark, all of whom had believed her without question.
Monica's mind wandered back to how easy it had been to lure Priya in.
She only regretted that she hadn't been able to watch the light go out of her eyes the way she had watched it with Tao, but she had been in a hurry, and hurry made things messier than she liked.
She deleted the last text message she had sent Priya.
In a few hours, Priya's name would more than likely be trending on every platform.
She smiled at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
"Babe," Taron's voice came from the bedroom. "Almost ready?"
"Just a few more minutes," she called back pleasantly.
She picked up her Chanel purse from the bathroom counter and stepped out into the bedroom. Taron was standing by the window with his back to her, and something in how still he was stopped her in the doorway.
He turned around.
In his hand was the jewellery case she kept in the inner pocket of her Dior bag.
Her Chanel purse hit the floor.
"What are you doing with that?" she said. Her voice was very controlled.
"I was looking for your charger," he said. His voice was different. Not angry yet. Something worse than anger. Hollow, as if there was a fundamental change in how he was viewing things. "Monica. This is Tao's necklace."
"Taron—"
"She was wearing this the night she disappeared.
Every one of us said so. We looked for it when her body was found and it wasn't on her and my mother—" He stopped.
His grip on the case was turning his knuckles white.
"My mother cried for two extra days specifically because of this necklace.
Because it was the last thing she remembered seeing on her. What is it doing here, Monica?"
Not a question. A door opening onto something that could not be closed again.
"I can explain—"
"Explain what? That you were jealous of her?
That you—" He stopped himself. Then started again, quieter.
"Don't tell me she gave it to you. She would never give that away.
I gave it to her for her sixteenth birthday and she wore it every single day for years, she would NEVER give it away to anyone. "
The case had shifted in his grip and something slid out, landing on the floor between them with a soft clink. Small. Silver. A bracelet with a particular charm he had seen a hundred times. On Priya's wrist. Every single time he had seen Priya in the last three years.
"Is that Priya's bracelet?"
Monica said nothing.
"What did you do to Priya, Monica."
Still nothing. Monica stood with her hands at her sides and her face blank as she looked in his eyes.
"What did you DO—"
"I loved her," Monica said. The words came out before she had decided to say them, raw and quiet. "I know how that sounds. I know what I did. But I loved her."
The silence that followed was the longest of Monica's life.
"You loved her," Taron repeated. Each word separated from the next.
"Not in a normal way. I know that. But I did. She was the only person who ever made me feel like I could be more than what I was, and she wouldn't give me what I needed from her, and I—" She stopped. The walls of truth were closing in from every direction. "I know it doesn't make sense."
"You killed my sister," Taron said. His voice had gone very quiet. "You killed my sister and you are standing in front of me telling me you loved her."
He threw the jewellery case at the wall. The sound of it made Monica flinch, the first genuinely uncontained physical response she had shown in the entire conversation.
"I'm going to the police," he said. He turned toward the door.
Monica's hand found the bedside lamp before her mind fully committed to the decision.
The lamp connected with the back of Taron's head with a thump, nothing like what she had imagined it would sound like. He went down hard and stayed down, and Monica stood over him with the lamp in her hand and breathed through the adrenaline and the strange grief of what she had just done.
"I'm sorry," she said, to the room. "I'm sorry. But I cannot let you do that."
She locked the bedroom door and covered Taron with the duvet. She touched up her makeup, reapplied her concealer, picked up her bags for Milan, and went downstairs.
?
Rachael, one of the helpers, was in the driveway with her bag over her shoulder when Monica emerged.
"Miss Blanchard, there's blood on your shirt," Rachael said, pointing carefully to the small dark stain at Monica's collar.
"I cut myself," Monica said smoothly, the lie rolling off her tongue like liquid. "Silly thing. Are you heading out? I told everyone to take the evening."
"Yes, Miss. It’s grandmother's ninetieth birthday."
"Oh, how wonderful. Give her my warmest." Monica smiled and climbed into the waiting car. "And Rachael, please make sure everyone stays out of the house until I return. I need the space quiet."
"Of course, Miss Blanchard."
The car pulled away. Monica watched the driveway disappear through the rear window and turned forward and began planning her arrival in Milan.
Rachael stood in the driveway until the tail lights turned the corner.
Then she stood for another moment. She had worked for the Blanchard family long enough to have developed a reliable instinct for when things were wrong, and that instinct was hitting her with full force.
She had noticed Monica's strange behaviour over recent weeks.
The maids being sent home. The locked rooms. The way Monica's eyes had started moving before her smile did, which was new.
She went back inside.
The strong smell of iron reached her halfway up the stairs. She pushed Monica's bedroom door open and pressed her hands over her mouth and grabbed her phone, dialing the emergency services with shaking fingers, the operator's voice was the steadiest thing in the world as Rachael began to speak.