Best of 2017

"My piano," I tell him. "I'm going to play on the piano. And I'm going to sing. That's it. My songs. My choice. My control."

"Then what do you even need me for?"

"You get to publicize it. I know how much you love that media attention. I’m sure that hasn’t changed."

"Why would you do this?" he asks. "Why even bother?"

"Because, Luke. I know this may be a difficult concept for you to understand, but once upon a time, I loved music. I loved to sing. And then everything got messed up. I just want closure. One last show. A show where I can put it all out there. Then I can be done. I can move forward. For good."

He mumbles under his breath again before releasing me.

"I'll see what I can do."

And in Luke speak that's a yes. I smile and pat him on the arm. He winces.

"Your boyfriend won't be coming around for this," he says.

My eyes burn as I swallow and avoid his gaze.

"Don't worry. He won't be."

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

COLD METAL TAPS the base of my skull, stirring me from my delirious slumber.

It is familiar, this feeling. The heaviness in my body. The barrel of a gun rapping against my head. But it is the smell of earth that I remember most.

The urge to wretch is strong, and I am still hungover from whatever it is I ingested. When my eyes finally open, everything is blurred.

The room is dark and small. Cold. Underground. I'm trying to piece it all together. Trying to make sense of it.

I see Bella's face in my mind. Her screams. Her fear. A surge of adrenaline has me attempting to launch myself upright, but I am swiftly rejected by the confines of my restraints.

"Easy there, tiger.”

The voice is muffled, but familiar. The build of the man is too when he comes into view. And then I remember.

Bella's father. His house. The whiskey. This man is the one. The one who took me from my Bella. I try to lunge at him. To kill him. But my movements are still sluggish. My body is still weak. And I am still chained.

"There's no need for dramatics.”

It’s his shoes that I notice first. The same shoes I have seen a hundred times before. Shoes that have graced my own home. Shoes that belong to the man I trusted with my life.

With Bella's life.

When he sees the stark conclusion on my face, he removes the mask and retrieves an apple from his pocket.

"Sorry old pal," River says. "Just the way these things go sometimes, isn't it?"

I look up at him. My oldest friend. My only friend. I thought I had known betrayal before. I thought that nothing could be worse than what Ray Rossi did to me.

But I was wrong.

I still can’t accept it. I want to be logical.

River has taken issue with Isabella. He thinks me weak. Perhaps this is his way of trying to make me remember. To continue down the course of revenge that he helped me plan so meticulously.

This is what I tell myself.

“Release me,” I demand.

He looks at me, apologetic, but does not move to help me.

“I think you already know, Javi, that I can’t do that.”

His words cement the doubts in my mind. Years of memories, skewed as I try to make sense of them. I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know how. River gives me time to process. He has always been good about that. He knows me so well.

"How long?" I ask.

He paces around the room. Looks at me twice while he chews his apple. And then paces some more.

"Since the sanitarium."

The sanitarium.

He was only ten then. It doesn't seem possible. But I know better. I know with the agency, anything is possible. But still, I reason that there must be another explanation. River could never betray me. It never even crossed my mind.

Except for once… when I quickly dismissed it.

Now I know better.

“Luke,” I say. “It was you. You were the one who told him I was coming that day. You were the only one who knew.”

He looks away again.

“It wasn’t me,” he mumbles. “But I know who did. And the leak did come from me.”

Fucker.

Lying, filthy, scum.

It is the only thing I can think, and River knows it. He won’t even meet my eyes.

"You were never unstable," I accuse.

He stops. And now he looks offended.

"I'm as unstable as they come," he assures me. "The back story was true. I wouldn't lie about that, Javi."

"No?" I question. "So only everything else then?"

"I know it might seem that way," he says. "But you should know better than anyone that things are not always how they appear."

"So then tell me how they really are," I demand. "Tell me the truth for once. If you can even bring yourself to do that much."

River appears hurt by my words. His eyes flash before he turns away again.

"I need you to do something for me," he says. "And it isn't sanctioned by the agency."

This much, I believe. If the agency were involved in this, it would not be only River and me in this room. He is desperate. And I have never seen River desperate.

"There is a girl," he begins.

"A girl," I scoff. "You are lying."

This has to be the agency's doing. There must be more to this than what I can see.

River turns to me. Discards the apple core onto the ground. His eyes narrow and sharp.

"It's the truth.”

"The truth is that you are a coward and a liar.”

River is unfazed by my accusations now, and determination has strengthened his resolve as he continues.

"The program. I was a part of it too."

And now he has my attention. I look up at him. I still don't want to believe him. He is a traitor. A liar. He is no friend of mine.

But then he recites his thirteen-digit code number. The same numbers we all had. The numbers we were assigned upon entrance into the program.

It can't be true.

"I would have known," I tell him. "You were the same age."

"Yes, but I was in a different sector. And they started me earlier."

"How early?" I press.

"Nine."

I shake my head.

River ignores my doubt and goes on to explain.

"I graduated from the prog

ram with top marks. Killed three men before the age of ten. I was quite proud of myself."

"Until they sent you to the asylum because you had imagined it all.”

He ignores my jab and continues on to his point.

"My first assignment was easy," he says. "Just a man. I do not even remember his face, to be honest. They all blend together after a while. Even the second and the third. I didn't care to know them, or what they had done to earn their deaths. I believed what the agency told me. I followed my orders. I earned my stripes."

He paces again. Looks at me again.

"But then there was the girl."

And now it is me who has tired of his dramatics.

"What girl?"

"She was just a girl," he makes a point to say, as though he hasn't told me three times already.

"There was nothing special about her, really. She was nice to look at as most girls are. She had a pretty face. I thought she would look very pretty when she was dead, and I told her I wouldn't ruin her face because I intended to take her heart."

I think of my Bella. My beautiful Bella. So many times, I had imagined her dead myself. I had imagined how good I thought it would feel to see her that way. Until I tasted her. And she poisoned me. I could not have it any other way.

Before River even admits it, I can tell that he has been poisoned too.

"Those were my instructions," he says. "Cut out her heart. It should have been quite easy. None of the others were difficult."

He struggles with acknowledging his defeat. River has always been too proud. Too arrogant.

"There was something about her face though," he declares. "I thought she was lovely alive. It seemed a shame to watch the life drain from such a pretty face."

He downplays the words, but he cannot hide his true emotion. Not this time. It is clear that River disobeyed his orders long before he ever knew me.

He was a traitor before I ever trusted him. And not only to me.

"You let her live?" I question.

"I let her live," he confesses. "I thought I could fool them. I have always been smarter than most of them."

That much, he does believe.

"It worked, for a while," he says. "I kept her hidden for four years. And I got careless. I thought I could not be touched. That I could do no wrong. They believed I was doing so well. I had made progress with you after all."