Chapter 18 Liam
LIAM
It doesn’t make any more sense to me today than it did yesterday. None of it does.
I woke up with a weight on my chest, like an elephant had decided to have a sit-down on my sternum. The bed was empty apart from me. It’s almost funny how long it takes for someone to get used to something new. Waking up alone—after hardly sleeping at all—felt foreign.
The gloomy, gray light beyond the windows reflected my mood as I went through the motions of my day.
I barely felt the water in the shower. I brushed my teeth robotically, without thinking.
The sight of my hollow-eyed reflection in the mirror made me turn away in…
what? Disappointment? Disgust with myself?
Whatever it was, the feeling has clung to me all day like a scent no amount of soap will wash away.
Hours later, after spending most of the day trying and failing to focus on anything but the attack, I’m no closer to understanding what I walked in on. I only know I should have prevented it somehow. How did I not see this coming?
Yet again, I didn’t think it through. This time I could have lost someone valuable.
The thought brings up a wave of burning rage, like lava escaping the mouth of a volcano and incinerating everything in its path.
What would’ve happened if I hadn’t gotten home when I did? What would I have found in the kitchen?
No matter how many times I turn it over in my mind, I can’t bring myself to put the image together.
Selina, bleeding out on the kitchen floor.
It doesn’t gel. She’s tough, she’s skilled, she’s had to fight as hard as I have for as long as I have.
I can’t imagine her going down like that. I don’t want to, either.
By the time dusk begins to fall, I have to admit the day is a total wash.
Instead of continuing to fight the urge, I pull up the video feed from the cell.
The sight of my captive stirs conflicting emotions I’d rather not feel.
Regret. Concern. There she is, where I left her, curled in a ball on the cot.
Her face is to the wall, like even now she’s trying to hide herself from me.
She did a pretty good job up to this point—I would never in a million years have imagined her with the…
what? Guts? Insanity? Is that what it is?
Did she inherit her father’s taste for blood?
When I search my thoughts, what I know of her, I find it difficult to believe that.
She’s tough. That much, I can’t deny. But vicious?
What did she have to gain from attacking Selina?
There’s no escaping. She doesn’t know the code for the elevator, which is only the first of her problems. How would she survive on her own with no money and nowhere to run?
The direction of my thoughts makes me growl at myself while I take one last look at Aurora’s shivering form before turning off the feed.
This is my biggest mistake in a nutshell.
Thinking too much about her, trying to make sense of her.
She is my prisoner. My pawn. A man doesn’t waste time trying to rationalize the actions of his pawn.
Guilt makes me reach for the phone. Selina picks up on the second ring. “Hello there.” She sounds weary. I can relate.
“How are you? How does the wound look?” I offered to call Dr. Baker for her last night, but she refused. She’s tough, insisted she didn’t need help.
“I’m alive. Thank you for being so concerned.”
“How could I not?” After all, I left her wide open to danger, didn’t I?
Why the hell does that not feel right? Something keeps tapping at the back of my mind.
It won’t let go of me. Last night, I assumed it was all a matter of guilt, the way I couldn’t shake a sense of something being wrong.
Something that doesn’t add up. It’s still there, as strong as ever, churning in my gut.
“I’m telling you, we underestimated her.
I blame myself,” she says, while I turn my attention to the security feed once again.
This time, I’m not interested in the feed from the cell as much as I am in the feed from yesterday, in the kitchen.
The camera is mounted over the window and can take in the entire room.
I need to see for myself. I need to know how someone like Aurora can get the better of someone like Selina.
“She is her father’s daughter.” There’s an edge to Selina’s voice. I can understand why. “She’s insane. Can you even imagine the way he actually raised her? And there she is, pretending she wasn’t part of all of that. I think we know differently now.”
I hear her buzzing in my head like a mosquito while I pull up the footage from last night. There’s only one problem.
“The file is corrupt,” I mutter. I pull up the footage from the entryway, above the elevator doors. That’s fine. It shows me stepping out of the elevator, pausing. The sound of Selina’s scream froze me for a second, since it wasn’t what I expected. I then rush out of frame.
“What did you say?” she asks.
“I said the file is corrupted. I can’t open it.”
“What file?”
“The footage from last night. From the camera in the kitchen.”
There’s a silent beat that stretches out too long. “That’s strange.”
Strange, and unlike her normally airtight system. “It’s the only camera whose footage was corrupted,” I point out after clicking through each feed. “How would that happen?”
“How bizarre. I can pull it up now from home and take a look.”
“No.” It comes out too sharp. I clench my fist and force a slow breath before speaking again. “No. Don’t do that. There’s probably something wrong on my end. I don’t want to put you through reliving it.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” Now here I am, lying to one of my oldest friends.
One of the only things I’ve ever asked for from any of them is honesty.
We don’t have a chance in hell of being successful if we can’t trust each other, which means telling the truth, even if the truth is ugly or awkward or painful.
I’m going back on my own rules, lying to someone I’ve always been able to trust.
But that’s the problem. Once I had a chance to think about it, going over Selina’s story time and time again after my rage cooled, something didn’t add up.
It still doesn’t. Why would Aurora do something that out of character?
It could have been desperation, but that still wouldn’t explain how she was able to injure a woman who’s fought for her life against people much bigger, stronger, and more ruthless.
I’m not sure I believe her, and I hate my indecision. I hate the idea of someone I’ve always believed in and trusted implicitly being anything less than worthy of that trust.
“Take care of yourself,” I tell her. I need to get off this call. It’s better she not know my suspicions. Not until I have proof one way or the other.
“Are you all right?” she asks in a softer voice, full of intimacy, that for some reason makes me bristle. “You sound shaken. I can hear it.”
“I have a lot on my mind.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
I’m sure she will, because in the end, the wound was rather superficial. Much like her response to the corrupt files. This is someone who always has answers. She’s the best at what she does. And now, she very conveniently doesn’t know how the footage from her assault was destroyed.
I don’t like this. Indecision launches me out of my chair once the call is over and gets me moving down the hall, toward the door to the cell.
I didn’t ask for Aurora’s version of events last night because I didn’t want to hear her voice and knew I would only get lies and excuses.
I was in no place to hear her, anyway. Too enraged. Too betrayed.
I open the door and at first stand and watch her from the doorway, like I did from my office. She doesn’t move, though the slow rise and fall of her back tells me she’s breathing.
“What happened yesterday?” I might as well have asked the wall for a little insight. She doesn’t move a muscle. Doesn’t say a word or even whisper.
“I’m speaking to you. I want to know how it happened.”
Still nothing. Her silence makes me grind my molars. My fists clench tight, which is better than taking her and dragging her from the cot, dropping her on her ass, and screaming in her face. Anything, so long as she’ll stop ignoring me and give me what I need.
“If you ever want to get out of this room,” I warn, “you will give me your side of the story, Aurora. But I’m warning you. There’s a limit to my patience, and a time when I will stop asking.”
“Big deal.”
Not what I expected. “Come again?”
“Big. Deal.” She’s still facing the wall and now pulls her knees up closer to her chest. “All of a sudden, you want to listen? You didn’t yesterday, when it counted. Why would it matter now? What, are you suddenly going to believe me?”
“You could give me a chance.”
She lets out a sharp snort. “Right. Because that’s what this is about. Giving you a chance.”
“You’re telling me you would rather stay in this cell, alone, then?”
I think I got through. She falls silent again, like she’s thinking about it. Weighing her options. Anything has to be better than this. Bleak, gray walls, an overhead fluorescent light that stays on around the clock. I didn’t exactly design it with comfort in mind.
Her voice is strong and clear. “I would rather stay here again tonight than lie next to you.”
No way to misinterpret that.
Is she the reason for the rage that blooms deep in my core and brings my blood to a boil?
Or is there something else, something I am not ready to admit?
“Enjoy yourself,” I warn before taking hold of the door.
This is what she wants? This is what she gets.
I slam it hard and lock it using the keypad. It’s a satisfying feeling.
My satisfaction is short-lived. I can’t remember the last time I couldn’t trust myself. Years ago. Decades, even. There’s been no room for second-guessing. Only room for action. Ultimate self-trust. Nothing less.
That self-assuredness is nothing but a memory now, walking through my silent penthouse, wondering who I can trust. Whether I made a mistake. Coming to a stop in the kitchen, I look down at the floor. I cleaned it last night, but I remember it now, like rubies scattered on the tile.
How in hell, if Selina was already in here fixing a sandwich, was Aurora able to cross the room and take a knife from the block in the far corner, then turn around and attack?
Then again, why would Selina lie?
How was she injured, if not by Aurora?
Where the hell do I go from here?