20. Audrey
AUDREY
PLAYLIST: TOURNER DANS LES VIDE – INDILA
Iam unable to tell what exactly made me do it. Maybe the rain. Maybe because she made me aggressive on a whole other level and it turned me on. The way she looked at me—
Whatever the reason, I shouldn’t have. I should have stayed inside.
Should’ve let her sort it out alone. Should have let it rest after the warehouse.
Hide whatever it is I feel for her somewhere deep down in a locked black box in me until it eventually fades away, especially after what Lilian told me about my sister.
Only I didn’t.
I went after her.
Provoked her.
Kissed her again.
Kissed her in a way that shatters the ground under my feet.
And now that her hands demand more, I can’t.
I can’t.
What have I done?
I pushed her beyond a line I am not able to go myself.
Now that she demands me, I can’t.
I need to walk away.
She has no fucking clue.
She doesn’t know what happened in L.A.
She doesn’t know about Hailey.
She doesn’t know about that February night where I lost everything.
I let my head fall back, fighting the tears that come. Tears that come because I want her, but can’t. Tears because I have to drive her away. Tears because I feel as horrible as I can.
She doesn’t know what Lilian told me.
She doesn’t know my sister was in love with someone else.
She doesn’t know anything.
And all I want is to run.
I want to run so far away that no one will ever find me.
Because I am going to destroy everything.
“What’s up?” she asks.
Her voice is insecure.
Because I made her be vulnerable, and backed myself into a corner with it. A corner so tight there is only fight or flight left.
My breathing fastens.
I try to regulate it, but I can’t.
I bring my head back up.
Her mascara is completely smeared. She looks so pretty with it. But pretty isn’t enough when faced with a lion that is about to strike.
I’m sorry, I tell her in my mind as I take a step back.
“I will go forward with Lilian,” I say and walk to the Mustang.
“Wait!” she shouts. “We have to talk about—“
“No, we don’t. I own Whitney-Morgan, not you,” I say harshly.
Her face hardens.
“Fucking hypocrite,” she says.
I chuckle darkly.
“Yeah,” I say with a pretended self-sufficient smirk while all I want to do is die from the pain it causes me. “Living up to your expectations of me, ain’t I?”
Slap. Her flat hand meets my cheek with rain splashing from the pure force of her slap.
Yes, please hate me.
“I told you to leave,” I say. “I warned you. You didn’t. Now you gotta live with whatever wreck I leave behind.”
With that, I get into the car. Doing so causes a pain to stab me in my chest.
“I won’t let you,” she says, holding onto the door. “You can’t walk away from what is real.”
One sentence.
My sentence.
But she walked away, too.
“You walked away first,” I tell her and rip the door closed.
I start the motor, but she steps in front of the car, blocking the way.
The headlights dip the yard into a dark scenery, the heavy rain, her standing in front of the car with a long shadow and her gun pointing directly at me.
I let the motor roar.
She doesn’t move, so I let the car jump forward, just enough that it almost touches her knees.
She still doesn’t move.
I shake my head.
She has no clue who she is confronting.
One of the many things she doesn’t know.
I pull the hand brake up as hard as I can.
Turn the steering wheel completely to the left.
Instead of letting the gas come in slowly, I press it all the way down.
The Mustang roars and drifts to the side without touching her.
I can’t see her face, but when I pull the Mustang straight and let go of the hand brake, causing it to dart forward, A shot is fired. It hits the Mustang in the back.
I don’t care; I just drive off. After all, I have a plan to finish.
The moment I leave the driveway and the garage behind, I know there will be no way back after this. It’s for the better, before she loses herself in me as she did in my sister.
I will go back to L.A., and everything will return to normal.
At least, I tell myself as much. I tell myself because anything else would be too painful. Telling her about Hailey? About my sister? No. I won’t be the reason she drives her car into the Hudson again.
So, I swallow everything down, step into a role, take my phone, and get on with the plan.
“Lilian,” I say when she answers. “We’ll do it, and we’ll do it now.”
“Good,” she says. “How did she react?”
“Didn’t tell her,” I say. “I’m on my own.”
“It’s not a one-person job,” she says.
“It is now,” I say. “I’m very good at what I do. We proceed as discussed. I’m signing the pre-proposal and take care of the rest. I’ll call you when it’s set so your wife can do whatever she does.”
With that, I hang up.
While I drive to Manhattan, I sign the contract Lilian sends over digitally and send it back to her without even reading it. Whatever happens, I don’t care.
The only thing I want is freedom. Freedom from all of this responsibility.
And I am, as of this moment, free—at least on paper. Because whatever happens to me, I am no longer responsible for Whitney-Morgan, only for the wreckage I will leave behind.
I park directly in front of the Whitney-Morgan tower, walk in, past the guard, wish him a good night, and tell him I forgot something in the office.
I ride all the way up with the elevator, straight to the big meeting room, unplug and rip the beamer from the ceiling, and am back outside with the beamer in my backpack within ten minutes.
When I walk towards the Mustang, instead of getting back into it, I walk straight past it, cross Park Avenue, and go to the building opposite that is currently under construction, with a massive fence and scaffolding around it.
I put on gloves, but then hesitate for one moment with the mask in my hand, closing my eyes and focusing on what I am about to do.
Freedom.
It’s the only thing that matters. My eyes wander onto the mask in my hand, the one that would protect me from the consequences. But running ain’t freedom.
“No. They shall see my face,” I say. There is nothing I have to lose.
I jump up the fence, pull myself up, and climb the scaffolding from the outside with my backpack until I am high enough. It’s not as easy as I imagine, because the rain, though getting lighter, made everything slippery.
My feet slip off the metal several times, causing adrenaline to pump through my system.
“Fuck,” I breathe out when I slip once more and almost slip off with my hand, too.
It takes my last power to get to the level above me, and when I do, my arms tremble. I lie there for one moment, panting heavily.
But I don’t have time for my body to be exhausted. I have a mission to accomplish.
I get around the corner, facing the Whitney-Morgan Headquarters, close to a distribution box. There, I slip off the gloves I used for climbing and take the beamer from my backpack.
I fix it with duct tape on the beam so it points exactly at the massive glass front of the Whitney-Morgan building, and repeat the same with my corporate laptop.
I plug all of it into the distribution box for the construction workers, return to my setup, and take my phone.
“Ready when you are,” I say.
“Hang on,” Lilian says. “Putting you on speaker.”
“Is it connected?” asks a very strong, but deeper female voice. I like how Lilian’s wife is all about business and doesn’t concern herself with platitudes, but I wouldn’t have expected anything else. Lilian has always been straightforward herself.
“Yes, wifi is connected.”
“Give me a minute,” she says, and I wait. Meanwhile, I stare down at the few people walking down on the sidewalk in the middle of the night and some cars passing. The occasional honk and siren in the background—it is, after all, the city that never sleeps.
“Got it,” she says. “Plug it in.”
I connect the beamer to the laptop.
It first shows just a white stream, and then a video starts playing.
My sister’s face stares right at me, interrupted by the last raindrops before it finally stops raining.
She is sitting on a chair, getting interviewed.
My hands flap in front of my face.
Seeing her.
She is talking; I can’t hear the sound, but the text shows as massive subtitles.
The text telling all the things that died with her.
‘He said I should be a good girl and undress. That I am not a child anymore.’
Videos play as an overlay. Videos of her being—being—
Oh god.
My stomach twists.
I can’t watch it.
Names appear.
Names of people Whitney-Morgan does business with. Names of high-ranking employees, like the Foundation’s CFO. Names of people I know from film and red carpets. I hate this world. More names. Names of people I have personally met, like Lilian’s own fucking father. Like Delilah’s father.
Goosebumps, not of the good kind spread over my arms. There is this murderous rage withing me.
“Oh my god,” I whisper as I realize how bad it is. And what I have done, leaving her alone with all of it. Walking away and never looking back.
My entire body trembles as I stare transfixed at what Kat and Lilian have cut together.
I should’ve known. Should’ve made her come with me. Should have checked in. Should’ve connected the dots. Should’ve—
“You should get out of there,” says Kat suddenly. I have completely forgotten where I am and what’s happening.
Sirens.
“Are they coming for me?”
“I believe so,” Kat says. “We’re live streaming it everywhere. I interrupted every show on TV, every network; it’s all over social media. I even hijacked the White House site.”
As much as I am impressed by her skill, I am fucked.
“Shit,” I say, hang up, swing my backpack back on, and get back around the corner to the side and start climbing back down.
And then, my hand slips—I forgot the gloves.
I swing onto the level, rub my hands, and climb back up to the level I came from.
There, I take the gloves and slip them on as the sirens close in.
I climb down as fast as I can with the still-wet beams.
When I reach the first level, several police cars are blocking the area around me. I slip into the first level so they don’t see me climbing from the outside, and I get to the front to check out Park Avenue as I crouch on the ground, figuring out my options.
I will never make it to my car with—I count the police cars—six—no, seven—eight of them visible around me. And more are coming.
I look up. Two options: the way I came, meaning, withdraw up higher with the risk of having no option left and the hope they won’t make it up to the highest level or being ready to jump to the other building.
Or taking every single risk by getting down and making my way through the city and leaving the Mustang behind.
Decide, Addy, decide.
But before I am even close to deciding, a single roar of a motor trails into my ears. A roar I’d recognize everywhere, because it’s so unique.
A grin spreads on my face as I shake my head, while Park Avenue is taken over by a black Challenger Hellcat, spinning a donut in the middle of it. Cass.
Followed by a black Lexus LFA. Jackson.
A dark-green Camaro. Nikki.
A pink Charger. Blair.
A Tomahawk motorcycle flipping through them. Illy.
And all the other cars I’ve seen at the meetup surrounding them like a roadblock.
She came. All of them came. Taking a page out of my playbook.
Smoke evaporates around the donuts Cass, Jackson, Nikki, and Blair make. It’s a wild view, because the road is still wet, but from the force of their cars, they smoke anyway.
I hang from the first level, then jump.
I walk straight through the middle as they circle around me with a precision that shows how much of a family they are.
They know each other. They know their moves, and I am walking straight through the middle—an insane feeling as the headlights and smoke dip the entire Avenue into this magical moment.
I catch Cass’s eyes for one second as she drifts close by me.
I stop and follow her with my gaze for one second. She came, although I did everything to drive her away. She kept her code.
Her eyes are unreadable.
Or she didn’t do it for you, only because of what you did, says a voice in me.
She’s doing it for my sister. The woman she loved, who was one of them.
Not me.
Her.
And this is her last honor.
My eyes wander up to the stream with the smoke wafting up.
I hope you forgive me, I tell her in my mind.
One more second as I look at the stream, then I avert my eyes, snap back into focus, and get into the Mustang. Her car. Her last honor.
I start the motor.
The Mustang, the Eleanor, roars as if she knew what we were doing, readying herself for the most important race of her life.
I click the seatbelt closed.
And then, I shoot off, as they all do.
All in a different direction.
Cass is directly behind me.
We’re immediately followed by two police cars, and three more join us, two of them black sedans that are way too fast for normal cars.
Cass passes me, shooting in front, and I let her.
I know what she is doing. She is taking the lead because she knows these roads like no one else.
There is one moment when we are at the same height—
It is one look.
One pull in my chest.
One smirk.
Goosebumps on my arms.
Things are as they should be.
This is who I am.