Regardless, even with the numbness racking my body, I want to hold my baby brother one last time. I want to cry over his body in peace.
Tears stain my face when they declare him deceased just down the hall from the ICU where his father remains comatose.
I have no idea how Jean-Louis got here. Everything after we tumbled into the lake is a blur, just as it was the first time I fell in. I don’t know how I got out or how much time passed before Elle found me.
All I know is that I awoke on the embankment with one less sibling and no Jean-Louis. Instead, when we arrived at the hospital, I’d run into Mother, who told me they’d found himcollapsed somewhere on campus, and he was now in a medically induced coma.
Elle waits outside the door for me as I enter the room. Mother sits next to Jean-Louis’s bed, holding the shirt they cut off Beckett before taking him away for an autopsy.
She doesn’t cry. Barely reacts when she notices I’m in the room. Just keeps staring at the clothing like it might be enough to conjure up her lost son.
The room is eerily silent. I glance around, noting that Jean-Louis isn’t hooked up to any monitors. His IV has been detached. The oxygen machine switched off.
I look at her again, willing myself to feel something—anything—when she holds up a tiny clear vial.
“When I was a young girl,” she begins, her voice raspy, “I loved a man I was not supposed to. Founding family members weren’t to become romantically involved with each other, but we were all so close back then that it seemed almost impossible for there not to be some overlap. At least for me. My father had other plans, wanting to merge our family with Jean-Louis’s who weren’t founders. All I wanted was to be true to my heart.”
I don’t say a word.
“Turns out you can be too true if you’re not careful. I wound up pregnant with twins—you and Bellamy. A double penance for my indiscretion. That should’ve been the first clue that we were the cursed ones, not the Andersons.”
She sighs, tucking the vial beneath Beckett’s shirt.
Silent, I take a seat on the pullout couch behind her.
“It was obvious to anyone who cared that you had none of Jean-Louis’s blood in you. I used to think it was a good thing, until he started plotting in secret. I think he was threatened by the fact that you had double the founding family blood in you when he had none. He didn’t want his position in Fury Hill to ever be questioned, since he was only the head of our familybecause he married in and took my last name. Back then, the city council wouldn’t even give me a second thought as the family head. That’s why Jean-Louis worked with Death’s Teeth to orchestrate taking Bellamy’s life…and the attempt on yours. To eliminateobstructions.”
I squeeze my hands together in my lap.
“For a long time, I wasn’t sure, but the fact that he refused to retrieve Bellamy’s body never sat well with me. So eventually, I decided I’d give him a similar fate.”
The vial. His mysterious illness. “You’ve been poisoning him.”
“I had hoped the effects would take a toll on him much quicker. Especially after seeing the influence he had over Beckett…” Her voice cracks, and she brings his shirt up, inhaling its scent. “I tried to get him out of the hole Jean-Louis had dug for him, but all the new information he learned only seemed to make him spiral more. Still, I thought maybe you’d be able to reach him. I don’t suppose that was fair of me.”
My chest burns. “None of it would’ve mattered. He was too far gone.”
“Theyconvinced him that you being both a Blackwater and Dupont meant you’d try to edge him out or something. I don’t know what nonsense they spewed… I should have sent him abroad with Gigi.” Sighing, she lowers the shirt. “Good Lord. I’ll have to tell your sister about this.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
She swallows, nodding just once. “I’m not sure how long it’ll be before someone comes in here to check on your—on Jean-Louis. It’d be nice to have an alibi.”
I’m not sure my word is going to matter all that much when our last name will shut down questions anyway, but I don’t say that. I wouldn’t want to be alone in a tomb of my own making either.
I get to my feet, watching as she stares at him with a finality I can’t quite place. A coldness I’ve experienced in very specific settings and never paid enough attention to.
You didn’t recognize her last night?
Bending down, I hold out my arms as though I’m going in for a hug. Mother meets my gaze and tentatively lifts hers to reciprocate; as she leans in, I drop my hand, pressing against her abdomen.
She hisses, wincing and pulling away, but not before I can feel the thick gauze hidden beneath her shirt.
In the exact spot where I stabbed the Director.
A part of me expects sadness or even disappointment, but I feel nothing.
“It isn’t what you think, Sutton.”
