Chapter 16 #2
Graham rolled closer, and I saw something in his face he hadn't wanted Nikki to see.
Worry. Not the kind that humiliated me with pity, but another kind, restrained and furious: *If something happens to you, I won't merely rage at the world.
I'll put it on trial.* Something inside me straightened painfully beneath that gaze.
I didn't want his care as a cage, but for the first time, I could accept it as a simple human hand beneath my elbow: it didn't drag me back or decide for me; it simply kept me from falling.
"Two more questions," I said. "Then I'll lie down."
"One," he said sharply.
"Two."
"One and a half."
"Graham."
"Lana."
Nikki looked from him to me, and a strange expression flickered in her eyes.
Not envy. Not resentment. The understanding that this man spoke to me as an equal even when fear and exhaustion left me barely able to stand.
At moments like this, Adrian had spoken for me, over me, and in my place.
Graham bargained over how many questions I could ask, but the right to ask them remained mine.
"What did they promise you?" Langston asked.
"A place at his side. A new contract. An ownership stake in the clinic. Public acknowledgment after your death. They told me you weren't supposed to survive."
The room tilted even though the floor remained still.
I was dragged back into that night, into the wind, the water, the security guard's shout, Adrian's hand on my life jacket.
Nikki had known they would get rid of me.
She couldn't have known how, but she had known they needed me dead.
And she had taken the life jacket anyway.
"You knew?" I asked. My voice was so quiet that everyone leaned toward me, as though I were already disappearing somewhere far away and speaking to them from there.
"You knew I was supposed to die?"
Nikki began to cry. Not the way she had onstage.
There was no graceful tilt of her head, no hand raised to her lips, no tears falling precisely on cue.
Her face crumpled, saliva gathered on her lips, and her shoulders shook.
I looked at her and felt something still living inside me break.
Not something soft. Not something forgiving.
Simply something alive, and therefore still capable of aching at another person's fear.
"I knew they wanted you out of the way," she forced out.
"But I didn't think the yacht would go down.
They told me you'd sign the papers after the scandal, and then they'd commit you to a clinic.
When everything started, I got scared. Adrian said he would get you out.
Then he saw the life jacket. And... he chose me. "
She said it like a declaration of love. As though his choice made her less guilty. Perhaps she still woke each morning holding that thought like a prize: *He chose me.* I knew how that poison entered the blood, how it made a woman measure her own worth by someone else's cruelty.
"He didn't choose you, Nik," I said. "He chose himself. You were closer to the lifeboat and more convenient for his story. Don't confuse being rescued with being loved. I've already paid for that mistake for both of us."
Her face went rigid. The tears stopped. I had probably just taken away her last beautiful excuse. I wasn't sorry. Some illusions have to be torn out without anesthesia, or they grow back.
Langston asked several more questions. About the medical records.
About her conversations with Vivian. About the drugs they had slipped into my tea.
About the draft petition for my involuntary commitment.
Nikki answered, and with every reply, the room grew smaller and my former life filthier.
It was as though someone were opening one wall after another, only to reveal not a room behind each one, but another cage.
Then the forensic specialist arrived. The drive was placed in a clear bag, sealed, and the chain of custody documented. I signed the statement as the victim. Nikki signed as a witness and possible accomplice. When everyone else left, she remained seated on the other side of the table.
"Lana," she said.
I went still. It was the first time she had spoken my name without venom.
"What?"
"There's a recording on the phone. I heard it by accident, and that's why I made the copy. Vivian is talking to a man. They're discussing your parents."
"When was it recorded?" Langston asked.
"Eighteen years ago. The phone contains a digitized copy; the exact date is in the file.
Vivian recorded the conversations herself.
She was probably collecting leverage on everyone she dealt with.
I found a folder called 'Old' because it contained everyone she feared or planned to destroy.
Gordon was in there. Kyle was in there. Tamara was in there. So were you."
Graham turned his head slightly.
"And you just happened to open that particular file?"
"No. I was looking for myself."
She said it without self-pity, which made the words terrifying. A person digs through other people's graves while hoping not to find her own name among them.
"Was there a file on you?" I asked.
"There was. It's empty now. All the recordings were deleted yesterday at 11:40 p.m. But I saw the title before that: 'REED.
ACCIDENT.' Then a security guard met me in the hall and asked where I thought I was going.
I hadn't told anyone I was leaving. That was when I realized the car really wasn't going to make it to the airport. "
The simplicity of their methods made me sick.
Accident. How many women carried that word in their histories when the truth was simply that someone no longer considered them useful?
My mother. Now Nikki. I could have become one more line in the statistics of tragic accidents if the water hadn't shown me more mercy than my family had.
At first, I didn't grasp what her words meant. They lay between us, harmless, almost mundane. *Discussing. Parents.* As though Mom and Dad weren't two dead people, but line items in an estimate.
"What exactly does she say?"
Nikki raised her red eyes to mine.
"She asks who pulled you out of the car."
Everything inside me stopped.
No pain. No fear. No breath.
Only her voice.
"Then she says, 'The girl was supposed to die with them.'"