Chapter 9 #2
At the same moment, Alaric Severin pushed through the gathering crowd, his expression hard, eyes already on Rebecca.
Sera looked up at both of them, her face strained. “She needs help.”
“An ambulance is on the way,” Alaric said, his voice already shifting into command, cutting through the chaos.
Vidar knelt immediately, one knee hitting the marble. “Good,” he said, urgency clipped and professional. Then, softer, closer, “Rebecca,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
Rebecca couldn’t answer.
“Did she say anything?” Vidar asked Sera, his tone tight, concerned, entirely appropriate.
Sera hesitated, her throat working as she swallowed. Then she shook her head. “She… she said she was sorry.”
Vidar’s jaw tightened for a fraction of a second before he smoothed it away. The pause was brief, almost imperceptible, but it carried significance. Then he looked back down at Rebecca, focus intent, as if sheer will might keep her here.
The ceiling swam above her. The edges of the world darkened.
Her last thought wasn’t fear, but bitterness. She’d never been the point.
And enough had never been meant to save her. It had only been meant to decide who came next.
SERA DIDN’T REMEMBER sitting down.
One moment she’d been on the marble, her hands shaking as she tried to keep pressure where pressure didn’t matter, her voice begging Rebecca to stay with her.
The next, she was on a bench near the elevators with her palms pressed flat to her thighs as if she could hold herself in place by sheer force.
The atrium of Severin Holdings had turned into a scene. Not chaos, not exactly. Procedure.
Security had pushed the crowd back first. Quiet voices. Firm hands. A line of bodies creating a perimeter that didn’t need tape because everyone could see the blood on the stairs and understood what it meant.
Paramedics arrived within minutes. Two of them dropped to their knees beside Rebecca, equipment appearing as if from thin air.
They spoke in clipped phrases Sera couldn’t follow.
They checked pulse points. They lifted eyelids.
They pressed adhesive pads to skin that was already cooling.
A monitor beeped, then stopped, then beeped again as if the machine itself couldn’t believe what it was seeing.
Sera tried to stand. Alaric’s hand landed on her shoulder. Not gentle. Not cruel. Present.
“Stay here,” he said. It should’ve been impossible for his voice to sound steady. Somehow it did.
“She said she was sorry,” Sera heard herself say again, because the lie had become a reflex the moment Vidar had asked.
Because he hadn’t moved away when he should have, remaining close instead of retreating, hovering just inside the circle of authority and grief.
Because his gaze kept drifting, not to Rebecca’s face, but to Sera’s hands, then to Alaric’s, as if he were taking inventory.
And because this was a public place, full of uniforms and glass and listening ears, and she would not tell the truth where it could be turned against her.
Alaric didn’t react to the lie. Or if he did, Sera couldn’t see it. His focus stayed locked on the paramedics, on the way they worked faster and faster and somehow still looked like they already understood the ending. There was a deliberate, undistracted stillness to him.
Vidar paced once, then stopped. He kept his hands visible. He spoke to security. He asked for a towel, for space, for someone to call building management. He looked like a man trying to be useful when usefulness was the only thing left to offer.
Sera hated him for it.
The lead paramedic finally sat back on his heels.
He looked up and spoke quietly to his partner. The partner nodded.
Sera didn’t hear the words, but she saw the shift. The change in their bodies. The moment the effort ended and the job turned into documentation.
A police officer arrived just as the paramedic stood.
Then another.
People in uniforms moved with the same urgency as the paramedics. They spoke to security. They began asking questions. Names. Roles. Who saw what. Who was on the stairs. Who was closest.
Sera’s chest tightened when she saw Vidar turn toward the first officer, face pale, voice carefully shaken.
“We were talking,” Vidar said, and it sounded exactly like the first time. “She stepped back and before I could catch her, she fell.”
The officer nodded as if he’d heard that story a hundred times. He asked for Vidar’s name, and Vidar gave it. Calm. Cooperative. Slightly horrified.
A second officer approached Sera.
“Ma’am,” he said. “Were you with her when she fell?”
Sera’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Alaric stepped in.
“She’s in shock,” he said. “Ask me what you need and I’ll get you answers. She was the first to reach her.”
The officer hesitated, then nodded. He held out a small notebook, already open.
“Name,” he said.
“Sera Carrington,” Sera managed.
The officer wrote it down, precise and methodical, as if accuracy mattered more than volume.
“Relationship?”
Roommate, Sera thought. Friend. The person who had known where she hid her chocolate in the pantry and the person who always made coffee first even when she’d been up too late.
“She’s my roommate,” Sera said.
The officer’s gaze softened. Just a fraction. ”I’m sorry,” he said. Then his face returned to neutral. “Did she say anything to you?”
Sera’s throat closed.
Alaric’s hand tightened on her shoulder.
“She said she was sorry,” Sera said, and kept her voice steady because it was the story she’d already told. Because it was simple. Because she didn’t dare tell anyone but Alaric what Rebecca had actually said.
The officer nodded and wrote something down.
The paramedic, the lead, came over next. He spoke to the officer in a voice meant for adults who needed facts.
“Time of death is,” he began.
Sera flinched as if he’d slapped her.
Time of death.
Alaric’s posture didn’t change, but his jaw flexed once.
The officer asked more questions. Where had Rebecca been standing. Did she seem intoxicated. Had she been arguing with anyone. Had she made threats. Had anyone made threats to her.
Sera stared at the stairs and saw the curve of the railing, the smooth shine of the steps, the dark smear no one had dared to scrub away.
“She was scared,” Sera said before she could stop herself.
The officer looked up. Alaric’s eyes flicked to her.
“She wasn’t drunk,” Sera said, voice breaking. “She wasn’t angry. She was scared.”
The officer wrote it down and didn’t ask why, which came across like a kindness and a failure at the same time.
A woman in a dark coat arrived next, not in uniform. She walked with authority, badge clipped to her lapel.
The medical examiner, Sera realized— or someone from that office, given the badge, the case file, and the way people immediately stepped aside.
They took over quietly. Photographs. Notes. A black bag unzipped near the base of the stairs.
Sera’s stomach lurched.
Alaric moved in front of her before she could see more. ”You don’t have to watch,” he said.
Sera hated that he was right. She hated that she would never stop seeing it anyway. Minutes blurred. Then more minutes. The building lights stayed the same. The people moved. Voices came and went.
Someone asked for surveillance footage. Security pointed toward cameras Sera had never noticed before. Someone asked for a list of employees who had accessed Rebecca’s keycard today. Someone asked who she’d met with. Who she’d been speaking to.
Sera watched Vidar answer questions with practiced ease. He was always just the right amount of shaken. Always just the right amount of cooperative. As if he’d rehearsed what grief should look like.
When the black bag finally zipped, Sera made a sound she didn’t recognize. Alaric turned his head slightly. He didn’t touch her again. Not yet. Because he was watching. Because he was thinking. Because he looked like a man trying to solve a problem while the world burned.
An officer approached them again. ”Mr. Severin,” he said.
Alaric’s gaze sharpened. “Yes.”
“We’re going to need formal statements,” the officer said. “Both of you.”
Alaric nodded. “We’ll cooperate.”
The officer glanced at Sera. “Ma’am.”
Sera forced herself to stand. They moved into a conference room off the lobby, glass walls frosted halfway up. A bottle of water appeared on the table. Sera didn’t know who set it there.
The questions came again, slower, more exact. Timelines. Words spoken. Distances. Who stood where when Rebecca lost her footing.
Sera answered until her voice went hoarse. Then she dropped her head and stared at her hands.
At some point, the officer stood. “That’s all for now,” he said. “We’ll likely follow up.”
Sera nodded as if she understood what follow up meant when her roommate was in a bag.
Alaric waited until the door clicked shut behind the officer. Then he leaned forward, forearms on the table, and looked at her. Not at her face. At her eyes. ”What did she really say?” he asked. His voice remained even, but something in his stare was not.
Her breath hitched and her throat burned around the words. ”She said, ‘Bjorn was married to her.’”
Alaric went very still. ”And then?” he pressed.
Sera swallowed hard. “She said, ‘You’re next.’”
The silence that followed was like a pressure wave. Alaric’s hand curled once on the tabletop, then flattened.
“Who was she talking about?” Sera asked, and it came out as a raw, helpless question. “Who was married to your father? Who is her? Why would Rebecca say that?”
Alaric exhaled slowly. “I don’t know,” he admitted, then clarified without quite saying it. “I don’t know which part matters yet.”
“And the other thing,” Sera said, voice shaking now. “She said I was next. Does that mean what I think it does?”
Alaric didn’t answer. His gaze shifted, a fraction toward the glass wall, toward the lobby beyond.
“Vidar Johnson was with her,” Sera said.
Alaric didn’t deny it.
“He was right there,” Sera went on. “He was talking to her. He’s the one who asked if she said anything.
Not... Not how was she. First question. What did she say.
He’s the one who…” Sera stopped because her mind flashed the image of his breath hitching, his voice breaking, the performance that had been almost convincing until she remembered the way Rebecca had looked at her and said you’re next.
“I’m not prepared to jump to that conclusion, yet,” Alaric said.
Sera stared at him. ”I am,” she said.
Alaric’s eyes narrowed. “There’s no proof.”
“I don’t need proof,” Sera shot back, and anger surged up through grief like a blade. “He was standing with her when she fell. And she told me I’m next. What else am I supposed to think?”
“That you’re supposed to stay alive,” he said.
The words hit Sera like a shove. Her pulse thudded hard in her ears, drowning out everything else. Stay alive.
Alaric stood abruptly. “We’re leaving.”
Sera rose on impulse, legs unsteady.
They left the conference room and moved through the lobby as if moving fast enough might keep the night from catching up to them.
Officers nodded at Alaric. Security opened a path without being asked.
Outside, night air slapped Sera’s face, cold and sharp, carrying the metallic tang of lights and pavement and something unsettled she couldn’t name. She didn’t remember it being night.
Alaric’s car waited at the curb, dark and sleek, engine already running.
He opened the passenger door and Sera climbed in, fingers clumsy as she fastened her seatbelt.
The door shut with a solid thud, sealing them into a pocket of quiet that made her ears ring.
The building, the police, the questions all fell away at once.
They pulled away from the curb, the lights of Severin Holdings shrinking in the rearview mirror as Alaric guided the car onto the open road.
Traffic thinned. The city breathed differently out here.
Sera’s tension eased, her body finally registering the quiet hum of the engine, the steady lines of the road ahead, the fact that they were moving steadily away from the horror of Rebecca’s death.
She exhaled slowly, pressing a hand to her ribs as if grounding herself. “I hate that sensation,” she said, attempting lightness and failing. “The part where you don’t know if the worst is over or just waiting its turn.”
Alaric’s mouth firmed, eyes locked on the road ahead. “We’re clear,” he said, though the words sounded more like an order than a reassurance.
Sera nodded, then turned her head to look at him fully. The streetlights flashed across her face, pale and searching, her voice suddenly very quiet. “Alaric?”
“Yes.”
“If this keeps escalating,” she said quietly, “am I going to die next?”