Chapter 35 #3
“Yes,” he said. “And so careless,” he said, with a nostalgic tone.
“Do not sound fond.”
“I am fond.”
Something in my chest turned over. I ignored it.
“Talk.”
Vincent leaned back against the counter.
“Katherine’s laptop was very accessible. It didn’t take much effort to guess the password. It was your cat’s name, by the way.”
My stomach tightened.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I sent an email from her account to her mother.”
I stared at him.
“What did it say?”
“That she was tired. Lonely. Under academic pressure. That she was sorry.”
The room chilled. Mrs. Montgomery’s voice from the funeral echoed suddenly in my memory.
She left a note.
Not in those exact words, perhaps. But close enough. I had never asked. I had been too afraid.
“You wrote her suicide note.”
“I wrote an explanation people were ready to accept.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It was to them.”
I pressed both hands against the counter’s edge. Katherine’s last words to her mother had been Vincent’s. Not Katherine’s. Not even mine. His. Somehow, that felt worse than the handkerchief.
“You had no right.”
“No.”
“She deserved…”
I stopped. I no longer knew what Katherine deserved. Justice? Truth? A life? I had taken one of those. Vincent had taken the other.
“She deserved to be understood,” I said finally.
Vincent watched me.
“Yes, perhaps.”
“And you made her into a lonely, dead girl…”
He shrugged.
“And what about the police?” I asked.
“Money. Pressure. Institutional preference.” He said it without pride. “No one wanted a Montgomery death investigated as anything other than a tragedy. They wanted a note. They had one. They wanted witnesses to grief. They had you. They wanted a tidy scene and a motive. I provided both.”
I swallowed.
“And Wendy? I always wondered why she never told anybody I was with Katherine at the time she died.”
His expression changed slightly.
“I gave her what she wanted.”
“A place in your lab.”
“Yes. Read the acceptance email again. She was never selected. I added her name in later in exchange for silence.”
I laughed once. It sounded hollow. “People really are evil, huh? She betrayed Katherine for some prestige.”
I thought of Wendy watching me in the lab with quiet concern.
Wendy whispering are you okay. Wendy’s pale face in the courtyard when Daniel called me Selena.
How many lives had been quietly rearranged around my survival without me knowing?
How much of my life had Vincent altered before I even realized he was inside it?
“You have been protecting me since that night,” I said.
“Yes, my love. Since then and forever.”
It was absurd. Sick, maybe. But I felt too much for him to see it.
Katherine had made me into Céline because she needed me close enough to need her. Thad had wanted Céline because she looked right beside him. Sophia and Anya loved me, but even their love belonged partly to the version I had built well enough to deserve them.
Vincent had seen the worst of me first. Not after the charm. Not after the grief. He had seen me choose myself over Katherine’s life, and instead of turning away, he had stepped into the rain and made the choice final.
He had not loved the mask. He had loved the broken parts of me.
I did not know what that made me. I did not know what that meant for us. But it made something in me feel seen so completely that the feeling was almost unbearable.
I walked to the bedside drawer and took out the box with the handkerchief. Vincent watched me. I held it against my chest—not like a sentimental thing, but like a weapon. Like a vow.
“If I keep this,” I said, “you do not get it back.”
“I know.”
“If I stay, you never use Katherine’s phone against me.”
“I won’t.”
“If you lie to me again about something that changes my life, I will not try to drug you next time.”
His gaze sharpened.
“I will ruin you properly. I’ll plan better; I won’t miss.”
A faint smile touched his mouth. “I would not expect any less, my love.”
I stepped closer
“You are not my keeper,” I said.
“No.”
“You are not my saviour.”
“No.”
“You are not forgiven.”
“I know.”
I looked at him briefly. Then I said the only true thing left.
“But you are mine.”
He crossed the remaining space between us slowly, giving me time to step back. I did not. His hand rose to my face, careful now, almost reverent. I let him touch me.
Outside, rain moved over Blackwater, over Bellamont, over the courtyard where Katherine had died twice, over the roads where Daniel Martin had finally become someone else’s problem for the last time.
Inside, I held the bloody handkerchief between us.
For the first time since I had met Vincent Moreau, I did not feel trapped beneath his knowledge.
I felt armed by it.
He bent his forehead to mine.
“Selena,” he said quietly.
The name did not hurt this time. It sounded like something waiting for me.
I closed my eyes and kept the box pressed to my chest.
Céline Martin had survived by stealing names, futures, clothes, research, love.
Selena Martin had survived worse.
And now, finally, she had proof that she was not the only monster in the room.