One day, after a lot of justice and years of hardcore mental treatment, he might even have a second chance.
I certainly have mine.
Margot snoozes beside me, an eye mask over her face to block out the sun, and her blonde hair splashed across the pillow.
It’s adorable watching her sleep like a kitten.
She shifts in her sleep, pressing against my side with a sleepy groan.
I pull her in and reach for my phone, just like I do every morning.
Margot says it’s a bad habit to read the news before I’ve had coffee. Before the stalker-killer episode in Maine, I wasn’t the kind of guy to get too hung up on social media.
Hell, I know half of it isn’t true, especially the shit they write about me.
But this is different.
None of it feels real yet, and I need to make sure.
With one hand, I punch in the Babins’ names.
There’s not much fresh. Nothing new since yesterday.
But they’re out of the hospital, already in front of a judge for attempted assault, trespassing, arson, and a litany of other charges that’ll keep them locked up for years.
Especially if I have anything to do with it.
The cameras caught everything their confessions didn’t before the Babins took them out. Viola was caught walking into the house with a club, and Joseph doused the front porch in gasoline.
The rain has probably washed it all away by now, if it wasn’t cleaned up by the Blackthorns’ bodyguard, who rushed up there the day we left.
There’s no way they’ll crawl back to their blueberry farm after this.
The Babins didn’t make many friends in Sully Bay.
And Margot?
She made a hell of a lot.
As for Lee, he’s only at the start of a very long, rough road. My name is big enough, and his vendetta personal enough, to make his attempt on my life a big splash in the press.
Ironically, about as big as he wanted.
And now there’s a simmering stir about AI screwing over designers and other creatives.
Part of me hates that Lee’s message didn’t just die in that cellar.
Only, a bigger part of me knows it had to happen, for reasons that have nothing to do with one enraged almost-killer.
More importantly, it’s brought up legal questions about how the OptiSynth software learns, how it pulls so much material from existing designers and artists without compensation.
I’m not the guy to sort it out, so I’ll leave that to the judges.
The crack in the armor is there. OptiSynth will face the issues I tried to warn them about—big questions and a crisis they can’t just sweep away.
The world is talking.
Morals are shifting like desert sands.
