Chương 14
“You were afraid.”
“Lydia said you had people watching me.”
“She may have believed that.”
“Did you?”
Daniel considered lying because the truth was complicated.
“I asked Marcus to find the fourth name,” he said. “He used company systems. I don’t know whether anyone watched you.”
Maya’s face tightened. “Lily said you’d answer like that.”
“Like what?”
“Technically.”
He looked at the coffee in his hand.
“She thought you signed the contracts,” Maya continued. “At first.”
“I know.”
“She didn’t want to believe it.”
Daniel nodded.
“She spent three weeks trying to prove your signature was stolen before she told me what she found.”
“Why?”
“Because she said if you were involved, she wanted enough evidence that you couldn’t make it disappear.”
The vending machine hummed.
Maya adjusted the fern. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“She loves you.”
Daniel looked toward Lily’s door.
“That’s why she needed proof,” Maya said. “Not because she didn’t.”
She walked toward the elevators.
“Maya.”
She turned.
“Why did she go to the Gray Room alone?”
“She didn’t.”
Daniel waited.
“I was supposed to be outside,” Maya said. “I got scared. I saw Ethan at the entrance and left.”
Her grip tightened around the pot. “Lily called me twice. I didn’t answer.”
Daniel saw the guilt before she spoke it.
“I told myself I was getting help,” Maya continued. “I went back to campus security. They said she was probably at the party and told me to wait. I waited twenty minutes because they were adults and had uniforms.”
“You reported her missing.”
“Too late.”
“You reported her.”
Maya’s eyes filled. “That doesn’t fix it.”
“No.”
She looked at him, perhaps expecting comfort.
Daniel had none that was not dishonest.
“It doesn’t,” he repeated. “But leaving her there would have been worse.”
Maya wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Lily says you used to hurt people.”
“I did.”
“Are you going to hurt Mason?”
“No.”
She studied him. “Because the police got him first?”
Daniel looked through the glass panel in Lily’s door.
“No,” he said. “Because Lily did.”
Maya frowned.
“She kept the evidence alive,” he said. “Hurting him would make the story about me.”
Maya nodded slowly, then left.
Daniel returned to the room.
Lily sat propped against pillows, tablet in her lap. The fern rested on the windowsill.
She typed and turned the screen toward him.
MAYA TOLD YOU.
“Yes.”
SHE BLAMES HERSELF.
“I know.”
DO YOU?
“No.”
Lily watched his face.
Daniel sat down. “I blamed her for about ten seconds.”
WHY STOP?
“Because I’ve spent half my life making frightened people responsible for what stronger people chose.”
She lowered the tablet.
He looked at his hands. “I’m trying not to do that anymore.”
Lily typed again.
MARCUS?
“What about him?”
DO YOU BLAME HIM?
“Yes.”
ONLY HIM?
Daniel met her eyes.
“No.”
She waited.
“I blame Mason. Ethan. Brandon. Tyler. Marcus. Lydia. The people at the university who ignored earlier reports. The staff who took money and stopped asking questions.” He paused. “And me.”
Lily typed carefully.
YOU DIDN’T HIT ME.
“No.”
YOU DIDN’T KNOW.
“No.”
THEN WHY YOU?
“Because Marcus could forge my name and expect no one to question it. Because I built a company around trust in a man I knew was capable of terrible things. Because I wanted the benefits of his loyalty without looking at what loyalty meant to him.”
Lily’s fingers hovered over the screen.
Daniel continued. “And because when you found my name on those contracts, you believed there was a chance I had signed them.”
Her eyes dropped.
“That possibility came from somewhere,” he said.
She typed, YOU LIED.
“Yes.”
ABOUT EVERYTHING?
“No.”
The word came too quickly. He started again.
“Not everything. But enough that you couldn’t tell which parts were real.”
Lily looked toward the window.
Daniel sat without speaking.
After several minutes, she typed, MOM KNEW?
“Some.”
HOW MUCH?
“She knew I hurt people. She knew I worked for criminals. She didn’t know every detail.”
WHY STAY?
“She didn’t, at first.”
Lily looked back at him.
“She left before you were born,” Daniel said. “I spent a year proving I could remain gone from that life. Even after she took me back, she kept money in a separate account for three years. She never told me the code to the alarm system until you were five.”
Lily’s eyes changed. Claire had existed in her memory as warmth, impatience, music in the kitchen, and a voice that could turn Daniel silent with one word. The idea of her mother planning escape routes did not fit.
Daniel did not make it fit for her.
“She loved you,” he said. “She also knew love could make people stupid.”
Lily typed, LIKE MARCUS?
Daniel looked at the words for a long time.
“Yes.”
The preliminary hearing began six weeks later.
Lily attended by video from a private room because her doctors believed a crowded courtroom would worsen her panic symptoms. She still could not speak normally. Her jaw had begun healing, but every sentence required effort, and the defense attorneys had already argued that medication and trauma affected her memory.
Daniel sat outside the video room.
Lily did not want him visible during her testimony.
He accepted that without argument.
Through the closed door, he heard only fragments: the judge’s voice, an attorney objecting, Lily’s careful answers. Each word sounded expensive.
Maya sat beside Daniel, bouncing one knee.
“You’re making me nervous,” he said.
“I’m already nervous.”
“Then you’re making it contagious.”
She stopped, then started again thirty seconds later.
Across the hall, Dr. Park waited to testify about Lily’s injuries. She wore a dark suit instead of scrubs and looked less comfortable than she ever had in the trauma bay.
“Do they ask doctors stupid questions?” Maya whispered.
“Constantly,” Dr. Park said.
“You can hear me?”
“The hall is quiet.”
“Oh.”
May you like
Dr. Park adjusted her ID badge, realized she was not wearing one, and smoothed the empty lapel.
Daniel watched the courtroom door at the end of the hallway.
