Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
The sharp trill of the phone cuts through the early morning silence at seven o'clock, jolting us both from sleep with its insistent, unwelcome noise. My eyes fly open, disoriented for a moment in the dim gray light filtering through Julian's bedroom curtains.
Beside me, Julian groans softly, his warm body shifting against mine as he reaches blindly across the nightstand, his long fingers patting around until they find his phone.
He lifts it close to his face, those beautiful dark eyes still heavy-lidded and unfocused as he squints at the glowing screen, trying to make out who would be calling at this ungodly hour.
"Mark?" His voice is rough with sleep. He sits up, suddenly alert. "What? When?"
My heart immediately kicks into overdrive, hammering against my ribcage with sharp, insistent beats.
I push myself up on one elbows, my eyes fixed on Julian's face as I watch the color literally drain from his features, his warm brown skin taking on an ashen, grayish pallor that makes my stomach clench with dread.
"Okay. Yeah. I understand." He ends the call with a quiet click, his hands visibly trembling—actually shaking—as he carefully sets the phone back down on the nightstand, the device clattering slightly against the wood despite his deliberate movements.
"Julian?"
"Daniel's dead."
The words hang in the air between us. I blink, not sure I heard right.
"What?"
"He died last night. Complications from the spinal injury." His voice sounds hollow, distant. "The charges are now manslaughter."
My breath catches. Manslaughter. That word lands like a punch to the gut.
Daniel is dead.
I should feel something clear, something definitive. But instead, a chaotic mix of emotions crashes through me all at once.
Relief floods my system first—warm, immediate, undeniable. He'll never grab me in a parking garage again. Never send threatening letters. Never hurt Julian. Never terrorize anyone else. That bastard is finally gone, and part of me wants to dance, wants to celebrate.
Then guilt slams into me for feeling that way. A man is dead. A human life, ended at thirty-eight. That's young. Too young, really, no matter what kind of monster he became.
But was he always a monster, born with something fundamentally twisted in his soul? Or did something break inside him along the way, piece by piece, year after year of abuse and neglect until the damage became irreversible?
I find myself thinking about his childhood—those rare, vulnerable moments when he'd had too much whiskey and let fragments of his past slip through the cracks in his armor.
The abuse he'd mentioned, voice thick and slurred, eyes distant and unfocused.
His mother's relentless cruelty, the bruises and burns and locked closets.
His father's convenient absence, choosing work over witnessing what was happening under his own roof.
The loneliness of a little boy who learned that love and pain were inseparable.
Does any of that excuse what he did to me? Does it justify the terror, the control, the systematic destruction of my self esteem? Does it make what he did to Claudia—whatever horrors she may or may not have endured—somehow more forgivable?
No. Absolutely not.
Still, my chest tightens with an unexpected sadness. Not for Daniel, exactly, but for the waste of it all. The life he could have lived if he'd gotten help, if he'd chosen differently.
I turn my head to look at Julian sitting beside me on the bed, his body rigid, his shoulders hunched forward in a posture of absolute devastation.
He's staring down at his hands—those beautiful, talented hands that have coaxed such gorgeous melodies from piano keys, that have touched me with such sweetness and care.
The same hands that, just days ago, threw those punches.
The same hands that connected with Daniel's face again and again until he stopped moving.
Manslaughter carries real prison time. Serious prison time.
Years. The thought sends a wave of nausea rolling through me, and I have to close my eyes against the dizziness.
Julian could go to prison. He could be taken away from me, locked up for protecting my life, for saving me from being dragged back into Daniel's nightmare.
The injustice of it makes me want to scream.
"Julian—"
"I killed him," he says, his voice fracturing completely on the last word, splitting apart like something fragile dropped on concrete. "I actually killed him. I took a life. I'm a murderer."
I grab his face, forcing him to look at me. "You were protecting me. He was kidnapping me. You didn't mean for this to happen."
"That won't matter."
It might not.
And that terrifies me more than anything.
Julian pushes himself up from the bed abruptly, his whole body tense with barely contained energy as he crosses to the large bay window.
The weak winter light filters through, casting shadows across his face that make him look older, more careworn. His shoulders are rigid, hands shoved deep into his pyjama pants pockets as he stands there, silent and brooding, like he's searching for answers in the dreary Cumberland skyline.
"I need to get into Daniel's apartment."
"What?"
"Before his family shows up. Before they clean everything out." He turns to face me, eyes burning with determination. "Claudia. We need answers about Claudia."
My stomach drops. "Julian, no. Absolutely not," I say, my voice rising with alarm as I push myself up from the bed, backing away slightly. "That's breaking and entering. That's—God, that's illegal on so many levels. You can't be serious right now."
"I'm already facing manslaughter charges, Liza." His voice is sharp, bitter. "What's one more crime?"
"Don't say that."
"It's true." He runs both hands through his hair. "If I'm going down anyway, I want it to mean something. That girl deserves justice. Daniel was involved—we both know it. Those texts prove it."
"The police are investigating—"
"The police aren't doing shit. You said it yourself—one of the lead investigators is Daniel's high school buddy. They're not looking hard enough." He walks over to me, drops to his knees in front of where I'm sitting on the bed. "Please. Help me do this."
My hands shake as I stare at him, kneeling there before me with such desperate determination in his eyes.
Everything about this plan screams disaster on every conceivable level.
An illegal search that could destroy whatever legitimate evidence might exist. Compromised chain of custody that would make anything we find inadmissible in court.
More criminal charges piled onto Julian's already precarious situation if—no, when—we inevitably get caught.
This isn't just reckless; it's potentially catastrophic.
But then Claudia's face floats unbidden through my mind—that sweet, troubled girl with her honey-blonde hair and those haunted eyes that always seemed to be searching for something just out of reach.
The girl who reminded me so much of a young Reese Witherspoon with that same delicate bone structure and tremulous smile.
She deserves so much better than this—better than being dismissed, forgotten, written off as just another troubled runaway who chose to disappear.
She deserves someone to fight for her, to refuse to let her story end in silence and indifference.
She deserves the truth, whatever it might be.
"This is insane."
"I know."
"We could get caught."
"I know."
"It could make everything worse for you."
"I don't care." His hands grip mine. "I can't just sit here knowing he might have hurt her. That there might be something in that apartment that could help find her."
I think about Colleen—how she must feel right now, desperate and utterly alone in her frantic search for answers that no one else seems willing to help her find.
I picture her making call after call to the police, to Dylan’s friends, to anyone who might have seen Claudia, only to be met with dismissal and indifference at every turn.
I think about how the system failed Claudia just like it failed me when I needed help escaping Daniel's grip—the people who were supposed to protect me looked the other way, made excuses, basically told me I was overreacting.
Daniel's dead. His apartment sits empty, full of secrets.
"When?" The word escapes before I can stop it.
"Now. This morning.”
I close my eyes, exhaling slowly. "This is crazy."
"Completely."
"We're really doing this?"
"Yeah," Julian says. "We really are."