Chapter Fifty-Five
Rheda
Tomorrow.
The word keeps catching on everything even if the room around me moves on.
Paper shifts beneath Peter’s hands while he reads through the next file. Sean resumes typing. Somewhere behind me, Mike mutters something about transport timing before lowering his voice again.
The world continues organising his death around me.
My stomach twists violently.
“No,” I hear myself say. “You can’t do this.”
The words leave me before I fully realise I’m speaking.
Peter straightens slowly. “Rheda—”
“No.” My pulse is climbing too fast now, voice tightening around it. “No, this is too fast.”
My voice sounds strange to my own ears. Tight. Breathless. “You don’t even have enough to support immediate execution.”
Peter’s expression barely changes. “The board disagrees.”
“Based on what?” I push forward. “Behavioural instability? Circumstantial profiling? You still don’t have a full confession.”
Sean stops typing. The silence that follows feels careful. Peter studies me for a second too long before answering.
Peter watches me carefully now. “Harris has already authorised it.”
“I don’t care.” The sharpness of it surprises even me. “He is not psychologically stable enough for execution.”
“You already cleared competency.”
My body stills. “No, I didn’t.”
But even saying it now sounds weak.
Peter reaches across the desk without another word and turns one of the folders toward me.
“Yes,” he says quietly. “You did.”
I stare at it without touching it at first. My eyes catch the bottom page.
Psychiatric Competency Recommendation.
My signature sits beneath it in black ink, small, jagged lines.
The room tilts slightly.
“No.” I gasp.
I snatch the paperwork toward myself hard enough that several pages slide loose across the desk. My hands shake violently as I flip through them.
Assessment summaries.
Behavioural evaluations.
Risk analysis.
But there it is again.
Rheda Ainsley.
Approved.
My throat tightens so badly I can barely breathe around it.
“No, this isn’t—”
But it is. I recognise every stroke. The pressure marks beneath the letters. The slight drag beneath the final line of my surname whenever I’m tired.
My handwriting. My signature. Mine.
Peter’s voice reaches me carefully through the rushing in my ears. “You signed the competency recommendation a week ago.”
My fingers tighten harder around the paper. “I thought it was preliminary.”
“It was,” Peter says. “Until the board reviewed the final reports this morning.”
I stare back down at the signatures again.
My signatures.
Every page feels heavier now, dirtier somehow.
My chest pulls tight.
“No,” I whisper again, but the word barely survives the journey out of me.
My hands tighten around the paperwork until the pages crumple at the edges.
A sick heat floods up my throat.
Peter watches me carefully. “There’s nothing you can do now. The board takes over from here.”
The sentence moves through me like a blade sliding between ribs.
Behind the glass, chains creak softly. The sound reaches straight into my chest.
I don’t look at him.
I can’t.
Because if I do, I know I’ll finally understand the full shape of what I’ve done. He trusted me to stop this, and I built the thing that is going to kill him.