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It’s Mom.
It all comes tumbling back to me—the church, the screen, the revelation of what she did.
No, no, no. I can’t bear to see her. I don’t want her anywhere near me. She’d arranged to have my father murdered. The mother I’d thought I’d known and loved my entire life didn’t even exist. That mom would never have even considered such a thing. My whole relationship with her is a lie.
I realize something else, and my horror multiplies. I’m in a hospital, and if I’ve been admitted, it means my details have been filled in on a form and then uploaded to a computer somewhere. The police will probably get some kind of notification of where I am. They’ll come to arrest me for what I did to the professor.
Maybe I shouldn’t even care. Would it be easier in prison? Just to accept that my life is fucked, that my parents were never who I’d thought they were, that the three men I’d started to wonder if I could love had betrayed me, that I am a killer, and I will never come back from that. A part of me just wants to have someone slam a door on a cell, so I can curl up on a cot and pull a blanket over my head, and never have to deal with anyone ever again.
My heart aches.
How will I ever get past this? I can’t see a way. Everything has changed now.
Perhaps it would have been better if I’d died?
Mom must see the alarm on my face, as she covers my hand with her own. She knows me too well.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. This isn’t a regular hospital. It’s a private clinic, one Nathaniele owns.”
I practically roll my eyes. Of course he does. He would need somewhere to bring the students who’ve been badly beaten in their goddamn sick fights. He wouldn’t be able to easily explain away those injuries to a normal hospital.
I yank my hand away, though it takes all my effort. “Leave me alone.”
My voice is croaky.
The sheets are starched white and scratchy on my skin. There’s a faint chemical tang to the air.
I want to be back in my own bed, except it’s not the bed back in Verona Falls that I long for, or even the one in the cheap rental apartment that Mom and I abandoned when we ran. It’s the bed that was in my room back in the house where we’d lived back when Dad was alive, when I’d believed we were a normal family. My chest aches with a need to go back in time and undo everything that’s happened, but I know such a thing is impossible.
Despite myself, I can’t help wondering where the guys are. I don’t need to question why they did it. It isn’t as though Domenic has made any attempt to hide the fact he wanted to stop the wedding. I guess he found a way to do it. With a little help from his friends, of course. From past experience, I’m already sure that Valentino was the one who shot the footage of Mom and Nataniele talking, of her confessing to arranging my father’s murder.
Pain spears my heart. It’s such a powerful emotion, I struggle to breathe against it. Tino and Kirill must have known what it would mean, showing that footage at the wedding. They must have known how badly it would affect me, and yet they did it anyway. I’d been so fucking stupid to start to believe I actually meant something to them. They’d been using me; that was all. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been warned. But I’d somehow thought I was different, that the four of us together were different.
“We need to talk,” Mom says. “It’s important.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.” I raise my voice, a part of me hoping someone will overhear me. “You arranged to have Dad killed!”
Her eyes glisten with tears and she blinks fast. There’s tension around her mouth, and I notice lines on her skin that I’m sure weren’t there before.
“I would do anything to protect you. I want you to remember that. Anything at all. Even sacrificing your father. Bad men were making threats against us, against you. I wish you could see how you looked to them—young, pretty, female.” She swallows hard and a tear spills from the corner of her right eye, sliding down her cheek. She doesn’t even seem to notice. “They made threats against you, terrible threats. Your father owed money, and if he couldn’t pay it, you would be their payment. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Mackenzie? We needed the money from his life insurance, and we needed those men gone. It was him or you.”
A painful lump clogs my throat. “We could have just run. Like we have now.”
She turns her head, unable to look at me. “That option wasn’t open to us then.”
I understand why not. “Because Dad was still alive, you mean? Fucking Nataniele wouldn’t welcome us here while you were still married to him? Getting Dad out of the way helped Nataniele get you into his bed, too. You fucking sicken me. You all do.”
“I did it for you,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
I turn onto my side, so my back is facing her. My head is still pounding, and my stomach churns. My limbs feel as though I’ve got weights attached to them. Part of me knows what she is saying must be true because she has always protected me and loved me. She’s risked everything to do this, but I can’t get over her doing such a terrible thing, even if it was out of love for me.
I want to ask how long I need to stay in the hospital, but even if the doctors say I can leave, where will I go? Back to Verona Falls, where nobody wants me? I cringe at the thought. Will word of my epilepsy have spread around campus? I think of all the people who’d been in the church. It had only been a small service, but there had been enough for word to have spread. I bet the Devils have laughed about it all over campus. Dom is probably only upset that I didn’t die.
I want to scrunch myself into a tiny ball and vanish.
Mom touches my shoulder. “There are some people here to see you.”
“I don’t want to see anyone.”
