Chapter 42
Forty-Two
Astor
My ears are ringing, my head feels like an over-inflated balloon, my stomach is nauseous, but none of that is going to stop me from getting the answers I need.
The answers I deserve.
I stumble into the bedroom. Valerie, still on the floor, screams at my bloodied and bruised appearance, and scrambles backward against the wall.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I mumble, spitting a string of blood on the floor.
Valerie whimpers, covering her face with her hands.
“Stop.” I kneel down and pull her hands away from her face. “I’m not going to hurt you. But I am done with the games—I’m done walking on eggshells. I’m done with you. You will talk to me, or I will throw you out of this house and leave you to rot in the woods. Do you understand me?”
Her wide-eyes flicker between the open gashes on my face.
“I know Chloe is not my child.”
She blinks, shocked by this.
“Do you think you could keep something that big a secret for the rest of our lives?”
Her mouth opens and closes. She’s stunned speechless.
“Say it, Valerie. Say his name.”
“I can’t,” she sputters, trying to cover her face again, but this time, I grab her hands.
“Say it!”
“Leo! Leo, okay? It was Leo. He and I had sex when he’d visit. It just happened, and then . . . kept happening.”
I let her go, falling back on my ass.
For a long moment we say nothing.
“I’m not mad that you cheated on me, Valerie. I’m mad that you deceived me about Chloe. I have one more question for you and if you lie to me, God help me.” I inhale. “Does Leo know that the baby is his?”
Please say no, please say no, please say ? —
“Yes.”
My fists curl and it takes everything I have not to blow a hole through the wall. Valerie deceived me, and now one of my most trusted associates has deceived me as well. Despite the fatigue from the fist fight, my adrenaline begins to pump again, the rage beginning to simmer in my veins.
“He flipped out when I told him—absolutely lost it.”
“What do you mean he flipped out?”
“He lost his mind over it. It wasn't planned, obviously, it was a mistake, and he was terrified you'd find out and have him killed. So we agreed to make you believe it was yours.”
My heart starts to race.
“But . . . but he—he couldn't take it. He was so worried you’d find out. He looks at you like a father, Astor. He loves you.”
My head starts spinning.
No.
“He stopped eating, sleeping; he was going crazy with worry. He started talking about all these crazy things.”
No.
“The day Chloe died, Leo—he didn’t show up for work, and he stopped talking to me after that.”
No.
She reaches out her trembling hands, grabs mine. “You’ve asked why I keep having nightmares about Chloe, and why I’m asking why. Well . . . Astor . . . I—I think Leo might have killed Chloe so that you would never find out. I think he did it to save his own life.”
I don’t remember the next few seconds.
When I wake up, I’m on the ground again, being restrained by Cillian while Leo’s name rips out of my throat like a pig being gutted.