Doc doesn’t laugh. “Remember how I sold Parker Orchard? One dose for his Pam Anderson-looking girlfriend?”
“The model,” I say in a rush of memory. “God, she was stunning.”
“Yeah, Parker’s always punched above his weight,” Doc says dismissively. “But that dose didn’t matter. It was the second batch I sold him that fucked us.”
I frown, I remember Doc running the first sale past me—a good opportunity to get Parker more invested in the drug I thought—but not the second. “You sold to him again?”
Doc exhales long and hard and I have the sense he’s forcing himself to say this. Dredging it past eighteen years of internal walls. “Parker called me the next day, practically begging for more. Offered me fifty grand, cash, for as much Orchard as I had on me.”
“But that can’t be right because…” It clicks. “You didn’t tell me so you could keep the money.”
“Sure did,” Doc says grimly.
“So, he didn’t steal our stock!” I say outraged. “He bought it off you fair and square! He drugged January with what he bought from you years ago!”
Doc hangs his head. “Yup.”
“Fuck you!” I scream, my voice bouncing off the walls.Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!
“Fuck me,” Doc says in a hollow voice. “But don’t worry, Morelli, I paid for it. That deal cost me everything I had.”
“The fuck are you talking about?” Adriano says roughly. “If you hadn’t sold it to him, he still would have—”
“That’s not what I mean,” Doc interrupts. “The minute I saw his face when we made the second deal, I knew I’d fucked everything. His eyes were glowing like pinwheels, and when I gave him the vials, he kept me there another twenty minutes ranting about how good Orchard is. He kept saying, ‘She wanted me. She really wanted me.’”
My nose curls in disgust, but within it, I’m amazed to find a flicker of pity. Parker had more money than God, even then, but it took the most powerful aphrodisiac on earth to actually make him feel desired.
“I wanted to snatch it all back off him,” Doc says with a choking laugh. “Pour it down the drain and run, but I took the cash. I sold us all out.”
“It doesn’t matter that you gave him Orchard twice,” Adriano says sharply. “He’d already had it.”
“It does matter,” Doc says. “Second time was when he got obsessed. And I knew he would. First time’s an anomaly, your starfish girlfriend writhing and coming all over you, making you feel like a real man. Twice in two days…I knew he was gonna go apeshit. And I was right. The next day he called you Eli, remember? He asked to buy the formula outright. Got fucking furious when you tried to talk him down. I knew it was gonna happen. I saw the future and sold it out for fifty grand.”
“Doc…” I begin.
“Don’t you fuckin’ start,” Doc snarls and I hear the throb of impending tears in his voice even if he doesn’t. “Our whole lives, January, Alessia, us never getting to meet our kid. It’s all my fucking fault.”
I wonder how long this has weighed on him, how long he’s carried the burden. I remember the two of us on the hospital floor almost two decades ago, holding each other as we cried for what we’d lost.
“It doesn’t matter that you sold to him twice, Dom,” Bobby says quietly. “You didn’t know what Parker was going to do. And you can lie to yourself and say you did, but that’s just because you want to take responsibility, because in your head that means you could have stopped it. But you’re wrong.”
“I’m not,” Doc says, voice wavering. “Icouldhave stopped him.”
“You didn’t kill my dad,” Bobby says loudly. “Parker did. He killed your sister and January’s Zia.”
“And my Dolce,” I say, thinking of the sweet puppy who laid at my side as I slept.
“And my mama,” Adriano adds softly.
“All of them,” Bobby says firmly. “And that sucks. It was fucking shit, but Doc, I don’t need to stand here in the last hours of my life and listen to you act like you’re the reason it happened, you self-aggrandizing fuckhead.”
Silence. I shift awkwardly in my bonds, and I wonder if Doc’s about to break down weeping or snap his arms trying to throttle Bobby. Then he laughs. A clear, loud laugh. “Fuck, Bobby. What a time to grow a pair, huh?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Bobby says, but I can hear the smile in his voice.
“Shit,” Adriano says. “The door.”
We freeze and a series of beeps bounces around the cell.
