Chapter 53
I woke myself out of a nightmare, my throat so raw that I knew I’d been screaming. It would’ve been Joss’s name. It always was.
I saw the concrete coming at me, felt it fracture me to pieces. Just like that fire fractured your in-laws. Funny how that happens around you, isn’t it?
My entire body revolting at the poisonous echo of her voice in my head, I ran to the bathroom and threw up what little I had in my stomach.
Afterward, I sat in bed, just staring at the door as I waited for the night to end. The nights when Joss came for revenge…they were the worst ones. And she didn’t let go once she had her hooks in me—just like in life.
To escape, I’d had to tear those hooks from my flesh.
I didn’t even know when my tired body kicked me back into the dark…but it wasn’t Joss waiting for me on the other side.
I stood in the grove where Ani had died, even though I’d never set foot in it.
A little girl stood looking up at me, blood dripping down her face and a doll clutched to her chest, her eyes huge pools of black. “Bhaiya, you killed me,” she said in a small, high voice…and that was when I realized I was Bobby. Young, with scraped knees and scratched-up arms from all our play.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my pulse a lump of muscle in my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
Her face smudged, morphed, and suddenly, I was sitting across a table from Jocelyn, the cards scattered in front of us. “I wasn’t that bad, was I, Tavish?” she was asking. “Not bad enough to murder.”
“I didn’t hurt you.” Sweat broke out all over my skin.
A very feline look. “You know that’s a lie, love—you’ve always been so good at those.
Audrey’s true son, a man who acts through life itself.
” She picked up a tumbler of whiskey. “I’ve begun to think that you believe your own lies—that’s why you’re so good at it.
You convince yourself of a whole other version of events. ”
I plunged to the ground, the hard concrete rushing up at me so fast that I knew I’d die, my face shattered to pieces and my bones shrapnel. “JOSS!”
I stared at the door to the motel.
It took my brain several long seconds to figure out that I was still sitting upright in bed, not falling from the balcony of Jocelyn’s luxurious suite. Where Susanne had been about sophisticated glamour, Jocelyn had been a proud maximalist.
Velvet, tassels, everything gilded, her home should have looked tacky but it had instead looked like the den of some old-world vampire who’d collected only the best things through time. I’d been part of that collection, a “pretty boy” she’d met at a high-stakes poker table in Las Vegas.
“Don’t tell me I’m too old for you,” she’d purred in my ear in the elevator up to her penthouse suite. “I saw the way you looked at me from the other side of the table.”
I’d lost the game to her, and that night, I’d lost a piece of my innocence. Because Joss hadn’t been Susanne, who had made me. Joss had been the opposite, her intent to break me in ways that I didn’t understand until it was almost too late.
Her death had freed me.
Swinging my legs off the bed, I took long, deep breaths and reminded myself of that. Jocelyn wasn’t around anymore to tempt me with “just a little taste” of things bad and dark and destructive. I’d never understood why she did it, why she went all out to destroy those around her.
Joss smiled at me from across the room…and I realized I was still dreaming. Walking over to me dressed in the long black gown in which I’d last seen her, her hair slicked back in a perfect updo, she leaned down in a wave of musky perfume to tap me on the jaw.
“Make me a villain if you want, Tavish”—a sultry whisper—“but you know the truth: Of the two of us, I’m the only one who’s never killed anyone.”
—
My face as haggard as if I’d been on a bender, I walked into the ICU the next morning to find an alarm going off and medical staff rushing about. My heart shoved into my throat, but all the patients I could see, including Diya, seemed stable.
It was only a half hour later, when a harried-looking nurse came to log Diya’s vitals, that I said, “Jack, what happened? Before?”
The sandy-blond man’s eyes widened. “You don’t know? It was your sister-in-law.”
“What?” I jerked to my feet. “No. I’ve been with Diya all this time. Figured I’d stay out of the way.”
“She went into cardiac arrest,” the nurse said.
“No one has any idea why—her heart wasn’t touched during the stabbing.
But she is badly injured, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that her heart just gave out under the pressure, though the doctors are thinking she’s had a reaction to a change in medication. ”
My mouth went dry. “Could someone have messed with her meds, given her something they knew would hurt her?”
Jack’s expression closed up, an acute alertness in his gaze. “Why would you ask that?”
“The cops still aren’t sure there are three bodies in the house, not just two,” I whispered, quick and low. “And Shumi’s husband beat her.”
“Christ.” Open shock. “Do the police know?”
“I tried to tell them, but—” Shrugging, I stroked my hand over Diya’s hair, my fingers trembling. “Diya and Shumi are the only witnesses to what happened in that house. I’m terrified Bobby is alive and about to come after them.”
The nurse’s breathing was faster now. “Look, don’t worry. It was probably a genuine medical reaction, nothing more.” He took a deep breath, was calm again by the time he began to take Diya’s pulse for the chart. “I feel even worse for her now, though. I didn’t realize she was an abuse victim.”
“All hidden. Shame’s a big thing in Indian families.” Enough to silence a woman who’d once held a high-powered job and had endless interests. “With the Prasads being so notable, and with how much she loved them, I don’t think she would’ve wanted to rock the boat.”
“I can imagine. What a mess.” He touched my shoulder. “I’ll give the other staff the heads-up to keep an eye out for Bobby Prasad. Just in case.”
After Jack left, I went to look in on Shumi…
to find her alone but for Ajay; as with Diya, the nurses were keeping an eye on her from their station.
He was dressed in jeans and the same checked shirt he’d been wearing the day he arrived in New Zealand; his expression was stark, his voice shaking as he described the events of that morning.
“I was the only one here. Mum and Dad were having breakfast near the motel. I didn’t know what to do, Tavish. ”
I hugged him.
Arms clenching tight around me, he clung to me and sobbed, a young man who was doing all he could to be there for his sister. “It’s okay,” I said, over and over, until at last he was able to breathe again, speak again.
Drawing away, he took off his glasses to wipe the backs of his hands over his eyes. “My parents will be here soon,” he said, almost as if he was apologizing for their absence. “They love Shumi so much.”
I just nodded, the Kumar family’s relationship dynamics not my business except for the fact that they went a long way toward explaining why Shumi had attached herself to Bobby from such a young age—and why she’d never turned on him even when he hurt her.
To her mind, his controlling nature might well have equaled love.
Because even when they weren’t dating, they’d spent time together.
Shumi fell down a gravel embankment. Scraped up her legs, bruises everywhere. She said she wasn’t paying attention and slipped, but I know she was out walking with him.
It was attention, after all—of which, it was becoming clear, Shumi had received precious little from her mother and father. One preoccupied with her golden boy, the other a workaholic. “I’ll stay with you until then,” I said. “You want me to get you coffee?”
“Yeah, thanks.” A shaky smile. “I’m so glad you’re here, Tavish.”
—
It was just over twenty minutes later that I returned to Diya, thinking of how desperate Mrs. Kumar had looked as she checked that Ajay was okay after the fright he’d had. All the while, her brutalized daughter lay unmoving in the ICU bed behind her.
“I wonder if either she or her husband ever think about how they set Shumi up for abuse,” I said to Diya.
“I know she’s your best friend, but she’s broken inside, sweetheart.
I don’t know if she’ll tell the truth about what happened the morning of the fire.
” Because to do so would be to betray the one person she believed loved her. “You have to wake up, D. For me.”
A twitch under my hand.
“Diya?” I jolted up, staring at her.
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Baby, come on, baby, wake up.”
A sigh, another flutter, then a little sound.