Chapter 14
Killian
I’ve been doing this every night since the park. The monitors at my desk show the news coverage, the police activity, and the movements around the estate. The binoculars are for her. Her light is still on. It’s always still on. She doesn’t sleep. Neither do I.
My phone buzzes. She left a comment on my latest post — the bike on an empty highway, headlights cutting through the dark.
Freedom is miles and momentum. Everything else is just noise from people who forgot how to move.
I chose that caption for her. Everything I post is for her now, even if she doesn’t know it.
Her comment made my chest constrict. What if you’re surrounded by people but feel alone? What if the noise is so loud you can’t hear yourself?
Then you’re not with your people. Your people hear you through the noise.
A DM arrives seconds later.
Tomorrow, I have to stand in front of 400 people and pretend to be something I’m not. Broken.
You are broken, Smoke. Just not in the way they want.
HOW do you always know what I mean?!
I stare at the screen. Because I killed the man you’re burying tomorrow. Because I held you on a park bench and kissed your forehead and called you Little Moth. Because I’m watching your window right now and you don’t know the man you’re texting is the man you’re waiting for.
Because I live in the same cage. We have the same view. The bars just differ.
I have to bury someone tomorrow.
Someone who hurt you?
Someone who owned me.
Then you’re burying who he made. After tomorrow, you decide who you want to become.
Through the binoculars I watch her read the message. She shifts on the bed, pulling her knees to her chest, and something in her posture softens. I did that. Ghost did that. The version of me she trusts without knowing she’s trusting the same man twice.
Guilt is a physical thing. It sits in my gut like swallowed glass. She messages Ghost about feeling trapped and Ghost comforts her, and she doesn’t know that Ghost is the one who set her free. If she ever finds out, she’ll either forgive me or destroy me. I’m not sure which would be worse.
Smoke, listen to me. Tomorrow, you survive. But after you’re done, the noise stops and you’re not theirs anymore. You’re yours.
What if I don’t know what that means?
Then you find out. And when you’re ready, I’ll take you on that ride I promised. You, the road, and speed.
Promise?
Promise.
Through the binoculars I watch her clutch the phone to her chest and close her eyes. Her lips move — she’s saying something to herself, something I can’t read from this distance.
Nine days. Nine more days of watching her through glass and talking to her through a screen and pretending I’m two different people. Nine days of being Ghost when she needs comfort and being nobody when she needs Killian.
She needs both. I’m both. And she can’t know that yet.
I lower the binoculars and sit in the dark, wondering how long I can keep being two men before one of them breaks.
Ivy
The bun at the nape of my neck is annoying me, and the makeup I’m wearing makes me look like I’ve been crying for days.
The Dior dress feels like a straitjacket, and my mother’s diamond earrings are heavy in my ears, but Miranda, the PR expert my lawyer hired to manage my public image, said a sentimental touch would humanize me.
I focus on the scalpel I sewed into the dress lining last night. It rests against my ribs, cold steel on warm skin, and with each breath I feel it press. My only real company today.
Six hours. You can do this.
St. Augustine Cathedral has gothic arches and stained-glass that bleeds color into the dim interior.
It’s the kind of oppressive grandeur designed to make humans feel small.
Four hundred people in black fill in the pews.
The worst of the worst, gathered in one place to mourn a man who deserved nothing.
Arthur, Miranda’s assistant, offers his arm, and the moment we step through the doors camera flashes erupt and the murmurs start. Every step is choreographed. Every muscle in my body is tight.
I scan the pews the way I scan pulse points — fast, clinical, cataloguing.
James Harlow sits in the front row. He’s wearing an expensive suit, and his face is plastered with artificial grief.
His eyes find mine and I see it — the possessiveness, the math of whether the deal still stands now that Malachi’s dead.
My hand tightens through the fabric of my dress, finding the scalpel’s outline.
You’re first.
In the side aisle, in civilian clothes with a notebook in her hand — Detective Reeves. She just watches me the way a surgeon watches a patient under anesthesia — monitoring vitals, waiting for the body to betray what the mind is hiding.
White lilies cover the closed casket. The smell hits me — the same lilies from the gala, the same cloying sweetness that was burning my lungs the night everything started.
I stop three feet away, place my hand over my mouth and let one tear fall.
I lean into Arthur’s arm and whisper, loud enough for the cameras to catch, “Goodbye, Father.” Good riddance. I hope whatever’s waiting for you gets creative.
Father Bernard starts reading the eulogy after I take my seat. “Malachi Vane was a devoted father, a visionary businessman, a philanthropist whose generosity touched countless lives…” He drove my mother to suicide.
“His legacy lives on through his daughter, Ivy, whom he cherished above all else…” He kept me pristine so he could sell me.
My jaw clenches. My fingers find the scalpel through the fabric. Breathe.
Harlow leans in and his hand lands on my shoulder, the weight of it turning my stomach.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ivy. If you need anything, I’m here.”
I turn to him with tears in my eyes — real tears, from rage, not grief — and cover his hand with mine for one practiced second. “Thank you, James.” I know exactly how you’re going to die.
From the side aisle, Reeves writes something in her notebook.
◆◆◆
The reception is two hundred handshakes and two hundred versions of the same conversation. My face hurts from performing. My chest hurts from the scalpel pressing into my ribs with every breath.
A socialite in her seventies approaches. “How are you holding up, dear?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The performance finally hits a wall.
Miranda appears beside me. “I think Ivy needs a moment.” She guides me to Malachi’s office and closes the door. “Breathe.”
I drop into the chair behind his desk. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“You don’t have to. They’ve seen enough. I’ll make excuses.” She looks at me for a moment. “You did perfect today, Ivy.”
I sit in my dead father’s chair and press my palms flat against his desk and stare at the wall until the sounds of the reception fade.
My phone buzzes and a message from Ghost pops on the screen.
How did it go today?
I buried him.
How do you feel?
I stare at the screen. How do I feel? I feel like I performed for six hours straight and now the audience is gone and I’m backstage and I don’t know who I am without the costume. I feel numb and free and trapped and exhausted and lonely in a way that has nothing to do with being alone.
Exhausted. Numb. Free. I don’t really know.
That’s more honest than the performance. Honesty suits you, Smoke.
I don’t know the real me anymore.
We’ll figure it out. I’m taking you on that ride. Leave the noise behind.
Promise?
Already did. I keep my promises.
The room is silent in a way the factory never was — no humming monitors, no keyboard, no breathing from someone six feet away.
Ghost promised me a ride. Killian promised he’d come back. Two promises from two men, and I’m holding onto both of them like ropes thrown into a well.
I close my eyes. For the first time since the funeral started, the weight on my chest lifts — not because the day is over, but because somewhere out there, two people know I’m real. One through a screen. One through a memory.