“Why would an article about a random Italian girl’s death show up in Evie’s file?” Romeo asked.
Fola had a dangerous look on her face, a mixture between delight and vindication. It was the same look she had whenever she was nearing the end of a chess match and was only two or three moves away from checkmate.
“Well, that’s what we have to find out.”
7:31P.M.—THE BUTTON MANOR
Anwar stared at Bilal in shock. His words replaying in his mind on a loop.
The last words he thought he’d ever hear come from Bilal’s mouth.
“My brother… Octavius and I… we… wekilledsomeone.”
Bilal had his eyes closed now, and tears were running down his face in a gentle stream.
“What do you mean by that, Billy?” Anwar asked softly, wanting to help him wipe his face but not wanting to overstep.
At first Bilal remained quiet. Then he opened his eyes, his expression steely as he wiped the tears away with his own sleeve.
“We killed someone,” Bilal said in a more assured tone.
“Who?” Anwar asked, folding his arms, mostly to hide his shaking fingers.
“Adam,” Bilal started. “Adam Gray. I don’t know if you heard about him or read about his death… the car accident from three years ago? My father stopped as much as he could from getting out.”
“Adam… Gray,” Anwar said, breathing out. “Is… was he Evie Gray’s brother? I think she mentioned him to me.”
Bilal nodded solemnly.
“Do you, uh, want to explain? You said he died in a car accident.”
“He did. But… it’s a lot more complicated than that,” Bilal said, taking a shaky breath. “Everything from that night, even the official police reports, all repeat the same lie. That Adam was drunk, that he had driven himself home from the Prodigy Ball and ended up crashing on the highway. Whatthose reportsdon’tmention was that Octavius and I were in the car when it crashed. We were scrubbed from the crime scene completely. As if we were never there,” Bilal continued. “Yes, the car crashed, and yes, Adam died. But that’s not the only sequence of events that mattered that night.”
Bilal couldn’t look at Anwar, just at the ground. “The truth is, Octavius and I had known Adam since we were kids. His sister Evie too. They sometimes had classes with us. I always had the biggest crush on Adam, and so did Octavius. Adam was four years older than us and we thought he was so cool and were always trying to impress him. That night we placed a bet on who could impress Adam the most at the ball. I spent the entire night trying to think of what to do, but for Octavius it was easy. All he had to do was whip out his violin and play an impressive piece. I thought my chance was over, but then Adam invited us both to drive in the new car my father had gotten him for his eighteenth birthday the week before, and of course we took the chance. That’s where everything went wrong.”
Bilal took another breath, steadying himself on his more dominant leg. “When we were in the car, Adam started asking all sorts of questions… personal questions… questions I read to mean he thought we were friends, that he was interested in us. But when I look back, it was because he was mocking us. He knew we liked him and found it funny. But then something switched—Adam wanted to impress us too, I think. He began driving faster—at first at the speed limit and then just a tiny bit over. Octavius started daring him to go faster, and Adam obliged. I joined in the daring, and with our chants he kept increasing the speed. And then he started panicking because the brakes weren’t working. We didn’t really understand what that meant, we just thought it was so hilarious how fast we were going. I didn’t register Adam’s panic at first, all I saw was myin. My chance to finally impress him.
“Stupidly… I’d brought my fencing saber with me. It’s not like I could have really shown him many techniques in a moving car. I was so busy thinking of how I might win him over that by the time I realized that Adam waspanicking and something was wrong, it was already too late. I tried to use my saber to somehow jam the brake pedal, but it didn’t work. That was the last thing I fully remember. Henry told me most of what came after. Apparently, the car had crashed into a tree on the side of the road. Octavius had broken his foot. But Adam… Adam was too heavily injured… He died almost instantly. And I… I walked away fine. I’d just passed out for a few minutes with a minor concussion.”
“Oh, Billy…,” Anwar said.
Bilal shook his head, looking sick. “It gets worse. When I woke up and saw Adam, saw Octavius, I called Henry. Not an ambulance. That’s what we were taught to do whenever anything bad happened or whenever we were in trouble—call Henry first. Henry called the ambulance, but before they took Adam away, he was taken out of the car Father had bought him by thecleanup team. They are a sector of Father’s private staff who are sent to clean up any legal messes and I guess Henry had sent them to the scene. They placed Adam in an unregistered car so nothing could be traced back to the Button Estate at all. They essentially restaged the crash, made it look like Adam had alcohol in his system, like he was alone when he died. Even his parents believe that lie. What’s even more messed up about it all is that the Grays still work for us—Mrs. Gray is the head chef, and Mr. Gray is our head gardener, and my father paid tens of thousands a year into their retirement as a bonus for being suchloyalemployees. Really, it’s hush money. I sometimes wonder if the Grays ever suspect the truth about what happened that night but the money ensures they stay loyal to our family and never become curious enough to find out. Who knows what’ll happen now that Father is dead. Where the payments would even come from. And if the payments stop, they might feel the urge to finally find out the truth about what really happened.”
“Fucking hell,” Anwar said.
“Yeah. Fucking hell indeed.” Bilal sighed. “The other part that got scrubbed is the fact that the injury from the crash wasn’t the only injury Adam hadwhen he died. When they found him, he had a fencing saber buried deep in his chest. That part was me.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I did that.”
Anwar placed his hands on the fencer’s shoulders. He felt Bilal tense at the gesture, so he moved his hands up to the sides of Bilal’s face instead. “It’s truly a tragedy what happened. But you can’t blame yourself for it, Billy. You were trying to press the brakes. And you were also fourteen. Adam was eighteen. He was an adult. He chose to take you out driving, to speed up.”
Bilal wasn’t hearing any of it, he just kept shaking his head no.
“You did not kill that boy, Bilal.”
“My saber,” he said brokenly.
“Probably didn’t do as much damage as crashing full force into a tree while trapped inside a heap of metal did,” Anwar said. “You have survivor’s guilt. Quite a severe case of it, it seems.”
Bilal closed his eyes, his body shaking, and he let himself slump forward onto Anwar’s shoulder. Anwar wrapped his arms around him, as Bilal finally allowed himself to cry without holding anything back. Anwar rubbed circles into his back, trying to soothe him, to soothe the years of guilt that Bilal was holding.
