Chapter 5

I couldn't face that house, so I went back to my father's old place.

My phone buzzed. Victoria had sent me actual words — the first in three years.

Come back and apologize to Julian.

I looked at it a long time. It almost made me laugh.

Then the call came through, and she was already impatient. "Did you hear me? Julian says—"

"Victoria." I cut in. My voice came out very quiet. "If I died, would you be sad?"

The question that had been sitting on my chest for months, finally out loud.

A few seconds of silence on her end. Then her voice went straight up.

"What is wrong with you lately? Who's been coaching you to say this morbid garbage? Are you a man or not? If you need money, name a number. I've never once said no.

"Get over here. Now."

In the end, she never gave me an answer.

It didn't matter anymore.

The call ended. I lay down on the plank bed my father and I used to crowd into when I was small, and took an old phone out of a rusted tin.

Everything Victoria and I said to each other in our early twenties was still on it.

Daniel, I saw a girl hand you a letter today. If you keep it, we're finished, understand?

Daniel, when are you free?

Daniel, I miss you a little.

The pain had spread past my leg into all of me by then, like hands going through my organs, pulling. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream.

Nothing came out. Just a little wet at the corner of my eye.

I read all eight thousand of them, start to finish. Then I deleted every one.

What strength I had left went into swallowing the sleeping pills and the painkillers.

My head got heavy. The pain started to let go of me.

For the first time in months, I smiled and meant it, and closed my eyes.

"Victoria. I'm free.

"I don't hate you.

"I hope this time you marry the right man."

...

Victoria stared at the ended call, unable to settle.

Without thinking, she opened the location app. She was the one who'd made Daniel install it, back when she was young enough to pester him about that kind of thing, and for a while she'd checked it constantly. After she found out what he was, she never opened it again.

The dot sat over a run-down complex in the old part of the city.

She frowned and stood up, reaching for her keys.

"Vicky." Julian caught her wrist and looked up at her, pitiful. "You promised you'd come to the company dinner with me tonight. My hand still hurts."

She stopped. She looked at the bandage on his finger, and sat back down. "Fine."

She was somewhere else all through dinner. That weak voice kept playing in her head.

Irritated, she pulled her collar loose and told Grace to find out who Daniel had been in contact with lately. Somebody had to be feeding him this. No con man was that good on his own.

But what did it have to do with her? Daniel was a man who'd sell his own body for money. That was all he was.

She was pressing her fingers into her temple when Grace called back.

"Ms. Sterling, Mr. Bennett hasn't been in contact with anyone. Nowhere but the hospital. His life is very small — the only family he ever had was his father, and his father died three years ago."

Victoria's hand tightened around her glass. She was on her feet before she knew she'd stood.

Every head at the table turned. She didn't care.

"He had a father?"

Julian's people had looked into him. Daniel Bennett was an orphan who lived off wealthy women. That was what the report said.

"Yes, ma'am. Three years ago. Bone cancer."

Something went white and loud in Victoria's head, and for a second her legs nearly went.

Which meant there was a chance — the smallest chance — that he hadn't lied.

Bone cancer.

She'd seen those two words somewhere.

Where?

And then she remembered the message he'd sent her months ago.