He knows.
The corner of his mouth lifts, but what he offers me isn’t a smile. It’s more like the warning a hunter would give his prey before moving in for the kill. My heart beats with heavy thuds, each one a fist that slams into my ribcage.
I’m trapped.
The fire in his gaze becomes a cold blaze. The heat turns to frost. He cuts me loose, his attention shifting inwardly so suddenly I feel like a boat without an anchor in a stormy sea.
Leaving me standing on the threshold, he walks to his car, gets in, and drives away without looking over his shoulder or glancing in the rearview mirror. It’s as if I don’t exist anymore. Why that shatters me in ways surpassing the horrible guilt festering in the pit of my stomach, I have no idea.
When the taillights of his car disappear through the gates, I go inside, close the door, and lean on wood. I feel sick. How many times have I wished I’d never been born? Too many to count. But this is the first time I think I didn’t deserve to be born. I’d give my legs to the devil to undo what I’ve done. I would’ve run faster. I would’ve stopped my mom before she walked into that house in Triomf. I would’ve made her get back into the car and drive to the hill in Auckland Park.
Fuck.
Dragging the heels of my palms over my face, I push off the door.
This is reality. These are the choices we made.
I wish I could go numb like after the time Gus had shot that poor man, but my mind doesn’t allow me the reprieve. It punishes me, tying my stomach in a knot of anxiety as I climb the stairs to my bedroom and slip inside. Thankfully, my mom is already asleep. I wouldn’t have been able to keep a poker face and pretend my world wasn’t coming to an end. A very dark, very twisted part of me wishes Leon would just kill me and get it over with. At least then these unbearable feelings eating me alive will end. But that’s a coward’s way of thinking. I was born to fight. The only thing I know is fighting. Surviving.
How will Leon avenge himself? Will he push a gun against my head? Will he strangle me? Drown me? Beat me to death? The alarming thing is that those thoughts don’t scare me half as much as the idea of him simply saying nothing. Dragging out the wait is the worst kind of torture.
I don’t know for how long I sit on the floor in the dark with my back against the wall, but it’s after one in the morning when the front door slams and Gus and Elliot’s boisterous laughter funnels through the crack under my door. They’re not even trying to be quiet. Typical assholes.
“See you in the morning,” Gus says.
“Have a good one, Dad,” Elliot replies.
A door closes somewhere down the hall. Footsteps fall on the tiles. When they stop just outside, I scramble to my feet and yank my door open. Elliot stands in front of his bedroom, his hand on the doorknob.
He gives me a once-over. “You left early. You could’ve had the decency to congratulate me before slipping away.”
“How could you do that?” I bite out, keeping my voice down.
He raises a brow. “Do what?”
Putting my face in his, I say, “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Actually, I don’t,” he taunts.
“How much of that presentation was your own, and how much of it was Leon’s work?”
He doesn’t reply.
“Oh my God,” I say, feeling weak with shock. “You didn’t even try to change it.”
His silence gives me the answer.
I clench my hands at my sides, resisting the urge to punch him. “How could you claim his work to be yours?”
“What did you think I was going to do with the program? Gush over its brilliance in secret? Lock it away in my drawer? Ask him to autograph it for me? You knew exactly why I wanted the program.”
“I didn’t,” I say, shaking with anger.
“Come on, Violet. It’s too late to cry innocent or naïve. You played your part in helping me gain my rightful place in the company.” He gives me a wry smile. “I suppose I owe you a thank you.”
“He knows,” I say, gritting my teeth. “He knows it was me.”
“If you’ve been clever, he won’t be able to prove it. It’ll be his word against mine.”
“What if he can? What if he does?”
“Prove what?” he asks, menace cutting into his expression as he leans closer. “I wrote that program. It’s mine. That’s all anyone needs to know. That’s all you need to say.” Taking his phone from his pocket, he wakes it up, swipes across the screen, and turns it toward me, showing me the evidence that can never leak out. “Or this comes to light. Is that what you want?”