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That place has burned down.
Since I haven’t left the hospital like Jordan asked me to, I don’t yet grasp the severity of the situation. It doesn’t feel real yet.
I open my eyes, and I encounter a broken Smolyakov. His head hangs low, and his eyes are more sunken than ever.
And he’s the type to regularly do molly.
“We need to talk,” he tells me, and my heart shatters. His mask has slipped off, making me shiver. Where is he going with this? I don’t want to find out.
I glimpse at Ignas, and I’m relieved that he’s still in the position I left him in five minutes ago. I drift in and out of consciousness.
“I did that.”
“Excuse me?” I gasp.
“Ignas.”
“What about him?” I ask.
“His fractured knee? I did that.”
“You’re not making any sense,” I blurt out. I shift on the bed, but I’m too disheveled to get up and face my friend. Since Jordan had the place emptied, the noise has stopped. Where there used to be shuffling and pacing, now, it’s a silence ready to swallow me whole.
“I was supposed to kill him, Ivy. Do you understand me now?” He scowls at me, and I’m taken aback. I wrestle away from him, but he clutches my knee. I freeze.
“Why? Who made you do that?”
“Nobody,” Smolyakov quickly reveals. He doesn’t make a show of it. Simple. Hard. Facts. “Nobody makes me do anything. I was paid to do it.”
“But you failed,” I remind him. Ignas got away with a fractured knee.
“I decided against it at the last minute,” Smolyakov says, his icy eyes turning tense.
“You want me to congratulate you? Do you understand what you’re saying? You let perverts pay you to kill a teenager? Perverts that hurt kids? Are you… Are you listening to yourself? You’re a doctor. You’re not… Please, tell me you’re joking?” I’m transfixed by his words, the timelessness in his features.
He doesn’t care, does he?
For the first time since I’ve known him, Smolyakov shows me the one side I’ve always ignored.
The monster.
“I decided against it because I wanted to see the boy suffer,” Smolyakov tells me, and his words whip me, five years of trust vanishing. “I wanted to extort your daddy, Ivy. He has enough money to feed me, so I beat down on the boy until I felt satisfied with the results. Okay, I almost killed him. He’s been a little cripple for the past couple of weeks, hasn’t he? Your daddy seemed content with my slow torture. Being locked inside that tiny unprotected one-bedroom apartment in the abandoned youth facility… That’s a prison right there.”
“Fuck you,” I spit at him.
“I fucked the boy often enough. That should suffice.” Smolyakov stuns me quiet. “That’s not even the worst of it. I’ve decided that I won’t be your daddy’s employee for much longer, Ivy Lin. Or should I say Willow Abbott? I don’t care. This entire ordeal bores me, and I want your boyfriend to come and get me already.”
“You don’t mean that,” I whimper.
“I do.” Smolyakov reaches out for the sheet that covers me. His fingers trace lines on the surface until he flattens his palm, pressing the sheet against the bed. “Ignas told you about the guy who paid to punch him after shoving his dick down Ignas’s throat?”
I nod, my chest caving in.
“It was me who hired him. I made him do that, the punching and all. That was just the icing on the cake. I told the guy to keep calling Ignas, and he did. I told him to act like he works for the hospital, and he did. I handed him a wheelchair decorated with explosives that your silly friend would never detect. He handed Ignas the chair, and he drove him to our home. I was inside of my apartment when Ignas strolled into your place, Ivy. I’d meticulously prepared the entire building. I was so eager to watch it burn down. I was ready to die with him.”
“Then why the fuck didn’t you!” My heart begs me to shut him up. I can’t take it any longer. I’m fucking grateful that he saved Ignas. If he hadn’t… Smolyakov sounds like a child, confessing to his crimes like this. It pains me to see how our friendship unfolds, but there is nothing left to do but wait and see.
I’m not letting Ignas out of my sight now.
