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The problem is that for the first time, I didn’t want to chase after her. I’m not even considering what her punishment will be when she returns.
If she returns.
Maybe last night, I inadvertently fulfilled the orders I was to carry out…
Gripping the wheel, I glance down at the speedometer and ease my foot off the gas. The GPS said the journey would take a little over an hour, and I’m nearly at my destination in under half that time. Not that I care about a speeding ticket—they can easily be bought off. But the road is starting to get busier, and I don’t have the patience to deal with the asshats who can’t drive in anything vaguely resembling bad weather.
After waiting until I could finally walk, I went back to my bedroom and had a long shower. But even after that, I still couldn’t sleep. I was awake when Royal and Gemini returned home, sometime after four, and I was still awake when the sun finally rose, several hours later.
At some point in between, I made a phone call, and the moment I got the response I wanted, I picked up my car keys and left.
But from the moment Tori left, even until now, I haven’t been able to stop thinking.
No, that’s not quite right.
It took the shower to ease my body, allowing for some of the anger to ebb before I could focus on other things…
JP’s murder.
Just because I haven’t actively sought out all the information and details about his death doesn’t mean I don’t know what happened.
Or, at least, I thought I did.
JP had been brutally murdered—a fatal injury to the back of his head—and the guy who did it confessed. I didn’t need to know more than that. Like I said to Tori, I didn’t want to know more than that. JP was dead, and nothing was going to change that, but digging into things could hurt me.
Yet I was still suffering from the pain I felt on a daily basis.
Maybe this was a trick.
A nasty, vindictive last-effort attempt to twist the knife before she left…
But last night, it was me who revealed too much.
I didn’t lie. If my father had told me to kill Tori instead of just making her leave, I would have.
My freshman year, after I passed my own initiation into the XXXVII, my father had taken me to an apartment building in the Bronx. We waited outside for a couple of hours before a woman, not much older than me, left the building. My father made us follow her into a subway, carefully sticking to a particular route across the platform that he later told me kept us hidden in blind spots.
As a train passed through the station, he pushed her in front of it.
The papers called the death a tragic accident before the story broke that she was about to be investigated for fraud. Then it was suicide.
I’d walked into Gemini’s room and found him with the article on the monitor. Turned out he’d hacked her computer to plant evidence. Royal connected the dots when he said she worked at a company linked to the du Ponts and his family. She was about to go to the FBI to provide evidence which would have linked the company to illegal campaign funding.
We were all told later, that if an order is given, we follow it. Even if it’s murder.
After I killed her, my father said it was unlikely I’d have to get my hands dirty like that again, given my mapped-out future. It’s probably no longer outside of the realm of possibility to have a president with a criminal record—even murder—but it’s easier to keep approval ratings up if you have a seemingly clean background.
I had to be incredibly naïve if I didn’t think I’d be able to get through a full term as President of the United States without being responsible for anyone’s death.
Back then, I asked my father what would happen if he’d refused to kill her. He just shrugged and said someone else would carry out the orders. Then he implied that if I got orders like that myself, disobeying wasn’t an option.
What I told Tori was just the tip of the iceberg.
Of course, I know better. I shouldn’t have said anything. But that girl is the only one with the ability to get under my skin enough to make me slip up. Anger and alcohol are a terrible combination.
Thankfully, if she were to run her mouth, I’ve not said enough that would let anyone believe anything other than her being crazy. Twisted with revenge, enough to start creating poor conspiracy theories with no evidence to back it up.
And if she didn’t shut up, someone would make her.
