“We met in school. We were both assholes. Bonded over making fun of other kids,” he hisses, then cries out in pain. “Why do you even want to know? It’s over.” He shakes his head, then lets out a weak laugh. “He can have you now.”
“Did you even love me?” I ask, my eyes burning with tears.
“At the beginning, maybe,” he whimpers. “But later you turned so cold and distant, and all you ever talked about was him.
“What?” I say, looking at him, then back at the road. “You self-centered buffoon, all I ever saw was you, and if you didn’t beat the shit out of me so often, maybe I would have been talking about you.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” he says.
I close my eyes and inhale, then open them again, gripping the wheel so hard my fingers hurt as I slam on the brakes and turn onto the road by the cliffs. The same road where he left me six years ago, bleeding out.
When the car stops, I storm out.
I rip open the back door and shout, “Get out of the car.”
He drags himself out, standing weakly in front of me. “What are you going to do?” he asks.
I move to the trunk and throw it open, my eyes landing on a knife inside.
“Get in.”
He coughs, then slowly steps away from the car.
Something inside me snaps. I move fast, grabbing his hair and yanking him backward until he crashes onto the grass. Then I drag him as hard as I can toward the trunk.
“Get inside,” I say again.
This time, he enters voluntarily.
As he lies down, I say, “There’s a knife in there. Carve thirty cuts into your stomach for the thirty times you hit me and left me like I was trash.”
I close the trunk.
Tears spill down my cheeks as my jaw trembles. I start the car again and drive toward the cliff, pressing down on the gas as I shove the door open. Just before the car reaches the edge, I jump out, my body rolling across the grass as I hear the car slam against the rocks below, tip once more, then disappear into the ocean.
I push myself up, brush the grass from my knees, and start walking back to the house like nothing happened at all.
There’s been a strange silence in the house for the past few days. Nathaniel is quieter, and I can’t stop wondering if it’s because he noticed Daniel is missing. And I’m not ready to admit that I’m the one who let him go.
I stare at myself in the mirror, moving slightly to the side as I look at my stomach. I feel so bloated today.
I hear voices from downstairs. I pull my shirt back down and make my way out, moving slowly to the bottom of the stairs.
I sit halfway down, still and quiet, listening as Victor and Nathaniel talk below.
“Did you find him?” Nathaniel asks Victor.
“No trace of him or the car,” Victor says. “The basement door was unlocked when I noticed he was gone.”
“We have to find him,” Nathaniel says, starting to pace across the lobby. “If he gets to his father, they’ll run, and Aurelia will never get her money or the house back.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Victor says. “Dasha said her friend from the police arrested William Grant after Masha brought the papers in.”
“Good,” Nathaniel says, finally stopping.
“Did you tell her yet?” Victor asks.
I slowly rise to my feet and move closer to the room. My lips part as I look at them, walking inside.
