42. Leo
CHAPTER 42
Leo
The church is coming together.
Myles roped me into helping him set up, and I was happy to help. I needed to get some space from Veronica anyway. Ever since that night, I haven’t been thinking clearly.
I laid in bed, staring at my ceiling after our date. Veronica was tucked against my body, falling asleep after the many orgasms I denied her and the one I eventually gifted her.
The entire time I was inside her, or the vibrator was inside her, I fucked her ruthlessly. Not because that’s how I wanted to fuck her, but because anger took over.
While searching for the vibrator in her apartment, I came across her journals—plural because she had gotten a new one. At first, I debated on reading them, seeing as it was an invasion of privacy, but then I couldn’t give a shit given the circumstances.
I picked up the journal that I gave her in the asylum first. She had drawn on the cover with that silver Sharpie. There were small doodles of random things and monsters, but what caught my eye was the snake. It matched the one I have tattooed on my body.
I hesitated for a brief moment before opening it up. The first couple of pages were of her time before me. She wrote about Dr. Davis, the doctor I replaced, and how she told Veronica to write down her feelings and that maybe it would help with the anger. I had only skimmed over her words for those parts until I flipped the page to find the first entry written about me.
Sentences had stuck out to me.
In fact, maybe he can help me out with something I have been planning in my head.
Yes. He will do.
It will be easy to manipulate him into doing what I want. I just have to get him to fall in love with me .
Anger boiled my skin, making my body ignite in flames. I flipped to the next page, and that anger transformed into rage. Plan of Escape was the title of that page where she wrote, Manipulate Leo into falling in love with me and convince him to take me away from here where we can be together.
I continued to flip pages and skim over the words, and once I had enough, I slammed the journal shut. There was no need to peek at her new one. I didn’t have it in me to read the new plans she had for me.
I tossed the black leather book back into the drawer and stared at it momentarily. The rage filled my entire body; my heart twisted in my chest as I read her words.
She had planned to manipulate me from the beginning, and I was dumb enough to believe her. I remember her saying something along those lines after everything.
All I read was a reminder that nothing was real to her. I knew this after she left me for dead, and yet, there I was. Standing in her apartment while she is naked, waiting for me in mine.
The memories of that night in the woods leading up to her shoving a knife into my stomach play out in my head. It hurts to think about, which is why I have blocked it out since it happened. I kept the thoughts at bay after her apology, which I wanted to be true. I wanted to believe the sincerity in her eyes, but a part of me knew she meant none of it.
Now? After reading those entries, I let the incident of that night sit front and center in my mind. I allow the words on those pages to pierce my skin like a million needles. I embrace the pain, and it fuels the anger inside.
What was I thinking, forgiving her that easily when she didn’t mean it? She manipulated me again because that is all Veronica Rollins knows how to do. She doesn’t know how to love. How to be sorry. How to care.
The years she spent on her own, pretending to be Camille, have enhanced her acting skills. I can’t believe I fell for it again.
The voices in my head were right. This new and improved Veronica is the second act to the performance she gave me at Black Lake. And I was a spectator in the audience that watched and believed it was a true story.
As she slept silently next to me, I didn’t feel the hope I had for us to work out.
No, what I felt was that itch for the revenge I had half-buried away after she apologized.
I won’t let her do this again. I won’t let her rip my heart out for a second time.
Make her pay. The voice was loud in my head compared to the silence in the room.
I’m not the only one involved this time around. She has befriended my sister. A friendship that was built on lies and that isn’t real. How much longer does Veronica expect to carry out this friendship with my sister when she never wanted friends to begin with?
There is no way I can let her make the first move. I need to beat her to the inevitable pain. Until the time is right, I can act like she has been. I can pretend to have the same feelings of love for her that I used to have. When the time does come, she’ll get what she deserves.
“Leo, did you hear me?” Myles's voice pulls me out of my heated thoughts.
“I didn’t,” I say apologetically.
“I said there is a room upstairs where we will get ready,” he reminds me for the hundredth time. “The girls will be getting ready down here somewhere.”
I grab another bouquet and hang it outside of the pew. “Sounds good.”
Myles pauses, tilting his head. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just tired.” The lie leaves me easily, but I avoid eye contact.
“Bullshit.” Myles huffs, calling me out. “What is it? It’s not Veronica, is it? Chloe said you two have been getting really close. Like living together.”
“She’s been staying over a lot.” I shrug.
Even though I told him in the past that I wasn’t going to drag him into all of this, I feel like I need to now. I need someone to talk to about it, especially now because rage has been at the forefront of all my emotions.
“Please tell me you haven’t gone soft,” he questions with a whine.
I take a much-needed, deep breath and say, “I did get a little soft.”
“Shit.” He sets a bouquet back on the rolling cart and steps over to me. He cautiously looks around to make sure no one is in earshot. My dad is closer to the altar, placing the flowers where needed. “What happened?”
“I was stupid and fell into her trap again,” I begin to explain, keeping my voice low. “She apologized, and it sounded so honest. How she acted was… different than how she acted in the asylum. She played the role so well this time that I fucking fell for it.”
“So you fell in love with her again?” he asks.
“I thought I did,” I respond with the truth. “I was naive and thought she was being honest because of how she apologized. There was so much sincerity in her voice that I?—”
“Leo, I’m not judging. You know that, right? It’s who she is,” he reassures me that my feelings are valid. “What changed, though? What made you see through the fog and realize she was lying again?”
“I found her old journal and read it. All the plans she had made for escaping and tricking me into helping her. It just… lifted the haze from my body and showed me who she really was and always has been. That no matter what, she would never truly change.”
“You can’t trust her,” Myles states as a fact, and he is right.
“She thinks everything is fine,” I say. “I need her to believe that nothing has changed.”
“Why? Why put yourself through that again? Just break up with her and ship her off to the asylum like you should have done in the first place.”
I shake my head. “Her being locked up isn't punishment enough, Myles. She doesn’t get to hide behind walls anymore.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“I'm still not sure yet, but I know who I need to talk to for help.”
Myles gasps, his hand meeting his chest as he makes light of the conversation. “Am I not enough?”
I laugh, picking up another bouquet and walking to the next pew. “No offense, but you wouldn’t be able to help.”
“Well, I am taking offense to that.” He flips me off and walks backward, snatching up more flowers.
“Did you just flip me off under the roof of a church?”
“It’s not as unholy as the planning in your head.” He smirks, turning around and heading to the front of the aisle.
There is nothing unholy about the planning in my head. If anything, it is pure chaos up there because I don’t know what to do. I can continue to do what I’ve been doing since she waltzed back into my life: make her life a living hell.
But then what? I could do that until I die and probably never feel fulfilled. Plus, if I go that route, I’ll have to tone it down on the lovey-dovey stuff, and I don’t want her to realize something is off.
Sending her back to the asylum isn’t an option. Right?
To Myles, it is the best option. But why should she get to sit behind four walls in comfort? Then again, they would send her to solitary for who knows how long.
She’d lose her mind down there. She had done it before, only from being down there for two weeks. Imagine if she were down there for the rest of her life.
As I head toward the front of the church, my phone rings in my pocket. The ceilings are high, and only the three of us are in here, and the ringing bounces off the walls in an echo. Myles and my dad whip their heads in my direction.
“Sorry!” I apologize and dig my phone out to silence it. But then I notice the name that pops up and step out of the church to take the call. After I agree to take the call, I say, “For once, you have perfect timing.”
“Not getting laid right now?” Reed chuckles on the other end of the phone.
“Given that I’m in a church? No.”
“Having sex in a church is fun,” he states playfully. “I’ve done it once or twice.”
“You’ve been to church?” I walk further down the sidewalk until I’m secluded.
“Back when my parents thought God was going to save me,” he says with disgust and then turns his tone lighter. “All it did was bring me to the woman my age who had dirty minds and thought praying the filthy thoughts away would cure them.”
Shaking my head, I chuckle to myself. “As much as I would love to hear about you defying the church, I needed to ask you something.”
“A therapist coming to a convicted felon for advice,” he jokes. “What did you get yourself into now?”
“If you had to get revenge on someone, how would you do it?” I glance at my surroundings. Luckily, we are in a smaller area of town where there aren’t many people.
“Murder,” he responds without thinking.
I roll my eyes. “Let me rephrase that. What should I do if I want to get revenge?”
“Murder,” he answers again without hesitation.
“Reed…” I sigh. “Killing someone isn’t the answer to everything.”
“It should be. If someone does something terrible to you, you should be able to kill them without any repercussions.”
His words remind me of one of the sessions I had with Veronica. We had been talking about her killing her sister’s boyfriend. She had told me, If a person does an awful, unspeakable thing, I believe they deserve to be punished, and if that punishment happens to be death, then so be it.
I blink hard, not wanting to think about her words and how similar they are to Reed.
Inhaling a deep breath, I smugly say, “Says the convicted felon who killed someone and got sent to prison.”
“Yeah, yeah. Rookie mistake.” He huffs. “Like I said, I have people on the out—Walt! I have Leo on the phone, and he needs advice.” Reed’s voice gets a bit quieter the further away he gets from the phone. “Want to help him out?”
A shifting noise comes from the other end, and then silence. I almost think I’ve been hung up on, but I can faintly hear other inmates in the background.
“Walt?”
Conversing with him is pointless because no one has ever heard him speak. What help does Reed possibly think Walter can be if he doesn’t—“Leo.”
My body freezes at his voice, and I hear Reed gasp somewhere behind the old man. When I finally got over the shock that he had said my name, I finally spoke. “Of course, you have an accent. Russian?”
“Da,” he responds. Why doesn’t it surprise me that the man is from Russia? Which makes me wonder if he really was in a mob. “Reed says you need advice. You in trouble?”
“Oh my god!” Reed squeals in the distance. “Leo! He is speaking! He said my name!”
Walt grunts at Reed’s disbelief. “Tell me.”
“Revenge. I need to get revenge on someone that ruined my life,” I inform him without too much detail since these calls are timed.
“The reason you were sent to prison?”
“Yes. Reed thinks the answer to everything is murder. A second opinion would be helpful.”
“Reed thinks everything should end in violence,” Walt tells me. “This person. Did they hurt you?”
I nod even though he can’t see me. “The reason I was sent to the hospital with a knife wound.”
“Oko za oko,” Walt says with his thick accent.
“Uh, Walt. I’m American. I have no idea what that means,” the robotic lady interrupts us. The call is almost over.
“An eye for an eye.” He translates the Russian for me once the silence ends and brings us back together. “Delat' to, chto nuzhno sdelat'. For your American brain, that means do what needs to be done.”
Before I can say anything, the phone goes silent.
She never loved you. You need to get rid of her.