Chapter 46
Rather than shrinking in on herself like she did when explaining what happened to Harlow, Faye holds her head up high as she details for a stunned Naomi what happened between her and Colton.
How she’d had a crush on him ever since he started dating Harlow, saving magazine clips of him as a teenager, wishing it was her.
So when he approached her at the VMAs last month, both of them single, she simply couldn’t stay away, even though she knew she should avoid him at all costs, like Sam had urged her.
Faye explains how her foolish act of sleeping with Colton and letting her guard down—thinking he’d never realize she wasn’t the same woman he’d been with for years—led him to discover her secret, and what she’d done to Harlow. How he used this as blackmail against her.
“My first mistake was not coming up with a plan fast enough after he’d discovered I wasn’t really Harlow,” she said.
“It didn’t take long for the threats to start, telling me he would tell everyone who I was if I didn’t do everything he wanted.
At first I complied, giving in to his sick sexual fantasies.
Part of me liked it. In the very beginning.
But then he kept getting weirder and weirder, amping it up. I’ll spare you the details, though.”
Unfortunately, Naomi is able to imagine the details after learning about the DMs from Meghan. A creeping feeling pricks up her skin at the thought of her sister being involved with someone like him.
She’s here in front of you, she’s fine, Naomi tells herself.
But is she? She stares at her sister, focusing on the subtle tremor in her leg, the twitch of her hand.
“I couldn’t be beholden to him anymore,” Faye says, face red. “I needed to find a way to gain control back. So I’d planned to dig up his secrets and blackmail him back. Little did I know, someone had already done the groundwork for me.”
“Meghan?” Naomi asks.
Faye frowns in confusion.
Naomi explains how she met with Meghan Rhodes, recapping the horrible things she learned about Colton.
“Well, that was nice of Meghan to share that information with the world, wasn’t it?” Faye says sarcastically.
“I wouldn’t judge her too harshly. She was scared shitless of his family, had to sign an NDA…” Naomi gives Faye a chastising look, hoping the irony isn’t lost on her, of her—of all people—judging Meghan.
Faye rolls her eyes. “Well, no, it wasn’t Meghan. It was Harlow.”
Now it’s Naomi’s turn to frown in confusion. “She told you before…?”
Faye shakes her head. “Not exactly, but in a way, yes. Just before she died, she said something like, ‘You want my life so badly? Enjoy.’ Then she clutched at this large cross necklace hanging off her chest and said, ‘Take this. You’ll need it.’”
Faye pulls a necklace matching the description out of her bag, holding it up for Naomi, an excited look on her face.
“I didn’t think anything of it at first. Thought she was being a bitch, saying I needed God or something to help save me because of what I’d done.
But she was trying to help me. She didn’t want the truth about Colton to die with her. ”
Naomi narrows her eyes and frowns, not fully understanding.
“Look.” Faye twists off the top of the necklace and turns it over. She holds her hand out, revealing a small memory stick. “She’d been gathering evidence against Colton. And hid it in here.”
*
Faye pulls her laptop out of her bag, typing and clicking as she explains what she found.
“So there’s lots of files—anonymous emails, social media messages, crime scene photos, and news articles, which I assume are women who Harlow thought were hurt by Colton.
Most of these don’t actually prove anything—it looks like she was trying to build some sort of case against him, putting together pieces no one else would even be looking for. ”
She swallows hard, before turning the screen toward Naomi.
“This is the worst of them, but it’s her. It’s Jade.” Faye’s voice is filled with sadness and anger. “I didn’t know her that well, but we’d bump into each other from time to time, talk about music after gigs.”
Naomi fights the urge to vomit as a female corpse fills the screen.
She looks so fragile and pale, with hues of blue discoloration on her skin.
Faye clicks through the photos, one showing a needle mark in her arm and a few showing the blue bruises covering her neck, with “Photos deleted from records” scrawled in the margin.
Among the rest of the files is an official autopsy report, citing drug overdose as her death, plus newspaper articles alleging the same. The articles are dated October 2021.
“But look at this,” Faye says, opening a photo of a handwritten letter. “This is how I know exactly what happened to Jade…”
Naomi covers her mouth in horror as she reads a witness statement. Written by the real Harlow Hayes.
*
Stomach roiling with nausea, Naomi forces herself to focus on her breathing as she finishes reading.
Turns out her theory about what happened to Jade wasn’t far off.
In the letter, Harlow summarizes the details leading up to Jade’s death.
A threesome gone wrong the night before the 2021 VMAs.
Colton taking things too far, ignoring Jade struggling below him and Harlow’s cries to stop.
The morning after, Colton claimed “it” was taken care of.
How fucking cruel, Naomi thinks, heart aching for Jade’s sister, Emily. Not only did Colton kill Jade, but he dumped her body in some shithole to rot and then let her family think she shot herself up with dirty heroin.
Not that different from what your own sister let you believe, a voice counters.
She huffs out a breath, head spinning. She should feel vindicated that she pretty much pieced together the true cause of Jade’s death, but it doesn’t make her feel any better. She feels gross. Disgusted.
“Must’ve been eating Harlow alive if she was planning to go to the cops with this and implicate herself.”
Faye nods, looking down as she picks at her nail beds.
Naomi wonders if Faye feels more remorseful for what happened to Harlow after discovering what she was grappling with at the time.
How she was actively gathering evidence against Colton to send him to prison, even if it meant she’d go herself.
Now, only Naomi and Faye know the truth, while the rest of the world still believes Colton was the victim in all this.
She’ll have to find a way to fix that. But it will be tricky, since handing this letter into the police will actually implicate Faye, since she’s now Harlow.
She exhales. “So you found all this… and then what?”
“I didn’t know what to do at first,” Faye says, sighing.
“If people didn’t think I was Harlow, of course I would’ve turned the documents over.
I even thought about sending them to you anonymously, without the letter.
But all I could think about was his family getting him off somehow.
Using their money and power and connections to simply make it disappear.
And the more I thought about it, the more I could only see one option that would truly ensure he never hurt anyone again.
One that would also ensure he’d leave me alone.
Plus, it felt like a way to honor Jade and Harlow.
I know nothing can make up for what I did to her, but maybe finishing what she started would… I don’t know… mean something.”
Naomi swallows hard, chest tightening at what she knows is coming next.
“I figured an overdose was the best way to do it,” Faye says.
“Fitting, considering how they covered up Jade’s death.
Plus, actors and musicians overdose all the time, you know that.
So I got in touch with a friend, who got in touch with another friend, who then got in touch with the sketchiest drug dealer in New York.
Told them if they didn’t ask any questions, they’d be paid double. ”
Faye runs her tongue over her teeth, shaking her head.
“Like I said before, Colton expected me to be on call for his every want and need. So the next time he told me to come over, I was ready. I got him high off good stuff first, and then distracted him with…” Her face reddens as she gestures at her body, looking away from Naomi.
“Once I could tell he was in a… trusting… mood, I pulled out the other bag of cocaine, which was heavily laced with fentanyl. He was dead within the hour.”
Naomi’s breath catches in her throat. It feels as if her blood has run cold.
She knows her sister can be vengeful, but premeditated murder?
She understands on some level. She didn’t want Colton to hurt anyone again either, and his death does feel justified, to her, at least. But still.
She stares at her little sister, worried how far gone she is.
If she’s simply a vigilante or a psychopath.
She seems to have remorse, though, for what happened to Harlow, at least…
“So just to clarify,” Naomi says. “You didn’t poison anyone else with fentanyl, right? Just Colton…”
Faye looks horrified at the suggestion.
“I’m only asking because I need to first rule you out before I make my mind up about something. Harlow and Jade were injected with the same amount of fentanyl, most likely meaning it was from the same source, the same person…”
“Sam,” Faye responds, realization dawning on her too.
Naomi nods. “It must’ve been.”
The thought is sickening, but not as sickening as her next thought. The head injury on “Faye’s” autopsy report. Was that really the cause of death? Or could Harlow have still been alive when Sam injected her with the drugs?
“Do you think Sam got wind of Harlow going to the police?” she asks Faye. “So when she… hit her head… and you called him, he saw it as an opportunity? A way to save both his biggest clients from massive scandals? The perfect chance to silence his problem for good?”
Faye tenses. “I didn’t think about it like that, but guess it’s possible. The way he would talk about her, especially near the end. Like she was the biggest pain in his ass rather than his golden girl.”
Naomi imagines Sam plotting how to get rid of Faye next. “He’s really bad news, Faye. You need to get away from him.”
“I know,” she whispers under her breath.
But again, Naomi realizes there’s no way to implicate Sam without also implicating Faye. And even if they managed to find a way to spin it, he’d sure as hell make sure she went down with him if it came to it.
“Maybe you can come to some sort of agreement with him eventually, so you can both part ways… leave everything in the past.”
“Mmm.” Faye’s face is flushed and she’s jerking her leg up and down, like she used to do when she was agitated. A wave of uneasiness washes over Naomi in that moment as she studies her sister’s blank, distant stare.