Chapter Eight
A WEEK HAS PASSED SINCE Trina’s murder, and it still doesn’t feel real. My body has learned how to move with care, and I’m able to twist and turn without hurting my side. The downside of the fading pain, however, is that it makes everything that happened seemed like a dream.
Not one I want to wake up from, but a dream I want to go back to and replay over and over—
Stop being pathetic, Mira.
I shift restlessly in my seat. I’m at my usual spot by the window in Professor Sigmund’s lecture hall, but I haven’t heard a single word she’s said.
My notebook is open to a blank page. My pen is uncapped but motionless.
Outside, students crisscross the quad in the late afternoon sun, laughing, texting, living their normal lives.
I envy them.
The auction feels like a fever dream now. The bordello with its golden chandeliers. The countdown clock. The gunfire and the blood and the man with ice-blue eyes who carried me through chaos like I weighed nothing at all.
The man...whose name I never got to know.
I haven’t heard from him since the funeral. Not a call. Not a text. Not even a grunt delivered via carrier pigeon.
Which is fine.
Totally fine.
So stop thinking about him, Mira!
Just stop.
Stop thinking about the way his palm felt against my ribcage when he changed my bandages.
About the warmth of his fingers dragging across my skin.
About the way he looked at my mouth that one time, just for a half-second, before his eyes snapped back to mine like he’d caught himself doing something forbidden.
Because at the end of the day...none of it matters.
I’m safe, I’m no longer his duty, and—oh.
My phone is ringing, and I hastily answer the call when I realize it’s the police.
Fifteen minutes later, and Dane is waiting for me outside the police station when I arrive. I can’t help but notice how much weight he’s lost. Trina may be my cousin, but to Dane, she was the only girl he’s ever loved.
“How are you holding up?” I ask gently.
“I’m hanging on. The counseling helps.” He gives me a card as he says this, and even though I obediently give it a look, I can’t seem to make myself focus on the words. Everything has been a blur lately, I’m starting to wonder if it’s a neurologist I need to see.
“What about you? How’s the book doing?”
“We’re on our first round of edits still.”
He gives my hand a squeeze. “I’m proud of you. Trina would be, too, if she were here.”
All I can do is nod. I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead, not even if what I’m hearing is a lie.
There isn’t time to talk after that, with Detective Eaton calling us into her offic a few minutes later. She’s a compact woman with sharp eyes and a no-nonsense ponytail, and she gestures for us to sit before dropping a file folder on her desk.
“We’ve made progress on the case,” she says without preamble. “Your cousin had a life insurance policy. Two hundred thousand dollars.”
I blink. Trina never mentioned anything about life insurance. Then again, Trina never mentioned a lot of things.
“Someone cashed it out three days after her death.” Detective Eaton flips open the folder and slides a photograph across the desk. “Recognize this man?”
My stomach drops.
It’s him. Trina’s boyfriend. The one who cornered me in the kitchen at her birthday party, who pressed me against the refrigerator and told me I’d been asking for it, who lied to Trina’s face and made her choose him over me.
“Braxton,” I whisper.
“Braxton Moates.” Detective Eaton nods. “He was the sole beneficiary on the policy. And that’s not all.” She leans forward. “We’ve found evidence linking him to a human trafficking ring operating out of Las Vegas.”
Dane makes a strangled sound beside me.
I try my best to look shocked and scared, even though I already know the ring has been neutralized. My rescuer told me. Every single one of them is dead.
But Braxton wasn’t at the auction. Braxton wasn’t among the bodies.
Which means Braxton is still out there.
“He’s gone into hiding,” Detective Eaton continues.
“Cleared out his apartment, emptied his bank accounts, vanished. But men like him tend to resurface. So I need both of you to be careful.” She fixes me with a hard stare.
“Avoid being alone. Vary your routines. And call us immediately if you notice anything suspicious.”
****
DANE DRIVES ME BACK to campus in his beat-up Honda Civic, the same car he’s had since high school. The seats still smell like the vanilla air freshener Trina used to tease him about.
We’re both quiet for a long time.
“It still feels unreal,” he finally says. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”
I can only nod. So much of this is hard to take in. The murder. The life insurance. Braxton.
And the part where Trina sold me to human traffickers for fifty thousand dollars.
But that part, I have no plans of telling Dane. He and Trina dated all through junior and senior year. He loved my cousin so much I don’t think he ever really got over her, even after she dumped him for Braxton.
For someone older.
More exciting.
Look how that turned out.
After saying goodbye to Dane and promising to keep in touch, I find myself wandering aimlessly around campus while I recall the few good days I had with Trina.
She’d cook me breakfast once in a while.
Chat with me when she’s bored. Those were the best memories I had of her, and it was enough.
I loved her like a sister even though I always knew it was never reciprocal.
A couple is walking toward me on the pathway, both of them holding glossy brochures for the university’s astronomy department.
Prospective graduate students, maybe, or people considering a short course.
But what really makes me look at them and pay attention is the fact that they’re speaking in French.
“Mars est ingérable,” the man is saying.
Mars is unruly, I translate in my mind.
“Et Pluton est obsessionnel,” the woman replies with a laugh.
And Pluto is obsessive.
I bite back a smile as I pass them.
I don’t believe in astrology, but the conversation reminds me of that old book. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and I’m guessing dogs are from Pluto?
It’s the silliest thing, but it makes me smile and forget, even just for a while, that life will never be the same again.
****
CALIXTE WATCHED THE girl vanish through the doors before pulling out his phone.
“Zacharie, mon ami.” He kept his voice light, but his eyes were sharp. “Are you aware that the girl you rescued speaks French?”
Eden pressed close to his side, tilting her head to catch the response. When it came, Calixte shook his head at her, and his wife’s lips formed a small ‘o’ of surprise.
“If that is the case,” Calixte continued, “then is it possible she overheard you speaking in French? And learned of something she was not supposed to know?”
The silence on the other end was answer enough.
“I thought so.” Calixte’s smile was almost gentle. Almost. “Perhaps you should consider what exactly you said...and what she might have understood.”
****
ZACHARIE STOOD AT THE window of his study, the phone still in his hand, Calixte’s words ringing in his ears, his free hand curling into a fist at his side as he recalled her first night in his home.
Ironically, it was also Calixte he had been speaking to at that time, when he had said...
Je compte la marier.
I plan to marry her off.
And perhaps...that was where her accusation at her cousin’s wake was coming from.
You were the one who pretended first!
That time, her words had made no sense at all, and so he had simply assumed she was projecting her guilt on him.
I know I’m a burden to you.
All this time, he had been trying to figure out what changed. And what caused her to build walls when she didn’t even seem to be the wall-building type in the first place.
All this time—
The phone creaked in his grip.
He had been the answer.
He was the one who had changed in her eyes.
And maybe...that was life telling him it was better this way.