Chapter 31 #2
She stares at me, puzzling over my words as if she’s trying to translate them into a different language. “You think I’m a psychopath,” she finally states. “No, it’s okay, don’t answer that. I’m not, Char, for what it’s worth.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snap. “My name is Charlie.”
“Charlie,” she taunts, drawing my name out, holding on to the E at the end like she owns it.
I glare at her. “You killed your friend.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Then explain it to me.”
I want Viv to give me the villain monologue I’ve had to read in so many thrillers.
If she outlines her whole evil plan, maybe it’ll give me the time I need to figure a way out of this mess alive.
Besides, I genuinely want to know how Viv is rationalizing this.
She’s somehow convinced herself that she was blameless in Elena’s death.
But Viv isn’t game. “Fuck off, Charlie.”
I press her. “Come on, Viv, you owe me your story. You owe me this, at least, if nothing else.”
“I owe you nothing.”
What’s her weakness? The one thing she’s said over and over again, even when killing a member of her group? I hurriedly ask, “Why are you so obsessed with this group being a family?”
Viv stiffens, letting out a punctured exhale.
She licks her lips, glancing down. Finally, she breaks.
“All I’ve ever wanted was a real family.
Okay? My mother was a teen mom who gave me up for adoption, but I had all these health issues, and I wasn’t adopted until I was three.
And then wouldn’t you know it, my adopted parents died in a car crash a year later, and I went to live with my adopted mother’s brother in Rhode Island.
And he mostly ignored me until I turned fourteen and got tits and then he started looking at me funny, so I ran away.
Did you know that, Charlotte?” My full name spills from her mouth like crushing wet tar.
“No, you didn’t, because you never thought about how you’re not the only one with trauma. ”
“I—”
But she cuts me off. “I was homeless for a few years. In and out of shelters. One night I got arrested for shoplifting. I did it on purpose, in front of the security guard, because it would be in the single digits that night and I needed somewhere warm to sleep.”
“Viv,” I say, not liking the tug of pity I’m feeling for her. “Slow down, relax.”
She barrels on, ignoring me, but moving around the bed frame now, coming closer.
“I hitchhiked a ride to New York with a guy who could have been my grandfather, except I hope my real grandfather wouldn’t have made me give him a handy in the bathroom of a gas station.
Anyway, when I got to New York, I was eighteen and didn’t know anyone. Until I met Elena.”
I jolt back. “Wait, you knew each other for that long?”
“Aren’t you listening?” Viv complains. “That whole confrontation wasn’t because of a man; I know Trey’s MO.
I didn’t care that he was using me to cheat on his wife, and I didn’t care that he had fifty other side pieces.
But I wouldn’t let Elena go with him. He would get bored of her like the others, and then she’d be away from Empress, away from our family. I couldn’t let it happen!”
I grab Piper’s phone and use the mattress to pull myself to my feet, edging away from the bed to give myself space.
Viv is still approaching. There’s something unhinged about her that I don’t want to mess with.
Thinking she can go outside in this storm, thinking Piper is alive…
Something in her mind has been knocked loose.
Viv continues. “Elena and I bonded when we met in New York. We got jobs at a fancy nightclub. We worked our way up. We went from coat-check girls to bottle service girls. We became go-go dancers. We roomed together, we followed glamorous girls on Instagram and tried to mimic their posts.”
“What happened?” I ask, stepping away again as Viv edges closer. “You said Elena didn’t join Empress until this year. You two separated?”
“She met someone,” Viv says, her voice squished, like she’s shoving it into a box it doesn’t quite fit in.
“I told her not to be stupid. We had plans, dreams. We were going to become social media stars, have the most glamorous life. But she fell for him. And before I knew it, she was moving away with him.”
“So, she left you,” I say, the pieces fitting together. No wonder Viv freaked out when she heard Elena was planning to ditch her for yet another man; Viv’s man, at that. She’d probably reverted right back to that time in New York City, alone, left behind. “What did you do?”
Viv stops moving, noticing Piper’s phone in my hand, concentrating on it as she answers.
“I met someone too, shortly after. He was very rich. Older. I met him at the club. He lived in Miami. He offered to take me there, show me his world. I saw an opportunity, and I took it. It obviously didn’t last, but I met Trey through him and the rest, as they say, is history.
Elena and her man eventually broke up. She saw my social media, how it had grown, how I was making moves in Miami. We reconnected.”
Viv’s eyes glitter in the darkness, and I remember something from Elena’s page I noticed before the storm knocked out the service.
“You made it look like Elena was going on a social media break and you deleted the Empress posts from her page,” I say.
“But you kept up the pictures of the two of you together.”
“I couldn’t get rid of them,” Viv whispers. “She was my best friend. I loved her. I wanted us to stay that way. Forever. On her page.”
She reaches behind her, pulls something small and dark from the cargo pocket of her pants. A pistol. So small it easily fits right in her dainty palm.
For a minute, I think it’s a joke. A toy. No real gun could possibly be that tiny, right? Viv handles it deftly, flicking the safety off, and reality sets in, hard and cold.
“Now,” Viv says, leveling the pistol at me, “give me that phone.”