Chapter 18 #2
“She told him to get the hell out. He left. Didn’t even put up a fight. She told me…even as the door shut behind him, that he wouldn’t be a problem again. She’d see to it.”
“She was going to kill him.”
Her eyes closed. “I begged her not to do it. Begged her not to hurt anyone. She told me to calm down. That it was okay.” Mother knows best, my Lily. Now, calm down. Come into the kitchen. I’ll make you breakfast and a nice cup of tea. You’ll relax and everything will be okay.”
“Lily?”
Her eyes opened. “She cooked for me. I ate her food with no hesitation. I drank the tea with warm honey in it with no hesitation. Because this was my mother, and despite what I had learned, I believed with all of me that I was the one person she would never hurt. She loved me.”
His lips pressed together.
“Then I was on the floor. I was vomiting. I could feel my throat burning. My chest burning. My whole body burning as I heaved and struggled, and I knew I was dying.”
“Poison.”
Yes. “She rushed me to the hospital. They pumped my stomach…I don’t even know how many times.
The doctors knew I’d been poisoned. They told the cops.
The cops got a search warrant. They found the poison at our house.
They connected the dots to my mother’s previous lovers…
husbands…” They’d connected it all. “Everything spiraled when she rushed me to the hospital. When she chose to save me. Because I could have died there, in our kitchen, and she could have covered it up. She was good enough with crime scenes that she could have concealed everything.”
“But she didn’t. She got you help instead.”
Lily nodded.
“She loved you.”
Yes. “So she saved me, but she got locked away. David Warren went on the press circuit to talk about how lucky he was to have escaped the Poison Princess.” Her mother’s stupid nickname in the media.
“I got better.” She hated the memories of that sterile hospital room.
The beeping machines. During that time, Lily had come far, far too close to death.
Organ failure. It hadn’t just been a simple matter of pumping her stomach.
For days, she’d barely clung to life. But she had recovered.
Bit by bit. “I was in the courtroom every single day during her trial. I heard all of her crimes. Saw photos. Heard testimony. I witnessed every gory detail. And I saw my mother look back at me and smile.” She had her mother’s smile.
Was that why she didn’t smile very often?
No, no, I never smiled much. My mother used to tell me I was far too serious.
“The DA thought she messed up when she accidentally poisoned me. Others believed it was intentional. That she wanted to get rid of her daughter but had a last-minute attack of conscience so she rushed me to the hospital.”
“You didn’t believe that.”
Certainly not. “My mother doesn’t have a conscience.”
He just watched her. No judgment on his face. Simply hearing. Understanding. Not looking for a way to turn her words against her. Gage had always been looking for a weakness, for something he could use.
Atlas simply waited. He didn’t push.
So she told him what she’d told no other person. “My mother didn’t poison me. She would never have put poison in my tea. I know that one thing with certainty.” She had the proof in the diary that she treasured so much. The diary she would have to burn. The diary that… “David Warren did it.”
“Sonofabitch.”
“He’d realized what my mother was. Sometimes, I wonder if he knew all along. Some people are truly drawn to darkness. I believe I mentioned that to you before.”
“Um, yeah, during our fun conversation with Dr. Owen at the hospital. Hybristophilia.” A nod.
“I’m impressed you remember the term.”
“I remember everything you say. You’re important to me that way.” A considering beat. “So David Warren was drawn to your mother because he liked the danger she represented.”
“Sometimes, it is a case of like to like. Deviance to deviance.”
“Is it?”
“When he understood that he was going to be her next target, I suspect he thought he’d outsmart her.”
“And he poisoned you to frame her.”
“Yes. She got locked away. He got a book deal.” A shrug of one shoulder. “But I didn’t get locked away. I was the poor, innocent victim after all. That is what everyone saw when they looked at me. How tragic, to nearly be killed by your murderous mother.”
“You were a victim. His victim.”
She had been a victim. She hadn’t liked being one.
“I was a victim until the night I slipped into his house. My other breaking and entering experience, by the way. I was a victim until I broke in, and I poured poison into his favorite bottle of whiskey. A very expensive bottle, by the way. There was only a little whiskey left at the bottom of the bottle because he’d been slowly sipping on it.
Savoring it before bedtime each night. I knew his routine.
I’d made it a point to know. I knew that he’d come in, he’d get the last of that whiskey, he’d drink it in his big chair…
and he’d think he was the king of the world.
” He’d infuriated her. A man pretending to be a victim while he was as evil as they came.
“I found other girls,” Lily blurted that out.
“Girls like me…girls he’d…hurt but they had been too afraid to come forward. ”
She’d gathered her intel. She’d learned every detail that she could about David Warren.
Because there were some things you did that could never be taken back.
Or never forgiven. “One of those girls was his own daughter. She lived in another state with her mother, and it took some convincing to get her to talk to me. But in the end, she did. She told me how much she wished he was dead.”
Wish granted.
Lily was very conscious of each beat of her heart. “He was about to get married again. Did I mention that to you? No?”
Altas shook his head. “No.”
“I’m jumping around. I apologize for that.”
“Don’t apologize for a single fucking thing to me.”
That was…
“Be as you are, Lily. That’s exactly how I want you. Apologize for nothing.”
Her shoulders were tense. Her spine too straight.
She just wanted to finish this story. Have it done.
“So much time had passed. I’d gone to college.
Met Sloane.” Finally had a friend. “He was engaged. The wife-to-be had a daughter. Thirteen-year-old Taneisha. She had a great smile. Braces. Such a cute, happy kid. Kids should get to stay kids, don’t you think? ”
He swore. “Yeah, they fucking should.”
“My middle name is Oleander.”
“I know.” Softer. Gentle.
“Oleander poisoning is usually diagnosed partially based on cardiovascular symptoms. The plant has cardiac glycosides.” Did that sound too clinical? It felt too clinical.
He raised his brows. “Am I meeting Dr. Lily Gallo? Do tell me more about these cardiac glycosides. I’m fascinated.” A beat. “By you.”
“They, um, they can cause heart paralysis. I took that idea, heart paralysis, and I found something that would definitely get the job done. Not like I wanted to take chances, but I did want his heart to stop.” The confession was scary to make.
Chilling. And…freeing. “When he was on the floor, grabbing his chest, I walked out of the shadows. My mother had been in prison for over two years by this point. Two years for the circus of her trial to finally conclude. Then two years in prison. I was in my first year of med school. Being in med school allowed me access to all sorts of interesting drugs.”
“Lily…”
“I waited. I found my moment. I found my method. And I killed the man who poisoned me.”
Done. Confession made.
“His ex-wife and his daughter decided they wanted him cremated. Right away. They took care of the details. The ME ruled it a heart attack without even doing any blood work. No drug scans. Heart attacks happen, you know. There was no investigation. Why would there be? Who would want to kill him? Poison him? Who would even know how? Other than the Poison Princess, of course, and she was locked away. How could she hurt anyone when she was behind bars?”
I learned from my mother. No, I learned so much more than she understood.
Their gazes held. She’d told him everything, and her shoulders sagged as the weight drifted away. “You can walk out,” she told him. “You know that I am as twisted as—”
“Me?” Atlas finished.
That hadn’t been what she meant. “I don’t need protecting.”
“Yeah, I think you fucking do.” A nod. “For the record, I’m glad he’s dead.”
“Why?”
“Because it saves me some effort.” His dimples flashed at her. “Because know, sweets, know that if the bastard who poisoned you was still breathing, I would take great pleasure in eliminating him from this world.”
A savage thing to say. Chilling.
But instead of being scared, warmth spread inside of her. “Gage suspected the truth,” she admitted. “He asked too many questions, and he…I could see fear when he looked at me.”
“Gage Emerick is an idiot. He was using you to profile his cases and climb up the ranks at the Bureau. If he was afraid of anything, it was that others would find out that he was a poser.”
Ah. Her head tipped toward him. “You’ve been doing your research on him.”
“Yeah. I looked into anyone who was close to you. Like the good stalker I am. So I will tell you again, he was never worthy of you.” A shrug. “I’m not, either, but I’ll fight like hell for you. You see my darkness, and you aren’t afraid of it. You see it, yet you’re still standing right here.”
Her hand rose. Pressed to his chest. Over his heart. “So are you.”
“Tell me it’s not about research, Lily. Tell me I’m not just some new experiment for you.”
“I’m the experiment,” she whispered back. “I’m something new in your life. A puzzle.”
“No, you’re not an experiment to me. You’re an obsession.”
Was that good? Bad? Both? “Obsessions are dangerous.”
“Are you going to be dangerous to me?”
She shook her head. Hurting him was not her intent. “You’re not an experiment, either.”
“Tell me to walk away.” A low, rough order.
But Lily shook her head once more. “Why would I do that?”
“Because it’s the smart choice.”
Was it?
“Tell me to get the fuck out of your bedroom.”
She didn’t speak a word.
“Tell me our forty-eight hours isn’t up.” Even harder. Even rougher. “Tell me to back the hell away. Tell me—”
“You’re not afraid of me.” That was what she told him.
“Actually, I think you might terrify me.”
Shock rolled through her.
“You’re the one person who will make me lose all control.
I know it. The thing that has kept me sane, kept me focused, kept me from being like that bastard who gave up his fucking semen for me to be born—it’s my control.
It holds me back. It stops me from letting go and becoming a full-fledged monster. ”
Her hand remained against his chest. “That’s not what stopped you.” She’d wanted to find Atlas. To study him. To…understand him.
And she did.
She understood him better than she did herself.
“I don’t want forty-eight hours.” She didn’t need that time.
A muscle jerked along his jaw.
“When I told you what I’d done, when we were in your SUV, you didn’t say a word.” This was so important. “Why not?”
“Because I disagreed with you. But that didn’t seem like the time to argue.” He looked down at the hand that pressed to chest. “This doesn’t seem like it, either.”
“Disagreed…why?” How?
“Sweets.”
She always…secretly enjoyed it when he called her that. No one else had ever given her any sort of nickname or even used a term of endearment. Maybe it didn’t mean anything to him, but it did to her.
“You will always be protected,” Atlas vowed.
“I won’t underestimate you, no worries on that score, because I’m not an idiot.
But you are not evil. You’re not going to fly off the rails and hurt people.
Even before you told me the rest of your story, I already knew the bastard would deserve what he had coming.
” He eased closer, his head bending over her.
“And the answer to the why part on that is easy. I trust you. I can look at you, and I can see good. I can see innocence staring back at me even when you are so sure that your soul is all dark. Maybe that’s what you needed all along, Lily.
A mirror to stand before you. Well, here I am. Look into me.”
A…mirror?
“Born from evil and sin, just like you. A child of a monster. I know what I am, and I know that when I look at you—you are so much more. I want to protect that more. I want to guard you from every threat.” His jaw hardened.
“I want you to be mine. I’m your broken mirror.
Never going to reflect right back for you, not perfectly, but I am ready to cut the world to shreds if it means I can keep you safe. ”
Her hand was still over his heart. A bruised band around her wrist. A gleaming sapphire and diamond on her ring finger. “I’m not going to tell you to walk away. That is the last thing I want.”
“Tell me—”
She knew exactly what to tell him. “I want you to fuck me, Atlas. Right here. Right now.”