Chapter 4- What Tasha Came to Say

LARA'S POV

I was looking at the ceiling when the door opened.

I did not hear a knock because there was no knock. Tasha walked in like she had already decided the room belonged to her. She was wearing a long coat and her hair was perfect and she looked like someone who had just come from somewhere important. She pulled the chair close to my bed, sat down, crossed her legs, and looked at me the way you look at something you have already finished with.

"I wanted to come and see you myself," she said. "To check how you were doing."

I looked at her and said nothing.

She smiled and leaned back in the chair. "You know, most people in your position would have asked more questions before agreeing to a surgery like that. But you just trusted him. You signed whatever they put in front of you." She tilted her head slightly. "That was very sweet of you, Lara. It really was."

I kept my hands flat on the blanket and my face completely still. I had nothing to say to her and I wanted her to know that I had nothing to say to her.

She waited for me to react. When I did not she shifted in her chair and tried again. "Andre told me you were always like this. Very loyal. Very trusting." She said the word trusting the way you say a word when you mean something else entirely. "He said that was actually what made everything so easy."

I looked at her face. I looked at her eyes. I was trying to understand what she needed from this visit and I was starting to understand that what she needed was to watch me break. She had not come to check on me. She had come because winning was not enough for her unless the other person knew they had lost.

She leaned forward a little. "Can I tell you something? Something I think you deserve to know?"

I did not answer. She was going to tell me anyway.

"We had a donor match for Dylan three weeks before your surgery," she said. She said it slowly and clearly, making sure each word landed. "Three weeks before. A full match. The surgery was already scheduled." She paused. "We did not need your liver, Lara. We never needed it. Andre just thought it would be a good opportunity."

I looked at her and I did not move and I did not speak.

She watched my face carefully, looking for the thing she had come to see. I gave her nothing. I kept my breathing even and my expression empty and I looked back at her and waited.

She was not getting what she came for and I could see it starting to frustrate her. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward until her elbows were on her knees. "Do you understand what I just told you? They cut you open for no reason. Your liver is sitting in a medical waste bag somewhere. It was never used. Not one piece of it." She stopped. "Does that not bother you at all?"

"Keep going," I said.

She blinked. That was not the response she had prepared for.

She stood up from the chair and took one step closer to the bed. She reached out and tapped my stomach lightly with two fingers, just below where the incision was. I felt the pain move through me but I did not show it. I kept my eyes on her face.

"How does it feel," she said quietly, "knowing you will never be whole again? Knowing he used you like a spare part and threw the rest away?" She smiled. "That is all you ever were to him. A spare part."

I looked at her for a long moment. Then I looked down at the bedsheet beside me. The phone was lying there face down. I had started the recording eight minutes ago when I heard her heels in the corridor outside. The red light was still on.

I looked back up at her. "Are you done?" I asked.

Something moved across her face. She had expected tears, or shouting, or begging. She had not expected that question in that tone. She straightened up, smoothed her coat, and picked up her bag from the floor.

"Take care of yourself," she said. She walked to the door and opened it and left without looking back.

I waited until her footsteps disappeared down the corridor. Then I picked up the phone and stopped the recording. I played back the last thirty seconds to make sure it had caught everything clearly. Her voice came through without any problem. Every word.

I looked at the recording file for a moment. Then I opened Marcus's number to send it to him and saw that he had already sent me a message while Tasha was in the room. It was a screenshot of a financial alert from Castellano Holdings. The alert showed that an unknown entity had acquired eight percent of the company overnight.

I looked at the percentage for a moment. Then I typed back two words.

Buy more.

I put the phone down on the blanket and looked at the window. Outside the sky was the same flat grey it had been all week. I thought about Tasha sitting in that chair, crossing her legs, waiting for me to fall apart. I thought about the careful way she had delivered each piece of information like she was unwrapping a gift.

I picked the phone back up and looked at the recording one more time. Then I smiled. It was not a happy smile. It was the kind of smile you have when you realise that the person who came to destroy you just handed you exactly what you needed.